Podcast

Episode 557: How I Realised I’m A Perfectionist (best of the podcast)

I used to think I wasn’t perfect enough to be a perfectionist. And because I didn’t realise I was a perfectionist, I had no real way to start overcoming the procrastination, crippling self-doubt and overthinking that was keeping me and my business stuck. 

Realising that I’m a perfectionist (and what that actually means) gave me a whole new vocabulary that has allowed me to change my life for the better – because it’s only when you realise you’re a perfectionist that you become empowered to overcome perfectionism.

In this episode, I’m opening up about my journey with perfectionism and the important points along the way. I can’t remember everything but I hope that what I share in this episode helps you understand yourself a little bit more.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

(Custom Intro)
Today I have a best of the podcast episode for you. So at this point, there are a lot of episodes on this podcast, and I want to make sure the best episodes don’t get lost in the archives. So today I’m sharing with you an episode that is well loved and also one that I am constantly referring to and linking people to, and I want to make sure you can listen to it as well if you haven’t already. So without further ado, let’s get into the episode.

Sam Laura Brown
Hi and welcome to episode 162 of the perfectionism project. My name is Sam Laura Brown, and I’m here to help you beat procrastination, overcome perfectionism and become your best self. Today, I want to tell you about how I discovered that I am a perfectionist. This is something I’ve talked about, obviously, on other episodes at various points, but I realized that I haven’t really talked about this all in one place, and I think it could be really helpful for those of you who haven’t yet really realized that you have this mindset and the ways that it’s impacting you. Or for those of you who have just started to really feel like, holy shit, she’s in my head, everything she’s saying sounds exactly like it’s me. If that’s the case, I’m so happy that you’re here, so grateful to have you as a listener and to be helping you.

And if you can relate to everything that I was sharing, and you’re not yet in our membership community perfectionist getting shit done. I would love you to join. You will fit right in. You can find out more at SamLaurabrown.com/membership, if you’re interested in finding out more about that. But yeah, in this episode, I really just want to share how I realized that I am a perfectionist, that I have the perfectionist mindset. Because it did take me until I was in my mid 20s to figure out that I have this mindset currently, and that I have been a perfectionist. I’ve had this mindset for my entire life, but for a long time, because I didn’t understand what it was, and because there aren’t too many people talking about what it actually is, I just saw that there was something wrong with me.

I was really frustrated because I believed I was smart, I believed I had a lot of potential, and yet, at the same time, I was self sabotaging, procrastinating, overthinking, getting in my own way, not making decisions, and also just really holding myself back and playing small and caught up in so much fear and doubt when you have the perfectionist mindset, fear and doubt is often paralyzing. And I also was really in the all or nothing mindset as well. But while I was in school, it didn’t actually cause too many issues. It was really when I actually veered off the traditional path and started my blog that everything really came up for me, but I didn’t realize for the longest time that I had this mindset. And a lot of people talk about perfectionism in the sense that it’s what you say in a job interview when they ask you what your weaknesses are, and it’s a bit of a tongue in cheek response, because it’s not actually your flaw.

But I like to think of perfectionism as just a set of beliefs. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you for having these beliefs, but they aren’t actually what will help you succeed, even though that doesn’t feel true, and a lot of perfectionists really struggle with this because, especially in academia, they really thrived because of this perfectionist mindset. At least that was the experience. And so it can then be challenging to begin letting go of those perfectionist tendencies, because all of this fear comes up about, what if I stop achieving as much, and then I’m not going to be good enough? And it’s really interesting, because when you have the perfectionist mindset, your achievement and self worth are really tangled up together, and it’s because you’re a perfectionist that you’re scared of letting go of perfectionism and becoming less successful, because if you became less successful and you’d be less lovable.

