Overcoming Perfectionism

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. Today I want to talk with you about perfectionism being a perfectionist. What’s the difference between kind of having high standards and being high achieving versus perfectionism? How to notice perfectionism in yourself and in your actions and how to change that. And I came up with this podcast because I am creating a brand new course on How To Let Go Of Perfectionism and sort of break up with that narrative and those tendencies and those actions for your own sake.

And this started because one of the Mom On Purpose Members inside the Membership wrote in and asked if I could talk more about perfectionism. And I sent her one of my favorite classes inside the membership called Becoming Your Own Best Friend. It is fantastic if you are in there, I 10 outta 10 recommend going into the library and watching it. And that in combination with this podcast and the upcoming class on Letting Go Of Perfectionism, I think will really provide all the perfectionism perfectionist tools that will help you create the change that you’re looking for. So the question that she wrote in with says, hi Natalie. I’m wondering if you could talk more about perfectionism. What is it rooted in? Where would one start to overcome this personality tendency? Do you have any classes in the library or archives or podcast that cover this topic already? Thank you.

Okay. So with that in mind, I want to start off talking about what perfectionism even is. It doesn’t mean that you do things perfectly. It means that you have this relentless pursuit of doing things perfectly, and it’s driven by some sort of negative emotion like fear, fear of failure, fear of judgment, or lack like some kind of inadequacy. So that’s a really key takeaway for you to just notice if what you are doing is driven by lack, not enoughness, fear of failure or judgment, it’s likely that you are thinking that doing the thing will complete you in some way, will make you good enough. And that of course isn’t true and we’ll talk about that. But just noticing what perfectionism is, I think can be more than half of solving for it, because if you don’t know what it is, you’re just going to keep repeating that pattern.

And by noticing it, you can say, okay, wait, this is not helpful. When you are taking action from perfectionism, you will likely have negative emotions like anxiety, fear, and this sense of nothing ever being enough, like whatever you’re doing, it’s just not enough, and you’re not only thinking it’s not enough, but you’re making it mean something negative about you. I want to contrast this with having high standards of excellence. So I’m someone who holds really high standards for myself and my life and in my business, and I like that. But I think that if we only address perfectionism in terms of letting things go and take it it easy and not doing more, then that might deter some of you high achievers from it because you might be thinking, okay, so I’m just not supposed to have high standards for myself. Like I don’t understand that, I don’t like that I want to have high standards. So I want to provide a contrast between perfectionism and high standards so that it’s really clear the difference and can be a helpful framework for you to use in your everyday life. So high standards, having a high standard of excellence means that you are committed to doing your best, focusing on growth and striving for high quality. The motivation is expansive and abundant. The feelings are expansive and abundant, so it’s coming from a place of enoughness. If something doesn’t work out, you adapt and you make changes and you try again.

Contrast that with perfectionism. When something doesn’t work out, you make it mean something about you and your worth. And any mistake or failure feels like personal attack. It feels like something is wrong with you. So it’s a really quick telltale sign of perfectionism versus having a high standard of excellence. If you miss the mark, if you make a mistake, if you fail and you make it mean something negative about you, that’s perfectionism, same exact thing happens, and you don’t make it mean something about you, you just take it in as data and a lesson to be learned. That is having a high standard of excellence where you can continue to grow and change and evolve from a place of wholeness. And that’s really what this is about. It’s perfectionism is you chasing something in order to feel better about yourself. It’s wanting to do X, Y, and Z, wanting to complete the to-do list, wanting to get everything done, done, wanting to, achieve the goal, wanting to stop yelling at your kids, whatever it is, because you think that in so doing, you will finally be whole and worthy and good enough, and that’s just not how it works.

The way that I teach all of this work is to work on yourself first, to love yourself, to trust yourself, to have confidence in yourself, to be willing to experience those negative emotions without making them mean anything about you. And then from there, let’s improve our skillsets just because we want to. Let’s set and achieve big goals just because we want to, not because we then are somehow better or more worthy. So you can still have high standards of excellence and not be a perfectionist, not have perfectionist tendencies. Let’s go through a couple of examples. Let’s say that you are planning a birthday party. If you have high standards for planning a birthday party, you are planning on creating a fun, memorable experience for your kids. You are doing it in a thoughtful planned out way. Maybe you are ordering the catering and the cake from a bakery and you got all the decorations ahead of time, and it just is a way for you to express your love for your child through having high standards.

Contrast this with obsessively coordinating every detail from the party favors to, you know, the Instagram balloon designs that you’re trying to mimic to feeling like a complete failure. If something doesn’t go as planned, if someone doesn’t have a good time, if you know one of the letters in the happy birthday banner balloon,gets popped and you make it mean something really negative about yourself and you struggle to have a good time, you worry that your guests will judge you if the party isn’t up to a certain standard. Do you see how in this example, it’s like you can have some of the same actions, like the same balloon arch, but from a very different motivation. You just want to have the balloon arch for fun because you like to create an amazing experience for the party, not because you think that you have to do that in order to be good enough.

That’s the difference between having a high standard and being a perfectionist. Let’s take another example. Let’s say you are communicating with your spouse. If you have high standards, you will be willing to be vulnerable. You will value open and honest communication. You will allow disagreements, you will want to work through challenges together. You will not make it mean that you’re in a bad marriage or you are a bad wife or a bad woman. If there are hiccups, if you’re making mistakes or your spouse is making mistakes, you’ll be able to acknowledge your own mistakes and apologize, focusing on connection over perfection. Contrast that with wanting to communicate with your spouse from a place of perfectionism. Then every conversation has to go smoothly. There’s this tense anxiety kind of motivating the conversations, fueling the conversations. You blame yourself or you blame your partner. Either you are to blame or your husband’s to blame if you’re disagreeing, and then you worry incessantly that the disagreements mean that something’s wrong with your marriage, that it’s not perfect and it leads to you overthinking negatively about every interaction.

So do you see the difference here? It’s subtle because in both instances you still have disagreements, you’re still married to the same person, and yet the way that you’re thinking and feeling about it is very different. So it creates a completely different experience. Let’s take one more example. If you want to maintain a tidy organized home from a place of having high standards, then you will have routines in place. You will have an order of priority. You will also, delegate and work together in a team oriented way. You know, things aren’t going to be perfect. You know that messes are part of it. You will allow the laundry to sit from time to time, and you still value cleanliness and kind of being the CEO operator of your household. Contrast that with perfectionism where you feel compelled to clean and organize and kind of micromanage everyone else constantly, even at your own expense, meaning you are unwilling to rest or relax unless every single dish is clean, unless all of the laundry is put away.

And whenever the house is messy, you make that mean that you are not good enough. Like you’re failing as a wife, as a mom, as a woman, you worry what others will think of you if your home isn’t matching up to what you’re seeing on your feet. So in both instances, you might be cleaning or you might be organizing. Yet, when you have high standards set from a healthy place of approval of yourself, you create such a better experience for yourself. You’re not using cleaning against yourself, you’re not using keeping a home against yourself. You’re not making it mean that your home has to be a certain way in order for you to feel good enough.

So think about in your life some areas where you feel like you have to do certain things in order to be good enough. Said differently what are five things that you do or that you want? And then why do you do those things? Or why do you want those things? If the reason is rooted in lack, IE, the reason that you do these things or want these things is because you think you need to be good or whole or worthy, then it’s rooted in perfectionism. If the reason you want these things is just because you want them and it feels like abundance, it feels expansive, that is a really fun place to do things and to want things. So for example, if you want to stop yelling at your kids just because you want to expand your capacity to show up for yourself and your kids and your family, but you know that you are a good mom inside and nothing will change that you’re also just a human mom, then you can grow and build this skill while feeling good about yourself.

And that’s really what will enable you to create the results that you want of not yelling when you do it from perfectionism, when you do it because you think you’re not a good enough mom because you think you’re ruining your kids and your family because you think that something is wrong with you and you have to stop yelling in order to feel good enough, there’s this relentless sense of harshness, self-judgment, negativity, and scarcity where you disconnect from yourself and your kids and you feel like you are a bad mom and you have to change in order to be good enough that my friends is perfectionism. So just notice it, okay, there is no right or wrong, good or bad. You just want to notice so that from that place you can create change. I want to give you a list of 15 signs that you may be in perfectionism because I think that it’s really easy to notice when we are in perfectionism, if we have some specific examples that we can apply to our past and kind of how we’re showing up.

So number one is always evaluating others and comparing your goodness and worth to what they’re doing. So if you’re constantly measuring yourself against others to see how you stack up, that’s a sign of perfectionism. You think that you have to be more like them and have what they have and do what they do in order to be good enough. Number two, constantly being focused on the negative. When I worked on myself years ago for overcoming perfectionism, I noticed that this was a big one for me. Constantly noticing what’s wrong or missing in a way that is pretty much all encompassing, meaning I wasn’t noticing any of the good or appreciating anything of what I had created or my progress or wins or anything like that. That’s a sign of perfectionism. It’s only noticing what’s wrong because you’re so focused on changing yourself from lack that you think that you need to fix it all at once.

Number three, working on yourself from fear, lack or not enoughness. When you join a program like the Mom On Purpose Membership and you have this sense of being broken or needing to fix yourself, that is coming from perfectionism. It’s one of the first things that I talk about and teach you are not broken, you are not damaged, you do not need to be fixed. You are whole and worthy. Now what? Now let’s work on yourself and grow just from a place of wanting to, from a place of approval. Number four, thinking that you’ll be happier over there. This is thinking that you will feel more complete and good enough when you change yourself. Number five, disliking yourself when you feel really critical about who you are and you are unable to accept your imperfections, your humanness, that is perfectionism. Number six, procrastinating because you fear the results won’t be perfect.

So you delay things, delay projects, delay decisions because you don’t feel fully prepared or confident. You don’t trust yourself. Number seven, feeling guilt or shame about taking breaks or resting. This is such a big one for my clients. I often say, if you want to give a high achiever or a type a woman a goal, tell her to take a nap in the middle of a Monday. That is the work. She could knock out a to-do list like no one’s business, but can she take a nap in the middle of the Monday? I don’t know, right? That’s the work for all of us who can identify or have worked on perfectionism in the past, coming from being more type A and being in that masculine energy and wanting to go, go, go, and do, do, do. There’s this sense of equating productivity with worth and seeing downtime as unearned or lazy.

So you think, okay, well, to be a good enough woman, wife, or mom, I need to do more. And then when I’m done with doing all the things, then I’ve earned my rest, and if I rest ahead of that, that’s lazy, okay? That is such flawed thinking that is so detrimental to your own wellbeing. Number eight, when you beat yourself up for small mistakes, meaning you’re obsessing over every error, every misstep, no matter how insignificant the work is to love yourself, to allow yourself to be human, you can still learn from your mistakes. It’s not that there’s apathy towards your mistakes, but I find that for most of my clients on the continuum, on the spectrum of being really critical versus being apathetic, most of my clients are being really harsh and critical about their own mistakes. What we want to get to is approving of ourselves in our humanness and our mistakes and deciding from there who we want to be, how we want to change.

Just because we love ourselves, not because something is wrong with us. Number nine, seeking constant validation from others. If you rely on praise or approval to feel good about yourself, this is something that I definitely recommend working on. I think we all like to be approved of or praised by others, but how much of that is something you are striving for? That’s the real question. It’s not like you want to get to a place where you just don’t care what other people think, but if you care more about what other people think than what you think, that’s the red flag. That’s where you want to work on your own perfectionism so that you can learn how to validate yourself and love yourself so that you’re not relying on external approval in order to feel good about yourself. Number 10, feeling anxious about others’ judgment, meaning you’re worrying about how the, how others will perceive you, your parenting, your choices, and it’s from a place of thinking that you need their approval in order to feel good about yourself.

It’s a very disempowering, it’ll make you miserable because what others think of you is different and dependent on what’s going on in their brains. And so what your mother-in-law thinks, what your mom thinks, what your kids think, what your spouse thinks, what your coworkers think, what the random person at the grocery store thinks. It’s all different. It’s all based on what’s going on for them. And it’s not that you want to not care about their thoughts and opinions. You want to care. You are a caring person. I know that about you. It’s just that you want to care more about what you think, what you think about yourself. Number 11, do you struggle to celebrate your achievements? I am so guilty of this one. I’ve gotten a lot better, but it’s definitely a conscious effort. If you downplay your success or you immediately move on to the next goal without acknowledging your efforts.

This is a sign of perfectionism. It’s just kind of goal hopping, thinking that success is over there and goodness and your worth is all over there. Now, I’m all for you setting and achieving really big goals that can be so fun, and I love it. I continue to use my ambition to create the life I want. The work for me has been to get more grounded in my feminine and make space to pause after achieving goals and celebrate like obnoxiously celebrate. I don’t mean obnoxiously celebrate to others, but obnoxiously celebrate internally for myself, it kind of can feel a little bit silly at first. You might want to judge yourself like, oh, this is, you know, unnecessary. I’m telling you, it is necessary. You want to be so excited about yourself and your life and be proud of yourself, that that motivation drives you. Not being driven from lack and perfectionism, but being driven by approval and gratitude and joy and appreciation.

