How to Overcome Perfectionism
Last summer I was having one of my routine coaching sessions with a client and the topic of perfectionism came up. They admittedly had a rough week leading into our call and didn’t put the amount of effort they would’ve liked on the weekly assignment that we had both agreed upon.
I could appreciate the fact that they weren’t taking this lightly, as I could see from the visual cues and verbal disappointment they were fully expressing.
However what started as a couple self-putdowns, continued onto the point of them discounting all the work and progress they had made up until that point.
Continuing to allow them the space to vent, I started feeling a deep sense of love and compassion for them at that moment.
It was clear as day to me why I started to feel these emotions during that time.
I could vividly see exactly what they were struggling with: an ambitious need for perfection.
The reason why this was clear as day to me is because it was something I’ve admittedly struggled with myself.
It’s shown up at various times in my life and caused me to cascade into a loop of constantly second-guessing myself and always pushing to be “better” than I am.
While many may look at this as a positive (myself included to an extent) on certain levels, it can quickly become self-defeating when a healthy determination, turns into an unhealthy obsession with being perfect.
It’s interesting for me to express this now, because I remember previously feeling like a bit of a hypocrite to even allow others to see this.
As a Holistic Health & Lifestyle Coach, it’s my job to be a mirror for others and help confidently guide them to their goals.
I’m supposed to have all this figured out right?
“But it’s my job to be perfect”
It was in that moment that I realized the need to look deeper within myself.
In all honesty I’ve been more than aware of this inner tug-of-war, but it wasn’t until being triggered in that session last summer, thatI committed to researching it more and attempting to locate its root cause.
As an introvert and intuitive, I’ve always naturally been avery self reflective and inquisitive person.
The positive is that it had allowed me to gain tremendous insights into my own psyche throughout the years. Which I believe is a superpower that helps me in relating and connecting to a wide variety of people.
However the not so positive is that I was now pushing directly against another deep unconscious layer, and the discomfort of it was unapologetic and could be intensely felt.
Consistent years of yoga, mediation, and mindfulness practices weren’t enough.
It was now time for me to put attention towards this new aspect, with the intention of gaining valuable insight into where it came from, and with enough self-awareness to hopefully reverse it’s control of me.
I Am Enough.
While I believe this to be true on an intrinsic level, some of my actions (or lack thereof) had pointed to the contrary.
I thought at the time, if I genuinely felt like I was enough, wouldn’t I have done a better job of following through on some of the goals that I glimpsed at each and everyday on my vision board?
One of the main ones was to put out more consistent content on social media. I remember thinking at the time that apart of me feels like I have sooooo much to say, while another part questions who will actually care or if what I’m saying is good enough.
Those inner thoughts, now ruminating just after that client session, led me on what had to be an hour long Amazon search for the “perfect”book explaining perfectionism, and how to better manage it.
After scrolling through many titles and reading countless reviews, one book in particular caught my attention.
The title was, “How to Be an Imperfectionist” by Stephen Guise.
Attention caught, I’m sold.
I immediately bought both the written and audio versions and began taking them both in right away.
What ensued over the next four days was what I can only describe as “energy in motion.”
The more and more of the book I took in, the more I shook my head with a sense of sorrow and embarrassed agreement.
The five (5) key signs of perfectionism that it mentioned were:
Unrealistic expectations
Rumination (think paralysis analysis)
Need for approval
Concern over mistakes
Doubts about actions
Unfortunately I had to admit that I could put a check mark in each one of the aforementioned boxes.
I won’t give away all the details of the book but it goes onto explain the importance of incorporating “mini-habits” which in a way are there to lower your self prescribed expectations.
This may sound like your settling or selling yourself short(trust me that was my first reaction too) but it argues that setting accomplishable daily habits that can be achieved without too much effort can begin the process of creating new behavior changes.
An example would be setting a habit of doing just one push up a day, for someone who wants to exercise but keeps talking themselves out of it. Or another on a business level could be writing one (1) handwritten letter to a new prospect or current customer.
I actually found myself getting a bit angry while reading these because I not only found them to be over simplistic, but I used to already consciously embody these same behaviors in the past.
What happened?
It’s actually a few things:
I became so fixated on my large goal that I became crippled by the amount of action it would take to get there (think back to paralysis analysis)
I felt a deep sense of angst for not already achieving some of them (thinking too future oriented)
Most importantly, there were some aspects around my early childhood that I hadn’t fully faced or recognized (causing unconscious patterns to repeat themselves…this ended up showing me the clear root cause)
These childhood patterns were:
The constant feeling of needing to prove myself
Not feeling anything I ever did was good enough
The deeply ingrained belief that working hard solves everything
Through a few different exercises (outside of the book) and journaling, I came to realize that these hardwired beliefs were not mine to begin with. They were unconscious beliefs of my parents that were energetically passed to me as early as my infant and pre-k years.
At this point I was consciously aware of just how important a child’s first 5-6 years of life were, but hadn’t dove deep enough into my own to see certain realizations.
In these early years of life of life, we absorb absolutely everything in our direct environments, including the emotions and beliefs of our parents or caregivers, as we usually spend the most time in their presence during those years.
This happens due to the conscious or linear part of the left-brain, not being completely formed up to this point. Leaving us as an open sponge to fully absorb any and all aspects that enter our psyche, even though we’re unable to logically understand or interpret.
While I had done what I felt was a great amount of self-work on myself up to this point, this is one area that had greatly overlooked.
One of the main reasons was I genuinely didn’t remember much if any of my childhood during that time. I do remember it not being the most positive of experiences on an emotional level, but I guess since I couldn’t consciously remember all the details, I assumed it was trivial and meant to be forgotten.
Reading a couple additional books, “Homecoming”by John Bradshaw, and “TheDrama of The Gifted Child” by Alice Miller, really painted a completely new picture for me and provided a great sense of clarity into “what” I had been struggling with, and most importantly the “why” behind it.
Consuming all three books over a week, performing inner child meditations, and spending many hours journaling, really shed a new light on the deeply entrenched emotions and beliefs that I still had been unknowingly harboring for over 30 years of my life.
While I now feel a sense of relief in learning more about myself to aid in my healing journey, this experience had proven to be another reminder that self-growth and realization is a full-time and life long process.
You don’t know what you don’t know. We all are living a life where we’re doing the very best we can with the information and resources that are available to us.
Always remember that accepting where we are today isn’t settling, rather it’s allowing us a unique opportunity to be present and open enough to see what may no longer serve us.
This gives us the necessary ammo to make better decisions, which then gives us the tools to continue down our own unique paths in this beautiful, and sometimes frustrating thing we call life.
With Love,
Brandon