Getting to Good Enough

Janine is in Walla Walla moving her dad into assisted living, so she didn't have a spare moment to record an episode. So we're re-running an episode from August 2020. Enjoy!

Setting boundaries allows you to live a life based on your core values. This week, Shannon and Janine discuss getting in touch with what's important to you as a way to help you set boundaries that ensure you're doing the things that align with your why. They use a recent real-life example to illustrate how they recently benefited from boundary setting.

Discussion topics include:

• How it can be hard for people-pleasing perfectionists to set boundaries

• How boundaries can help ensure that you’re doing the thing that most aligns with your why

• The keystone of the getting-to-good-enough mentality: getting in touch with what’s important to you

• How Janine and Shannon harnessed our boundary-setting skills to make an invitation to present together work for us

• Our surprise that there were no objections from the program organizer to our request for an informal presentation

• How strange it feels sometimes to podcast without video

• The many ways it can be useful to get comfortable setting good-enough boundaries

• Getting in touch with what’s important to you as a guideline for setting boundaries

• Letting go of a fear of missing out or disappointing people with your boundaries

• How having boundaries can save you from committing to something you can’t follow through on

• Remembering that when you pass on something you don’t like to do, you’re giving an opportunity to someone who does like to do it

• Considering boundaries as gutter bumpers that keep you headed in the direction you want to go

• Shannon’s sweet spot in bowling (there’s beer involved)

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com.

Travel in 2022 feels very different from travel in 2020 (or 2019, for that matter). In this episode Janine and Shannon discuss planning travel in this time and letting of perfectionism around it.

Discussion topics include:

• Some differences between travel earlier in the pandemic and now

• Shannon's plans to walk the Camino in Portugal (canceled in 2020)

• How Shannon is planning to do more pre-planning for the 2022 version of this trip

• Hiring a professional to help make things easier

• Janine's hearty recommendation of using a Disney Travel Planner

• Reducing "adventure" in favor of security

• Getting in touch with what's important to you to let go of travel-planning perfectionism

• Allowing yourself creature comforts when traveling

• How any planning you do now will benefit you later if you have to cancel

• The security of making travel plans that can be canceled without penalty

• Shannon's excitement to see MacBeth and Janine's antipathy for Shakespeare

• Janine's upcoming trip to Walla Walla to move her dad to assisted living

Note: We apologize for the audio problems in this episode. We're trying to get to the bottom of it but in the meantime we hope you feel that it's good enough.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we're not able to publish a new episode this week. Instead, we're rerunning this episode, which we originally published on February 13, 2020. Enjoy!

Good people (like our listeners) have many good impulses. But how often do you act on them? This week, Shannon and Janine discuss how perfectionism can get in the way of acting on new impulses and how you can get past that.

Discussion topics include:

• Our excitement over breaking into the top 100 Health & Fitness podcasts in Poland! (And that we’re still on the quest for a listener in Antarctica.)

• How perfectionism can stop some people from acting on their good impulses

• The fact that it really is the thought that counts and most people just want to be remembered--they don’t care how.

• The story that sparked this episode topic: how Shannon was able to soothe a little girl at a coffee shop (and the cartoon she drew of it)

• How it’s so easy to censor yourself and not act on the impulse to help others

• One easy way to make someone’s day: Give directions to someone who appears lost

• The complexity of Shannon’s neighborhood that allows her to help many lost people

• How Shannon’s picking up of garbage on her training walks started as a good impulse

• Making it easy for yourself to act on good impulses

• The challenge of letting go of perfectionism around acting on good impulses

• How perfectionism can really trip us up on writing thank-you notes

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links!

Shannon and Janine were so tired from celebrating our 200th anniversary last week we decided to take a week off and re-run an episode from June 2021. Enjoy!

It can be so frustrating when you don't have control over things in your life. This week Shannon and Janine discuss relinquishing your desire for control over things you can't control. It's a recipe for living with more satisfaction and less frustration.

Discussion topics include:

• The frustration we can feel about not having control over things

• Focusing on the things we do have control over

• The feeling of control over our money that YNAB gives us

• How feeling you're not in control can be particularly difficult for people who struggle with perfectionism

• One particular frustration: Lack of control over other people's behavior or responses

• What you actually have control over: How you react to other people's behavior or responses

• Negotiating tricky spousal issues, particularly in relationships between perfectionists and non-perfectionists

• How this is really about relinquishing your desire for control

• Shannon's experience building a house and how relinquishing her desire for control over everything allowed her to get the project done

• The utility of deciding upfront that she would not micromanage the project

• The mechanism Shannon used to make all the house-building decisions easier

• Letting go of control when you're delegating tasks

• The value of knowing why your outcome is important to help you pinpoint those things you don't need to control

• Happy third anniversary to the podcast!

• Communicating clearly to try to get the response you want

See the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links.

This is our 200th episode and we're so proud! This week Janine and Shannon celebrate our 200th episode and discuss some of the benefits of talking about (and embracing) good enough week after week.

Discussion topics include:

• Happy anniversary to us!

• How talking about "good enough" for years has made us better at it

• The liberation of embracing good enough

Shannon's evolution toward good enough since episode 1

• The real shift: Feeling good about good enough

• Another benefit to good enough: It creates space for possibility

• Building ease + less stress into our lives through embracing good enough

• How talking about this topic week after week has really embedded it in our lives

• How letting our podcast be good enough has worked out well for us

• Our criteria for continuing: We'll do it as long as it's fun and if we help one person each week (besides us) we'll feel successful

• Our plea to let us know if there are any topics you'd like us to elaborate on

• How we'd love to hear from readers how listening has helped you let go of perfectionism

As always, you can visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com

Both Shannon and Janine drive a Nissan LEAF, the SL Plus trim. It's a 100 percent electric vehicle (EV) and we think it's 100 percent awesome. It's not a coincidence that we drive the same car: Janine bought one after Shannon raved about hers (and answered all her questions). We love our EVs and we want to help you open your mind to considering one! We talk all about it in this week's episode.

