Though we spent time on several other questions, the portion of the discussion that was most meaningful to me centered on Questions 5 and 8. Several participants shared the things that kept them from self-disclosing their feelings and thoughts to others. For some people it was wanting not to look stupid, for others of us it focused on trying to be perfect so that everyone would like us. We decided that trying to make everybody like us took LOTS of energy, and in many ways that it simply wasn't worth it. Someone said that when she turned 60 years old, she found that she stopped caring as much about what others thought about her. She thought it might be just the perspective of age that helped her do that, or maybe it was falling in love around the same time and having the love of someone else that made the opinions of the general public less important to her.
In relation to being "perfect," another participant told about a construction supervisor he used to know, whose job it was to make sure that projects were completed on time and within budget. One of the manager's favorite sayings was that "good enough" was better than "perfect," because trying to make something perfect probably means that the project will be either late or over budget. However, "not good enough" was useless, because that means that whatever was supposed to work, didn't. So he wanted all of his projects to be good enough, not perfect. Several people thought that was a useful counterbalance to their perfectionistic tendencies.
(This video was reviewed by Bob McGarey)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: