Stop Fixing What Isn't Broken: How to Resist the Urge to Optimize Your Life

Listen to Episode 40: Stop Fixing What Isn't Broken: How to Resist the Urge to Optimize Your Life

Have you ever listened to the subtle, insidious voice that whispers: "It's working, but could it be better?" In this episode, Blaze dismantles the modern compulsion to constantly optimize, fix, and improve every aspect of our lives, even when they are functioning perfectly well. She explores how we have internalized the "performance review" culture, turning our own lives into a project that must always be upgraded to justify our existence.

Blaze shares vulnerable stories about trying to "fix" minor inconveniences like parking stress, only to create more chaos, and the trap of comparing our behind-the-scenes reality to the highlight reels of "experts" on social media. She invites you to practice the radical act of leaving things alone, trusting that discomfort is not always a signal to change, and finding safety in the rhythm of "good enough." If you are tired of the endless cycle of self-improvement, this conversation is your permission to stop, breathe, and let your life ripen.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• Why we feel an urgent need to "fix" or "optimize" things even when they are working well.
• How we have internalized the "performance review" culture and now do it to ourselves.
• The difference between necessary repairs and unnecessary meddling in a functioning life.
• Why trying to "perfect" minor inconveniences (like parking) often creates more stress.
• The trap of comparing your daily reality to the "expert" standards seen on social media.
• How to distinguish between a signal of danger and the natural discomfort of life.
• Why "good enough" is a powerful and sustainable place to rest.
• Strategies for resisting the urge to modify all your routines at once.
• The importance of finding a community that can witness and reflect back your progress.
• How to trust that letting things be "as is" is an act of safety, not negligence.

Hello friends, this week I want to talk about our tendency to want to fix what isn't broken. And I think I also would call this the tendency that we have to kind of over-manage things in our lives because we're kind of used to having responsibility for so much.

So I think when we recognize ourselves as the responsible adult in the room, or the person who's managing the household or whatever aspect of a business project that we have, or our children, we quickly associate ourselves with that role and think,

"Okay. My duty then is to make sure that everything runs well all the time to protect everyone from anything going poorly. I don't want anything to go weird and reflect badly on me." And we put a lot of our energy and effort into making sure that things do exactly what we think they're going to do.

It can be very exhausting. What can happen to you is that,

We are taught by like work reviews and things like that, like performance reviews, to do that kind of check in with ourselves even in our day-to-day life.

So a performance review is someone coming and saying please let me evaluate you on how you've done and everything in your life. So how have you been performing your duties at work?

Are you very efficient or are you not that efficient? Are we really accomplishing what we wanted and can you please prove why you're important to this business and why we should keep paying you or give you a raise? And there's a whole lot of justification around every decision that we make.

And I think because we've set up life to kind of have those kinds of checks on us,

We've internalized it, and we've now felt like we need to constantly be improving upon everything we're doing and that if there isn't an improvement to be made, that we should artificially construct one so that it looks like we're being more productive and therefore we can justify our existence and our ability to still be a part of whatever organization we're in.

No, I'm not saying that it's good. I think that's a really dysfunctional system, but I think it's the one that so many of us are living in.

And I want to take a moment to just be with each other in this because it's kind of painful to realize that we might have internalized that kind of performance judgment so much that we now do it to ourselves.

And that because of that, it results in us looking at lives that are working pretty well, or maybe exactly as well as we wanted it to be, and feeling like there's something wrong or not good enough about that and that we should shake it up and change it and improve it. Make it better. And we're not necessarily even sure what making it better might even be.

But we feel this unease and sense like maybe we should do it. And I think that kind of starts happening at this point in time because we're wanting to maximize our summer and feel like we've really made the best of it and prove to everyone around us, including ourselves, that we did a good job, that we were the best at coming up with ways to enjoy ourselves and relax the most and get the most done, and have the most home improvement projects finished and coordinated the most things and had the most special time.

Again, dysfunctional, but I have so much empathy for all of us feeling that because I feel it too.

I definitely want to feel like I've had a really amazing summer that I've provided amazing things and that it's all going well and that it's being really appreciated.

And then I'm faced with the actual reality of despite having three weeks of theater camp...

