Perfectionism. The unrelenting pursuit of reaching a state where we can rest easy, look back on flawless work, and feel satisfied - or maybe even relieved.

And what then? We inevitably encounter the next thing we need to be perfect. Because the very fabric of what drives us is to achieve something without defect.

Perfectionism is both a gift and a barrier; the high standards can result in amazing achievement, but the relentless pursuit can have negative consequences on us and those around us. 

You’re productive. Capable. People rely on you. But lately your brain feels fried - like it has 47 tabs open and you’re continually jumping to and fro (aka context switching).

You find yourself second-guessing decisions, chasing clarity, and mentally running through unfinished to-do lists at 2 a.m. You’re not falling apart - far from it. But it’s not sustainable either.

This blurry mental state is more than just tiredness. It’s a cognitive bottleneck.

The more you try to eliminate performance anxiety, the more dominant it often becomes. Because anxiety is anticipatory stress, often our instinct is to do one of two things: either avoid situations where anxiety might show up, or try to control them so tightly to elimiate the chance of it showing up. But avoidance and hyper-control only reinforce the fear. It took years, but now I work with performance anxiety, not against it. And that shift has changed everything.

Japan, certainly has a rich history of traditions and customs and proved to be the ideal classroom for some lessons! Here are my top three insights into how the Japanese look after both themselves and their community, gleaned from our trip:

In a world where connection seems to be just a click away, why do so many of us feel isolated and alone? It's a question that has been on my mind lately, especially after stumbling upon an interesting fact: Young Australians aged between 15-24 are experiencing higher levels of psychological distress and loneliness compared to any other age group (HILDA Report, 2024). This shift in loneliness demographics, once dominated by the elderly, now places the younger generation at the forefront of this epidemic.

Life is a crazy ride of ups and downs, and we need a game plan to prioritise mental well-being and keep sanity intact. Let's break it down into three modes: reactive, proactive, and reflective – your Mental Health Game Plan for the rollercoaster ride we call life.

It’s easy to become trapped in thought patterns which work against, especially in adulthood, where those neural pathways become increasingly hardwired. We become consumed in how our experience of the here and now, forgetting there is another way. To get a little nerdy on you, the psychological term for this is cognitive fusion, where you think your thoughts are an immovable reality (Exploring Your Mind, 2023). In other words, you become your thoughts.

I was sitting in one of those classic French steel beach chairs when I noticed it - a spec in the Mediterranean Sea, slowly making its way across the French Riviera. It somehow looked relaxing and challenging in one. I mean, this swimmer was way out. It must have been challenging, but they must have been capable. They were on a mission, but also seemingly lost in the moment.

Like the Eiffel Tower from afar, a sense of perfection is so often portrayed in our culture; however, hidden inside our concealed minds we can so easily find mental mayhem.

Being stuck in mental mess is no fun, I know, I’ve been there. And by stuck, I don’t mean bedridden, although I definitely feel for such people. I mean the same old-same old, day-after-day, over it feeling. Everything feels hard and hope feels depleted. You can face another day, but it’s painful. You know something needs changing, but you can’t see how.

As we’ve based ourselves in Southern France for a couple of months, the other day I thought I’d take the opportunity to head on down with our family to the local pool and smash out some laps. To say the experience was different from my small local community pool on the Sunny Coast is an understatement.

A few weeks ago our family set off on an opportunity of a life time and landed in Europe, where we will be based for the next few months… tough times I know :) I always find it so interesting seeing how other cultures live, and with mental wellbeing being something I love to blog about, I’ve been interested to notice how Europeans go about life on this front. There have been a few things that have stood out which I think we can learn from.

I’m not sure about you, but do you ever feel like you’re in this never-ending pursuit of happiness? I do - I think if we’re honest, we probably all are to a point. Although happiness can be this fleeting emotion, I think there are certain things we can do to create an all-round happier lifestyle - simple things we can put in place that make life that bit lighter and more enjoyable.

Performance. Ahh, how we value it in western culture. We let it become part of our identity and self-worth. If we measure up to expectation, we feel worthy. If we don’t, we’re left with this feeling of inadequacy and not enoughness. If we measure up, we might get a boost of ego from others’ reactions, feeding our belief that strong performance = worthiness.

Have you ever been stuck in your thoughts? I have, and it’s brutal. A few years ago life’s situations and events got the better of me, overwhelming me to the point where I could see no way out - I felt paralysed…

I was packing myself, nervous to the core… butterflies, fidgety, all those symptoms you feel when something really matters, which you kind of believe defines you. I’m a perfectionist by nature, and I was about to butcher a race and totally embarrass myself. I envisaged the race before me, nothing less than perfection would avoid disappointment.

I remember the feelings of chronic anxiety - vividly. Tension. Unease. Apprehension, creeping into more and more areas of my life. Slowly, normal things became different from what they ought to be… used to be. They were bigger, more overwhelming… the world just seemed a scarier place.

Life had given me lemons, plenty of big yellow sour ones. I was in constant physical pain, my mind was all over the shop and I could see no end in sight. I’d been to appointment after appointment to try and resolve what was the deep-rooted issue. It was a simple procedure, elective surgery, how could things have gone so wrong? I’d been blindsided and I was now facing two battles, a physical and mental one. Life had well and truly got the better of me. I was not in a good space at all.

I was sleeping in the basement of the Royal Children’s Hospital when it happened. My 4-week old son was in a ward a few floors somewhere above me, waiting to receive open heart surgery to repair a valve in his heart. Sleep had been intermittently disturbed by emergency MET calls over the hospital's PA. You don’t want your child’s room number mentioned in this announcements - resulting in some of the best doctors and nurses around the globe dropping what they’re doing and madly rushing to a scene of human fragility. 

The room was spinning. There were hundreds of people. Intelligent, impactful people. As I stood on the platform in front of the crowd, everything went out of focus, as though I was being sucked into a vortex. Blood rushed to my head and I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak...