I write this amid the dulcet tones of juddering jackhammers and breaking tile. One of those unexpected gifts of homeowning, suddenly discovering you need to re-plumb a bathroom because the old metal pipes have rusted closed. No wonder the sink wasn’t draining. Of course, the bathroom was tiled floor to ceiling. The clogged pipes even ran beneath a cemented-in tub. The only way around was to rip it all out and start again.

I have to smile when one’s outside world reflects our inner journey. There are always parallels. These past few weeks I’ve been undergoing my own personal reconstruction. I’d noticed some sticking points in my behaviour and couldn’t seem to coach my way through them. Time to bring in a new set of tools. I signed up to see a therapist. Coaching and therapy share similarities but are very different. Both are confidential, talk-based practices but coaching is future-focused, for when we want to make changes going forward, create or transfer strategies, work through action plans and obstacles, find motivation and so on. Therapy is useful when there’s an issue at the core; when no matter how many ways we try to tackle something we end up undermining ourselves or keep repeating the same patterns — we hit a clog. That’s where I was. I know a stigma remains around therapy, but should we really hinder our own progress or ability to create happiness or find personal peace on account of someone else’s judgment? It’s so time we let that go.

My recent journey is nothing but cause for celebration. I’ve discovered so much and been helped to recognise some very unhelpful paradigms. One such block is a ‘perfectionist pattern’ that can stop me in my tracks to achievement. “Not good enough” is its undermining claim — for just about everything. It’s seriously demoralising, leading to procrastination, fear of trying in case I get it ‘wrong’, not being content with achievements or my own success. Exhausting stuff!

I discovered that a fundamental philosophy of mine was: we are here to make ourselves better. To be the best we can be. The counter to this was: why do we need to make ourselves better? Are we not good enough just as we are? Jenga!

No wonder I run myself ragged with all this ‘not good enough’ stuff. It’s written into my internal manifest. With that philosophy, I would never be able to achieve satisfaction because it implies that somehow we are currently ‘bad’ or ‘not enough’ and we constantly need to be better. I had built myself around this. I needed to chip off all the glossy tile and veneer, break into the concrete and extract that rusty old idea that was no longer serving. Having done that, though, we need to replace it with something new: something functional and durable that we can build a new model of the world around. What about, ‘OK is enough. My best is the best I can do. I am good and can choose to improve?’ Ahhh! The relief is immense. The new PVC pipes are laid, tile is ordered, the floor’s going back straighter, stronger than before. An updated, modern refit and such a joy to have removed that clogging. Sometimes remodelling is necessary and always worth doing a good job on.

• Julia Pitt is a trained success coach and certified NLP practitioner at Benedict Associates. Contact Julia on 705-7488, www.juliapittcoaching.com.