That is what makes all of the difference in your pursuit of growth. Number 12, living in an all or nothing mindset. If you believe that you can’t do something perfectly, then it’s not worth doing at all. Okay? That is perfectionism, all or nothing. On the one hand, you have to do it and you have to do it perfectly. On the other hand, if you can’t, just don’t do it at all. Instead of making space for the gray and the unknown, which leads into number 13, overanalyzing decisions, spending excessive time, making choices to ensure the “right outcome”, often leading to indecision and burnout. This is one I coach a ton on, and I do, practice pretty consistently in my own life, and it’s made such a difference. I can’t not tell you how helpful it is for you to really sharpen your skill of decision making.

When you overanalyze decisions it’s coming from insecurity and thinking that if you make a wrong decision or a bad decision, then that means you are wrong or bad. The example I always use about this is deciding to go for a vbac, a vaginal birth after cesarean with my second son and the decision making process that I used, because for the first part of making that decision, I was really stuck thinking that, well, I would want to go for it if it worked out, but if it didn’t work out, I didn’t want to labor for 24, 36 hours and then have it result in a C-section when I could have just planned the C-section from the beginning since I had already had a C-section with my first. And the way that I got to peace was going inward and deciding what the best outcome was for me with respect to what I could control.

Because there are so many variables that are outside of my control with something like that. And this is true for lots of decisions, right? You could move for a job, you could decide to switch your kids’ schools, and you just don’t know what will happen in the future, and you can get enough information. And then once you have that information, go inward and decide to have your own back regardless of what happens. And that’s really what I did with the vbac. I decided that I was going to go for it. And if it didn’t work, if something unexpected happened, if I had a cesarean, whatever the outcome was, no matter what, even though it was going to be harder, if it,resulted in, you know, days of labor and uh, C-section when I could have just scheduled it, I still decided preemptively ahead of time that I was going to have my back for that decision because I wanted to be someone who tried.

I wanted to go for it. And so I made total peace with that. I’m telling you, this was one of the most life-changing experiences for me because I used this process all of the time now thinking about outcomes I can’t control in decision making and making peace with it, knowing that all I have is the information I have now and trusting myself to approve of myself in the future, regardless of what happens. Doesn’t mean I don’t learn, it doesn’t mean in the future. I might not even do it differently. I might, but not because I made a bad or wrong decision in the past, just because I learned new information. Decision making is a window into you identifying whether you are imper, perfectionism or not. Number 14, feeling responsible for everyone’s happiness. Do you do this? Do you take on others’ emotions and believe that their wellbeing depends on you? You are not that powerful, my friend. That is great news. When you can learn to let go and give other people space to feel how they want to feel, it is freedom. And number 15, avoiding taking risks to protect your image. So you might opt out of setting a goal or a new challenge or opportunity because failure feels too exposing.

So those are 15 signs you are in perfectionism. Notice them. Think about them. What comes up for you in your life? And now I want to switch into what you can do to shift out of perfectionism. One of my favorite tools is labels. The way you label yourself creates your identity. So if I say I am healthy and I genuinely believe that about myself, then I’m going to take actions that align with that. If I believe I am unhealthy, I’m going to take actions that genuinely align with that. So the first order of business, even if you identify with all 15 of these signs of perfectionism, is for you to stop labeling yourself as a perfectionist. When you take on an identity, there is no choice but to live out that identity. So you might be thinking, okay, well then what do I do? I’m noticing that I’m taking these actions that are aligned with perfectionism. How do I make sense of that without using it as an identity? And the way that you do that is you use the information to bring more awareness to your actions and the way that you are being, but you don’t use it as a limiting belief.

So if you say, I am a perfectionist, you’ve now taken the information, made it a label and an identity, and it’s now going to be a limiting belief that you have to be this way. What I’m saying is to use the information to help you bring more awareness to yourself, knowing that you can change. So instead of I am a perfectionist, start saying, I notice I have perfectionist tendencies. This immediately separates out the identity of you from perfectionism and makes the perfectionist tendencies part of the actions that you’re taking. And we can all change our actions. So there’s no such thing as being a perfectionist. There’s no blood test. Sometimes we might use that language kind of casually, which is not a problem. As long as you don’t believe it to be truly part of your identity that you can’t change a hundred percent, you can change it.

