Deborah Hill Cone: Pressure of perfection never ends

Doing yoga is part of living this life of unremmitting virtue.

Worrying and obsessing about what people think is sometimes the wrong way to go with living one’s life.

I wasn't going to write this. I was going to lie and call in sick. Because I had a douche of a week and I didn't want to write another one of those sort of columns. The kind where I lie awake at 3am on Monday, wincing with the prickly dread of shame-anticipation.

My inner monologue: You are such a dick. And not only are you a dick, but you just chose to write a column declaring this to the world. I manage to ignore it most of the time, but my perversity really is quite bizarre.

Although I gather perversion arises out of intolerable helplessness: so presumably my compulsion to overshare is actually an attempt to exert some sense of control over a chaotic world. Seen like that, it makes a certain wonky sense.

Anyway, this week I was trying to do a million things and failing to do any of them. It was my daughter's 11th birthday. I made cupcakes for her class with square designer cases and three kinds of edible glitter but the icing wasn't very good, the kids informed me. Anyway it wasn't a good week. I was driving along castigating myself for not having written a better article about my inner critic. Then I crashed the car. I know, someone alert Alanis Morissette!

The man I crashed into, in a brand new shiny red Audi, was very nice about it. And maybe it was all for the best. Because afterwards, my face sooty with Dior Show Blackout mascara - you really couldn't get that sucker off with a water blaster - my head resting on the steering wheel, I heard a loud inner ding. I realised something important. You know what? I am just utterly sick of trying so hard. I am sick of trying and trying and trying to be good. Be strong, good, right, perfect. Don't be selfish. Don't eat processed meat, cut out sugar, limit screentime, work hard, be thin, have something intelligent to say about terrorism, be a winner, be invited to the right places, monetise your brand. The pressure never ends: relentlessly search yourself for fault, be scrupulous enough to find it and then eradicate it. You must live this life of unremitting virtue for any chance at all of being considered loveable and worthy. I mean, it's not like I don't try. I do yoga, read GPS for the Soul, take my kids swimming.

I go to therapy twice a week. Possibly the therapy is to blame. It has made me realise life does not have to be one long guilt trip. In fact all those good behaviour messages do quite the opposite. They make me want to be subversive and have a Bad Tuesday. In Mary Poppins, the little boy Michael is so fed up with having to be good that he behaves badly all day.

Frankly, I look at other people, puzzled. Don't you also get tired of worrying and obsessing and second-guessing and judging what other people think? Maybe I am not a very good person, but really, I think I've come to the point where I just don't care anymore. I decided: from now on, I'm going to do what I want.

Even though I don't actually know what that is, because I have spent my life wandering around with my umbilical cord in my hand trying to find someone to plug it into, metaphorically speaking, and have never found out who I really am. All I know is, all this effort to do the right things, garner approval and avoid guilt does not seem to be working. Most importantly, I don't want my children to feel that if they don't do all the right things, if they can't be good enough, they are not okay.

I wanted my daughter to have a perfect birthday. Why didn't I buy some supermarket cupcakes? Who am I trying to impress? Really I want her to grow up to feel it is enough to be be real, you don't have to be perfect. Perversely, I feel a lot better now I've decided to just give up on trying so hard anymore. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

Hey kids, you know what? Just don't eat the icing if you don't like it.