But if you can get yourself into the growth mindset, which is the other mindset that you can have, that’s when you can really begin to experience life fully and really begin to go for whatever it is that you want. But yeah, I just didn’t really understand perfectionism. I hadn’t really heard anyone talking about it too much, besides people just saying, Oh, she’s a perfectionist, or he’s a perfectionist, when someone was really controlling or was wanting everything to be perfectly organized. I never really heard people referring to procrastinators as perfectionists or overthinkers as perfectionists or people pleasers as perfectionist. It’s only when people were really neat and organized, and I think this is part of the reason a lot of perfectionists don’t think they’re a perfectionist is because they think I’m not neat and organized.

And it’s interesting, because perfectionists love the idea of being neat and organized, but then self sabotage and stop themselves from being that way, so they feel like, Oh no, I’m not perfect enough to be a perfectionist. So I hope that by sharing some more insight into my journey of realizing that I was a perfectionist, and how that’s been helpful for me. Can really help you to maybe recognize this for yourself, and it’s really not about pointing the finger at anyone else. Often, when we learn things like this, it can be like, oh, this person in my life, like my sister or my friend or whoever is a perfectionist, and I need to tell them about the podcast, for sure. If this reminds you of anyone, send them my way. But it’s really important to not go in there and say, Okay, I recognize this about someone else, and they need to change to be like, how could this be relevant for me? Can I relate to this? And I found, for me, having that label of perfectionism has been really powerful, and I haven’t yet actually done an episode relating to self image and perfectionism specifically.

And I’m going to do that soon, because I have received DMS from a few people asking me questions about, okay, I know I’m a perfectionist now, but how do I actually see that as a good thing and something that can be empowering, or do I need to see it as a bad thing so I can get out of it? So I’m going to answer that in a separate episode. I think it’ll be really helpful. And on this podcast and in our community, we do discuss self image a lot, and identity, and that whatever you believe about yourself will be a self fulfilling prophecy, but for me, it’s interesting, I actually don’t think of myself as a perfectionist as such, and I don’t really think of myself as a recovering perfectionist either. Though I started talking about being a recovering perfectionist more, because I’ve really realized that a lot of people think of themselves that way, but I don’t see it as part of who I am, which might sound really weird to you, because that’s all I really talk about on this podcast, but I really see it as just something that’s been helpful to identify.

Okay, I just have this pattern of thought that’s, at this point, quite habitual that I learned as a child, because it serves me, but now I have an adult and it’s causing problems, but it’s just a pattern of thought. It’s a pattern of thought that can be changed, and I don’t have to change it. There’s nothing wrong with not changing it, but if I really want to achieve the things I want to achieve, it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier and feel a hell of a lot better. If I’m not in the perfectionist mindset. But I wanted to mention, by the way, if you are new to this and new to figuring out what perfectionism really is, I have a couple of episodes that are going to be super helpful for you. The first one is episode 45 I dive into 10 signs you’re a perfectionist. It’s one of the most popular episodes, and that’s a great one to go to after this if you’re still trying to figure out exactly what being a perfectionist means.

Episode 57 is also a great one as well, because I talk about the differences between high achievers and perfectionists, and a lot of people think, oh no, a perfectionist is a high achiever, but not really. And if you want to be a high achiever, you will need to overcome perfectionism. I created our membership community, PGSD, perfectionist getting shit done to help you really overcome perfectionism. But that really is what you will need to do if you actually want to become a high achiever, instead of someone who just looks smart. So I’m going to now begin telling you really just a bit of background about my journey and how I realized that I was a perfectionist. So as I mentioned, it wasn’t until I was in my mid 20s that I realized that there was actually a name for all of the really frustrating self sabotage that I was creating for myself and for some of the tendencies that I had, I really just thought that there was something wrong with me, and a lot of perfectionists feel ashamed of their perfectionist tendencies, which is really interesting, because we’re being a perfectionist to try and avoid shame, and yet we end up feeling so much of it.