So start by removing that label from your identity. I am working on overcoming perfectionist tendencies. I notice a lot of perfectionism in my actions from the past, and I’m working on changing that. Do you see how all of these sentences are more helpful than labeling yourself as a perfectionist? Number two, take a break from goal setting. If you notice that you are setting goals from a place of wanting to earn your worth, wanting to feel good about yourself, wanting to fix you, then you’re really not ready to set that goal. It can be a goal like writing a book. It can be a goal like starting a business. It can be a goal like stopping yelling at your kids. The work is to love yourself. This is number three, practice self-love, self-trust, and self-confidence in the library. Inside the Membership, we have the most amazing, fantastic class on How To Practice Self-Love.

I’ve made it really doable, really practical in a way that will help you. Same thing with the class this month on How To Get Into Your Femininity and be more easygoing. That is definitely something that you can utilize and be really changed by if you are noticing a lot of perfectionism. Number four is to create a ritual where you celebrate really small wins just because you want to celebrate you. I do this, it’s really helpful. Anytime I have a win, I make sure to create space to celebrate. And for the perfectionist tendencies that I, tend to fall into. This is really helpful to mitigate against that. And number five, be kind to yourself. Work on your mindset when you make mistakes. So how do you want to think about yourself when you make mistakes? How do you want to think about yourself when you get it all wrong?

So for example, let’s take yelling at your kids. Let’s say you yell at your kids. You probably don’t want to think, I’m so glad I yelled at my kids. But what we tend to do is go to the opposite extreme and beat ourselves up and try to punish ourselves. You know, the negative self-talk we have might sound something like, you’re a horrible mom. I can’t believe you talk to your kids that way. You’re kids deserve so much better. You’re awful. So we go from yelling at our kids to then yelling at ourself. The work is to be kind to yourself, I have this image of a basketball coach. I don’t know why, but that’s my image in my mind. So go with me here. The basketball coach is not a coach who is really mean and harsh and critical and says, why can’t you make that basket?

You’re awful. Why can’t you be a better dribble and a better teammate? You’re terrible. Okay? That would not be a great basketball coach to be on a team for. Conversely though, I wouldn’t want to be on a team with a basketball coach who said, oh, don’t worry about it. Whether you practice or not, doesn’t really matter. It’s totally fine. Your dribbling will get better. You’re fine. Don’t you know, change anything. Two opposite extremes. One rooted in being really harsh and critical, and the other kind of rooted in, let’s say like apathy and almost this like ignorance and lack of paying attention. In the middle is the strong, confident, loving, connected, motivating, gentle basketball coach who says, Hey, what’s going on here? You are a great player. I know you have what it takes. Be easy on yourself with the misses, with the air balls, with whatever’s going on. And also, let’s work on these skills. Let’s practice X, Y, Z more. Let’s get to the free throw line and make some baskets. Let’s practice. Do you see how with a coach like that, you love yourself first and you want to improve on the skill?

That is how you can be towards yourself, that inner coach with whatever you are doing or setting out to change or achieve. So if you want to stop yelling at your kids, if you yell at your kids, you genuinely reflect. You’re kind to yourself. You’re gentle with yourself. You don’t yell at yourself, but you’re also not apathetic and dismissive. You repair with yourself, you repair with your kids, you love yourself, and from that place of wholeness and worthiness, then you work on the skill of changing your mindset, changing how you’re thinking and feeling in the moment. Processing emotions, right? These are all skills that we’re working on. I have an entire How To Stop Yelling At Your Kids’ class inside the Membership, not the point here. The point is that for all goals, for all things that we’re doing and working on it’s skills that we want to learn, and the motivation for learning those skills matters.

If you are motivated by lack and from not enoughness, you will try to outrun yourself. You will self-sabotage, you will beat yourself up. It will feel terrible. That is perfectionism. Conversely, when you are motivated by love, by connection, by inspiration, by expansion, that is healthy, that is good for your wellbeing. So my friends, overcoming perfectionism is a worthwhile goal, is a worthwhile transformation because it will bleed over into all of the goals that you set, whether it’s a weight loss goal, whether it’s working on stop yelling, whether it’s not really a goal, but more about how you navigate your everyday life so that you want to take care of your home because that’s what you want to do, and you want to rest because that’s who you want to be, not because you think you need to earn any of it. The ripple effect of working on perfectionism is incredible.

It will change you and therefore it will change the way you relate to your kids, to your husband, to your friends and family, to your colleagues in such a better way. I invite you to join me inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, to get more support, accountability, and tools to help you overcome perfectionism once and for all. Take care, my friends. I will talk with you next week.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.