Hi Reader,

Ria is a high achiever, and high achievers carry a particular weakness that no one warns them about. It is not laziness. It is the opposite. It is the quiet, relentless pursuit of doing it perfectly.

She would start a week beautifully. Then one meal would go off plan, a single slice of cake at a birthday, and something in her would snap. "Well, I have ruined it now." And the rest of the day, sometimes the rest of the week, would unravel from that one small thing.

I asked her to notice the word she kept using. She wanted to eat the best way, make the best choice, have the best week. And that word, best, was quietly destroying her.

Because best is perfection. And perfection does not exist. It never did. There is no flawless way to eat, no spotless week, no human being who gets it all right. The pursuit of best means anything less than flawless registers as failure, and so a single slice of cake becomes proof that the whole effort was pointless.

The shift I asked her to make is tiny, and it changes everything. Stop trying to make the best choice. Just make a better one.

Better is always available. Better has no failure built into it. You ate the cake? Fine. The very next choice can still be a better one. You do not have to wait for Monday, or for a fresh clean start, because you never fell off anything. There was nothing to fall off.

I think of it like driving. Your car is narrower than the road. You do not have to stay welded to a single perfect line down the centre, terrified that one small drift will send you into a ditch. You have room. You can move a little left, a little right, you can correct, and you are still safely on the road. A plan that demands perfection is a tightrope. Real life is a lane, with space to maneuver.

This one reframe quietly dismantles the entire cycle of bingeing and guilt. The cycle does not run on cake. It runs on the belief that one imperfect choice has ruined everything, which makes the rest feel pointless, which is exactly what turns one slice into the whole thing. Take away the demand for perfect, and the cycle has nothing left to feed on.

One small thing to try this week. The next time a choice does not go to plan, do not write off the day. Just make the very next choice a slightly better one, and carry on as though nothing was ruined, because nothing was. One better choice, then the next. That is the entire game.

Loosening the grip of perfectionism, especially in a woman who is excellent at everything else, takes a steady hand and an outside eye. It is most of what I do, quietly, with a few women at a time.

Ria was never failing. She was holding herself to a standard no human could meet. The moment she traded best for better, she was free. So are you. You were never the problem.

Dhaval
Recovery First Method

Two ways to go deeper when you are ready:
Read the free guide, You Were Never the Problem: dhavalbhadeshiya.com/free-guide
Apply for Project Phoenix, six months of private one to one coaching: dhavalbhadeshiya.com/apply