Support4Change Blog

May 7, 2007

Categories: Q-and-A Club, Expanding Your Horizons, Lesson of a Recovering Perfectionist

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

Again I am forced to face the limitations of 24-hour days and change from what I had thought were promises to what I must regard now as hopeful intentions.

With a book and workbook in the editing stage and a couple CDs to complete, I’ve come to the conclusion that while I had originally said I’d do a Q-and-A Club question every week, there isn’t enough time to get everything done I want to do and maintain my sanity. So one of the blog entry categories for today is “perfectionism” because I want to use this as one of my Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist. So if you struggle with perfectionism, I suggest you check your calendar and see whether you’ve made promises that need to be transformed to intentions. Acknowledge your planning wasn’t perfect and move on.

Okay, now let’s get on with the current Q-and-A Club questions. The idea for these questions began when I bought my latest set of forty brightly colored postage stamps — right before I learned that the cost of stamps is going up.

While I don’t send as many letters as I used to now that e-mail is so much a part of my life, I enjoy giving and receiving beautiful and informative stamps. And when the stamps come in a set, I wish the recipient could see all of them because frequently the whole page looks so terrific as a group.

This is certainly true for the theme of the stamps that sparked my interest in these questions for the Q-and-A Club. The set is called “Wonders of America: Land of Superlatives.” The back of the stamp sheet says: “The United States is a land of superlatives, rich in natural and man-made wonders. Forty of the most remarkable places, structures, plants, and animals in America appear on this stamp pane.” Here are the categories

Almost everyone is interested in knowing superlatives for a multitude of places, things, and people. We want to know what is considered the longest, tallest, shortest, fattest, thinnest, deepest, widest, oldest, smartest, darkest, brightest, quickest, heaviest, and lightest, as well as an almost any other adjective you can think of. We eagerly devour lists of the “most” famous or talented movie stars, authors, athletes, or any other group of people in whom we’re interested.

I don’t claim the questions below are the “most” interesting you could ask on the topic of superlatives. I leave that to your discretion. I merely offer these to encourage you to be curious about some of the many things, places and people in this wide world, and to see what adjectives you could apply to groups of them.

EXPANDING YOUR HORIZONS

How many in the list above can you identify correctly? (After you’ve done the best you can, you can go to the page of answers to see how well you did. You could go there without first trying, but that would defeat the purpose of stimulating your thinking.)

If you were to include the whole world, rather than just the United States, what do you think are the correct answers for the list above?

If you don’t live in the United States, what would your answers be for your own country?

If you were to create a list of many more categories of places and things, as well as people, what would be on your list?

What adjectives would determine the “best” of such places, things, and people?

REMEMBER: These weekly questions are available for no charge if you want to use them for your blog, newsletter, website, or discussion group, but you must (1) attribute the questions to the Q-and-A Club and me, Arlene Harder, (2) provide a link to Support4Change, and (3) include both the introduction and the questions.