There's the daily reality of like driving to and from theater camp and dealing with the parking situation and with my kid both having a good time and then sometimes the feedback is like, "I'm so exhausted and tired and I'm stressed out and don't you know this is hard." And there's so many emotions flinging at all directions.

And we want to make up a story about it and make it make sense. And that's hard to do, but we all do it because we're humans and we're storytellers and we want it all to make sense. So we come up with a story.

All of us are hitting that point of full saturation right now. And we're all wondering like, okay, how did we measure up what's going on here?

What can I do to make it better? So we go into fixing mode.

And what we want to do is to take a routine that's working mostly good or pretty good, and say, how can I make this even better so I'm less stressed out tomorrow?

But then sometimes, trying to fix the morning commute doesn't work anyway. We actually find that we spent even more energy trying to fix something that was good enough or was gonna be what it was anyway.

So that's something that happened to me is like, okay, I don't like having to find parking on this road. It's like really stressful. There's not enough. I hate parallel parking.

What side street can I find, but there's construction everywhere. So what if we left 10 or 15 minutes earlier and just got there really early because then surely there will be parking and then finding out that getting there early didn't really reduce my stress that much. It didn't make parking like so much of a factor easier than it wasn't like that it was worth it.

And then we were there so early that now we're just sitting around waiting for everything to be unlocked. And that led to just more emotional blowouts between us. So I'm like, all right, sometimes--

We start with the greatest intentions and it kind of backfires on us and it really sucks.

So in that regard, I was able to look at myself and go, "Okay, you were trying to fix something that wasn't necessarily broken."

And you were also making a judgment about having an experience bad. So I was judging that having some discomfort and trying to find parking or have to figure out how to parallel park with someone behind me, which stresses me out, was so bad and such a negative thing that I couldn't handle, that I had to change everything.

And then I was like, oh, well, changing it didn't make it any better. I still have the same feelings, the same feelings of stress and whatever. I've just moved them to an earlier portion of my day and actually ironically it takes even more now because I don't hear longer.

So I laugh about that and be with myself and go, "Okay, we're gonna adjust back and refined back to what really was okay," and recognized that it's fine. But I wanted to share that because I think,

Sometimes when we go into fixing mode, it's like this low-level restlessness and scanning for problems and the dissatisfaction kind of bubbling up on our lives.

And maybe being dissatisfied and having some low-level stress is actually okay and it's necessary and it's not bad.

I think... I wish that it was bad. I don't know. Maybe I don't, but I... I believe now that having discomfort and things that are dissonant in our life is actually there to help us.

It's not always there to hurt us. Certainly there are signs of danger and warnings and stuff that we should take seriously, but...

In my life on average. If I have an uncomfortable experience such as parallel parking, it is not the end of the world. It's not something that is life-threatening and it's not something that I necessarily should try so hard to avoid.

Maybe being in the discomfort is okay. And having that discomfort allows me to have the contrast of like the relief when it's over, the joy of getting home, all of the other things.

I think that we're quick to dismiss what we get out of having difficult situations sometimes because

Instead, we build stories about how triumphant we are in overcoming it.

How important it is to try to pave over every bad experience in our lives and make things easier.

But I find that having a life if it was that, I don't know, if it was that easy, would it even be meaningful or interesting to experience at all?

And for me that answer is no. Like I don't want to say like yeah bring on sadness and heartache in difficult times, but I think having moments of frustration or little peaks of anger or boredom or intense scary things that happen sometimes, as long as they're not ending in tragedy, I think it's okay.

Perhaps I was much more open to them as a child than I am as an adult.

And I want to open that up to you too and say, what was your experience as a kid? And how many emotions did you have that you weren't judging yet when you were a kid? So were you scared more often because you didn't know what was going to happen next?

And what did it feel like to actually be in that moment and be afraid and how, what did we do to cope with that? And it's interesting because I think some of the things that we do is we learn to make stories either to comfort ourselves or to scare ourselves more.

And we do it to make sense of the world and to get through that stuff and sometimes it results in more nightmares, sometimes it results in us feeling pretty powerful. But...

We had those experiences and I think as we get older, they're not as frequent perhaps because we've experienced so much more of life like there's less things that spark...

like watching Jurassic Park as a kid and like, "Oh my god, it's so scary." And you know, watch it as an adult and you're like, "Yeah, okay, I mean, it has scary moments, but you're not surprised by it because you kind of know the pattern of these things."