But when I look back at myself in childhood and in school, I can really see so many different examples of being a perfectionist, and one is definitely that I tried to hide anything that really made me different from anyone else around me. And this is basically people pleasing, but it’s so much more subtle than that, because it’s just making up all of these things about what you think other people want you to be and then conforming to them. So I just remember I never really wanted to share with other people, like what music I was listening to. It was different with my family, but more so with friends and things like that at school, like I remember, actually in high school and early high school, I liked all this different indie music, and I just didn’t want anyone to ever see my iPod, I just felt so ashamed of being different.

It was it’s so weird to think back on it now, but it came up later again when I started my blog, this desire to not do anything that might be judged. And of course, everyone is always judging us positively or negatively, but we’re always being judged, so it’s impossible to avoid it, but I was trying my damn hardest to only receive positive judgment because I really didn’t have a great view of myself, and I really didn’t want anyone else to confirm all of the things I already believed. And I also I really feel like I developed the perfectionist tendencies from a story that I created as a child, which was when my mum died, or actually, I think, in the lead up to that, she passed away when I was 11, but in the lead up to that, I really created a story when she was unwell, about not like that. I have talked about this on previous episodes, but I think it played such a huge part in it that I wasn’t good enough to have a mom and all of this stuff that makes zero sense intellectually, but as a child, that’s where my brain went, that there was something wrong with me.

And so the best way for me to really make sure that no one else left me or anything like that was to please and perform and perfect, which is what Brené Brown talks about, and how I spoke about this, actually, in the episode on how to stop a shame spiral. But when it comes to shame, there are really three ways that we react. We move against, away or towards shame. And I’m not going to go into that here, because I did a whole episode on it very recently. But for me, I think in that sense, I really moved towards the shame, in the sense that I was people pleasing and really wanting approval. I really did my best at school, even though I procrastinated a lot because I was so scared that I would procrastinate, and still I wouldn’t be good enough. I mean that I do my best and so wouldn’t be good enough, so I procrastinated. So if I didn’t do as well as I thought, I could blame procrastination.

But I think when that was happening in my childhood, really, when the story was happening in my childhood, when I made up that story, that to me, it was just this kind of survival strategy that if I can just please everyone and stay in everyone’s good books and look smart, and I will receive praise if I’m smart, so I’m going to make sure I always look that way, Then I will be loved, and all of that. And again, it doesn’t sound logical, but a lot of us believe this, and then we kind of have those stories that move with us into our adult life completely unchecked. So that was what happened to me, and it wasn’t until I was 26 that I really saw that, and I spoke about the breakthrough I had in Episode 22 around that. So I won’t go into that here too much, but I really just had this huge breakthrough of, like, holy shit. I actually had this story because I didn’t realize that I even had created that story, because it didn’t seem logical to me as an adult that I would have so I didn’t even recognize that it was there.

So that was so huge for me to have that realization, and to really see that I was trying to always please everyone, because I had these glasses on that said I’m not good enough, like I saw the world through those glasses. And so because of that conclusion I drew as a child that I wasn’t good enough, suddenly I viewed everything through those lenses. So if I did something and someone criticized me, then that confirmed my belief. But if I receive praise, I dismissed it, which is so funny, because the only reason I was wanting everything to be perfect is to get the praise. But when you believe that you’re not good enough, it doesn’t matter how much praise you get, your brain will just dismiss it. If there’s that underlying subconscious belief there, and I think there’s a probably a good chance that you can relate to that, because I know that a lot of people in our community really feel this kind of frustration, in a sense, because they have supportive friends, supportive family.

They’re doing really well. Everything should be good, and yet they still have this belief that they’re not good enough, and they can’t seem to shake it. And what perfectionists will really do, we will try to achieve, to try and get rid of that feeling of not being good enough, and we’ll try to achieve everything perfectly without having to overcome any obstacles or having to fail. And it’s a strategy that doesn’t work, because even if we do succeed, we still have those glasses on where we’re seeing the world through this lens of I’m not good enough, and when. I had that breakthrough. I basically realized, like, holy shit, I have been viewing everything like my brain has been distorting and deleting and warping reality to show me evidence that this story, that I’m not good enough is true, and it’s kind of like a fish in water, like I couldn’t see the story because I was so in it, and had been in it basically my entire life.