Discussion topics include:

• Our love for our Nissan LEAFs

• How Janine letting buying her electric car (very) easy

• How the price of gas is making buying an EV even more attractive

• The options for charging in Janine's garage

• How (relatively) hassle-free charging in public chargers has been for Janine

• Shannon's charging strategy since she doesn't have a charger at her home

• How surprisingly cheap it is to charge our electric cars

• Shannon's terrific neighbor who offered up her charger

• Shannon's future plans for charging her car at home

• Tax incentives for electric cars and plug-in hybrids

• Some of the trickier (and fun) aspects of driving an EV

• Our opinion that buying an electric car is not as hard as people seem to think

• Our offer to help any of our listeners who want help or advice on buying an electric car

Check out the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com

Think of how much time we'd save if we trusted our intuition, rather than agonized over decisions. In this episode, brought to you by Wordle (kidding!), Janine and Shannon discuss how trusting yourself can benefit you in living your life, as well as playing games.

• The spontaneous nature of our podcast

• What sparked this topic: Wordle

• Shannon's explanation of Wordle (for the uninitiated)

• How we're learning to trust our intuition while playing Wordle

• How your first instinct is often right, or at least good enough

• Trusting yourself: a productivity hack

• Muscle testing to tap into your unconscious knowledge to make decisions

• How it's so much easier to let something come to mind than to try to force it

• Shannon's observation that the more reasons you try to give yourself that something is a good decision, the less likely the decision will work best for you

• How we know more than we often give ourselves credit for

• The reality of perfectionism paralysis

• Thinking of trusting yourself as a practice

• Approaching trusting yourself from a place of curiosity rather than trying to be right or wrong

• Remember, you can always choose again until you land on what you want

Check out the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links!

Genealogists in the U.S. are excited about the release of the 1950 U.S. census, which happens at midnight tomorrow. Janine is eagerly awaiting it (it's been on her calendar for months!). This week Shannon and Janine discuss the value of planning ahead -- and enjoying the anticipation.

Discussion topics include:

• The upcoming release of the results of the 1950 U.S. census

• How technology advances have made it easier to search on the 1950 census the day it is released

• Whether or not the 72-year rule for the delay in releasing censuses is based on lifespan and whether it will change with increased life span

• How the release of the 1940 census was the gateway drug that got Shannon into genealogy

• How Janine is preparing for the release of the census

• Janine's inability to be chill about this

• The joy of anticipating something

• Studies that show that you can get more benefit from anticipating an event than the event itself

• How any preparation Janine was able to do for the census is time well spent, even if she didn't do as much as she hoped

• Janine's biggest fear about what might happen the day the census is released

• Thinking through what might go wrong with a plan and having a back up plan

• How planning ahead is about creating the enjoyment of anticipation, not trying to create a perfect plan

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a follow up note and links!

We bring up little tips and tricks for getting past perfectionism all the time in this podcast. Do you remember them when you need them? We don't. This week Janine and Shannon discuss building an anti-perfectionist toolkit that you can turn to when you're stuck in perfectionism.

Discussion topics include:

• How the possible techniques we talk about on this podcast come in handy

• The inevitability that our go-to anti-perfectionist tools will stop working

• Embracing the idea that not everything is going to work forever

• Knowing that it's not a failure if something stops working for you

• Janine's enthusiasm for Shannon's insomnia-busting technique of naming cities alphabetically

• Her recognition that this will inevitably fail for her at some point

• Tweaking a tool that stops working or trying a new one

• Collecting your tools in one place so you have a handy toolkit when you need it

• Cultivating the habit of looking at your toolkit when you're not under stress

• Adding to your toolkit regularly

• Reviewing your list every time you add to it

• Using a worry flowchart

• How it's totally normal not to remember things you hear (so write it down!)

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a photo of Shannon's worry flow chart!

Shannon's crowded basement was bringing her down and perfectionism was getting in the way of her doing anything about it. In this "Good Enough in Practice" episode, Shannon and Janine discuss Shannon's basement challenges, her beliefs around what she needed to before she could start decluttering and organizing her basement and they talk it through to the point where she can't wait to get started!

Discussion topics include:

• Shannon's overwhelming basement and how it became The Basement of Doom

• The various roles Shannon's basement fulfills

• Janine's own basement woes and how having a water problem forced a solution to them

• The perfectionistic loop of trying to figure out the best way to tackle a big project

• What's important to Shannon about how she organizes her basement

• How Janine's organizing company handles overwhelming basements

• Shannon's need to have a plan in place before starting: "How do I know what I'm doing if I haven't pre-planned it?"

• Janine's faith in Shannon's ability to proceed without a detailed plan

• Using pre-planning as a way to come up with a starting place (rather than a finishing place)

• Janine's caution about having a plan you feel you have to stick to

• Shannon's historic difficulties working with a professional organizer

• Bix's meltdown, which we couldn't edit out

• Shannon's new plan to let go of the easy stuff so that she can put lids on bins and work through them one bin at a time

• How this framework of recognizing what's important to you, what's keeping you stuck, and brainstorming some different approaches until something feels right can be applied to many different challenges

• Shannon's excitement over the prospect of getting started on her basement!

Be sure to visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for an update from Shannon and embarrassing basement before-and-after pictures from Janine!