So how much of our lives now is us knowing the pattern of things and then just being somewhat put out and disgusted when it plays out the way we kind of knew it was going to play out anyway?

And we're not willing to play full out anymore and just be a part of that roller coaster experience of life.

It's fascinating and I really appreciate observing my daughter and her life and I think, wow, one of the joys of having young people in your life is getting to remember what it was like for you as a young person and the delights and the fears and like the amazement that you can have at cool things.

One of the delights that I've had this year with my kid is her realizing how delicious a strawberry is.

When you pluck it out of your own garden and her, oh my gosh, her carrots. She's so proud of her carrots, so she bought purple carrots and they're neat because they're purple, but also her wonder about how big they would be and were we able to predict it based on how tall the greens were above it or was that not related.

Just how much curiosity and involvement and presence that she had with that. And I think, man, I want to cultivate that in myself as an adult.

To be that excited and curious about what's going on with my plants. Like, hey, if I see leaves up high, like how low do the roots go and what's happening with my plants and will they be well cared for this year and over the winter?

So those are things that I'm wanting to participate more fully in and be more present for.

But to return to the idea about wanting to change what's actually going on. Because it's a human thing, and we're all doing it. Sometimes it's born out of... being taught to scan for problems all the time, so I think sometimes we're trying to preempt troubles that we might have later, and I know I'm hugely guilty of this.

Is that any time I work on a house project or complete something, it's like I immediately fire off a future email to myself about when to check in with it again to make sure that nothing goes awry.

So I don't know that that's bad. I think it's very useful to have that.

But if it's overstimulated, if you're constantly feeling fear about what could go wrong in the future,

That's a signal to yourself to go like, "Oh, okay, I'm just dysregulated in some way." Like, I shouldn't always be in a panic about what could go wrong. And if I'm spending an incredible amount of energy trying to preempt the future or make it go a certain way,

That's a good signal from your body saying like, okay, I don't feel safe here.

Whatever's going on, like the future that I think I'm moving toward is scary to me.

So what might I need to actually shift in order to be a little bit more comfortable? So I think that sometimes the wanting to fix things that aren't yet broken comes from that place of wanting to create safety for ourselves and that's such a tender thing.

And I want to acknowledge that because I would always want people in my life and around me to take care of themselves and to acknowledge where maybe they feel that they're not getting the support that they need.

I think what happens when you keep putting out energy to fix things that might already be working or that maybe aren't working, but you're doing it kind of on your own is sometimes you disrupt pieces of that engine that we're working okay.

Again, I think this is why I talked in prior episodes about the proper timing of things.

So by all means, if something's actually broken right now, yes, fix it. But if you're just...

I don't want to say fantasizing, but if you are contemplating and figuring out and spending the mental energy right now, figure out what needs to change in your life and what's going on.

Often the better time for planning that and implementing it is earlier in the year when there's an abundance of energy and abundance of available resources and an abundance of support of welling up.

I think this time of year when things are going sideways or we're feeling like we want to start fixing stuff.

It's a more natural season to call in our community, to call in the people that are there for you in your life or to call on the systems that are there in your life that you've already set up, that are working, that are supportive and are able to help and spread the effort to not make it just you, an army of one, trying to confront an issue or a problem.

It becomes you and your entire community of friends and family working together to bear something or shift something or change it, which becomes so much more doable and easier.

Even just talking about it, I'm like, Wow, just involving people and trusting that you have resources available in your life or places that you could reach out that even just understand what you're emotionally going through can often make the actual act and effort so much easier.

So if you're part of this community, take advantage of it. Reach out to us. Talk to us.

Come join us in the seasonal gatherings and talk about what's going on in your life and get some input back so that you have that energy and that support around you to make these changes.

And also to recognize that it is okay to allow things that are well enough to keep going and that not everything has to be perfect.

I think that what it looks like to leave things alone is to just let routines repeat without changing them all the time.

Recognizing that the routine that you made this year might not be perfect, but it has worked so far and it's going to be okay, even if you don't optimize it or change it yet.

So this is more related to when you're feeling that comparisonitis where you're like, "I just want to be as cool as this other person on Instagram and maybe I'll like change my workout to be a little harder right now even though I'm kind of tired and don't really want to do it."

You might go, "Okay, if I see myself doing that, the thing that I could do is just let my normal routine where I get up and I do a walk and I do a few push-ups be enough right now because it's the thing that I'm actually doing and it is getting some results, maybe not like epic results, but maybe that's something that I can modify at a future time, but it doesn't have to be today."

Here's the other thing I want to say is that I think modifying any one thing is fine.

It's when we try to modify all of our routines at once, that it becomes difficult. So the desire to make yourself over or to have this completely different you, is a really difficult thing. We all want to be this amazing person and a better version of ourselves and I admire that.

But I also think that part of being you and being the best you is utilizing your energy and your attention in a way that actually works.

And for most of us, that means focusing on one change or one thing at a time rather than trying to simultaneously...

Start working out more, pick up an instrument lesson, go on a huge vacation, and cultivate a better relationship with your in-laws. Like, all of that is a lot. Any one of them takes plenty of energy.

And I don't think we're used to congratulating ourselves or appreciating ourselves for the progress that we make in any one of those areas.

Often we diminish it, we compare it to the most expert person in the field that we can possibly think of and go, "How come I'm not like that person?" And I don't know if that's human nature or if it's a symptom of the way that our society has access to everything all the time now.

Because now if you have an interest in anything, you can find the foremost experts or the 20 experts in that field and their TED Talks and their books and like all of the things, and you can see a news feed in their wiki page about all of their accomplishments and then you go, "Yeah, that's what I'm aiming for. That's what I need to do."

Whereas perhaps even 100, 200 years ago, your idol would be like, "I really wish I could be like my gym teacher." And that was still hard to become.

But so much more reasonable than thinking that you're going to be like as good as an all-star NBA player, plus all these other things and do their exercise routine that they've curated online with workouts and whatever and also by their product that they're selling you in Gatorade, I don't know.

There's a lot of commercialization, I think, that has shifted the way that we think about ourselves and what's reasonable and what we think we need to improve when actually there's nothing wrong with you and you don't need to improve it all, actually.

Yes. So definitely I have some thoughts and feelings about that and about the commercialization of expertise and how we unreasonably compare ourselves to other people.

I think it's important that we surround ourselves with people that we care about and respect that are able to let us know when we're doing good enough and when we're trying to improve things that maybe don't need improvement or from the outside, other people are thinking look pretty amazing.

So I think I want to let you go this week with that thought is to say,

Who could you talk to this week who can remind you of how awesome you are?

Who could you talk to that will remind you if you asked, "Hey, can you remind me how much I've done or how far I've come?" in regards to a project that you're working on, a workout that you were starting out, whatever it is that your goal was that you've been working on this year, someone in your life sees you and witnesses you and is able to reflect back to you that what you have been doing has made a difference and it is working.

And maybe you don't need to change as much as you think you do at this point in time.

Yes. I'm so glad that you're here and I'm looking forward to seeing you next week where we'll just talk about what it means to be present and allow life to kind of ripen around us so that we're enjoying it more and getting more comfortable with being with ourselves as we're moving towards the end of August, which is creeping up on us.

Have an excellent week, and I'll see you next time.

Related Episodes

Series: The Trap of Optimization and Comparison We often feel that if we aren't constantly improving, we are failing. These episodes explore the exhaustion of trying to "fix" what isn't broken, the danger of comparing ourselves to unrealistic standards, and the freedom found in accepting "good enough" and trusting the natural rhythms of life.

• Ep 39: The Urge to Expand: Why You Shouldn't Add More When Things Are Finally Working – Why expanding your life right when it's stable can lead to burnout.
• Ep 22: The Urge to Reinvent Yourself in Spring: How to Change Without Burning Out – Why the spring impulse to overhaul your life often backfires and how to change sustainably.
• Ep 15: Why You Keep Saying "Later" — How to Stop Postponing What You Want – How perfectionism and the fear of not being "ready" keep us from starting.
• Ep 09: Reflecting Without Shame — A Year-End Ritual – A shame-free way to look back on your year that moves away from productivity and comparison, honoring nourishment and resilience instead of just outcomes.
  

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