And so when I had that realization that I actually was viewing the world through that lens, it just dissipated so much of the self hatred that I had and the talk about not being good enough. And I know all the time there are people talking about how to actually feel good enough. And you might have noticed that I never really talk about telling yourself I am enough. A lot of people talk about that, and I don’t think there’s any problem with it, but for me, having the intellectual knowledge and repeating I am enough like a that was too far away from what I actually believe subconsciously, that my brain would just be like, No, you’re not. But also that wasn’t really for my own journey, how I actually began feeling good enough. It was really seeing and acknowledging and having a breakthrough, which came after going through a lot of emotional turmoil, that I could actually see like, holy shit, I have just been wearing these glasses the whole time that have been coloring the whole way I see the world. And I can actually take off those glasses.

So I never really talk about telling yourself I am enough, because for me, like, yeah, I get it intellectually, but I wasn’t able to truly, really get it until I was able to have that insight. And there’s no magical formula to get you to have a breakthrough like that, but to continue on your personal development journey. And I think those breakthroughs really happen when everything kind of gets pieced together in this beautiful way in your brain. It’s just like this paradigm shift. Breakthroughs are the most amazing thing that’s so addictive. I hope people really fall in love with personal development, because when you have a breakthrough and you have a complete paradigm shift, it’s like, Oh, my God. Like, I didn’t even know, I didn’t know. Like, it’s this whole world is opened up, and it’s like, Oh, I wonder what else I don’t even realize, and it just becomes this endless pursuit, which is really fun.

And as long as you can see it as a lifelong journey, incredibly satisfying. So I recognize when I had that breakthrough, that I really created the story that was underlying all of the perfectionism when I was a child. For all of us, it will be usually, if I want to say 99 times out of 100 from what I’ve learned about personal development and the way the brain works. It will be in those first seven to eight years of our lives that we make these decisions about whether or not you’re good enough, and that there is this significant emotional event. For some people, it will be something that others would consider traumatic, and for some people, it will be an experience that you might have, that everyone else would think isn’t a big deal. Maybe it was just a teacher or a parent or a friend said a one sentence comment to you, but in that moment, you decided, I never want to feel this way again.

And that’s when we started the perfecting, the pleasing, the performing and also hiding and being defensive and all these other things that we do when we feel shame. So we make that decision in childhood, I never want to feel that way again, and to avoid feeling that way again, I’m going to please and perfect and perform and do all these things so that I never have to do that. So for me, that had been a huge part of my journey of not realizing it as a perfectionist, because at that point, I had realized it, but I didn’t really recognize where it had come from, because I had this belief under there. By the way, this feels like a therapy session. It’s very cathartic, but I had realized that under there was this decision I made. It wasn’t an observation.

It really felt like, until that point, I’m not good enough. Was an observation, but I realized that it was a decision, and it was that decision that had then colored all of my other experiences and had become a self fulfilling prophecy because I was just dismissing all of the evidence that I was good enough. And I talk about this actually, in our course, get out of your own way, which is actually being added to our membership community, so all the members will have that at no additional cost. So I’m super excited about that. But I don’t think that you need to actually go into your past to find the moment that you made the decision that you weren’t good enough. I think it can be incredibly helpful for me. I wasn’t out there looking for it. I just kind of realized, like, oh, wait, shit. This is when I realized, this is when I made the decision that I wasn’t good enough, and when I started creating this story, and that that story was optional.

But I don’t think, I don’t want you to be listening to this podcast episode and thinking, okay, now I have to figure out at what point in my childhood did I make that decision that I’m not good enough. If you know what that is, it’s great in the sense that, like for me, I could see, oh, wait, that made no sense. And so that immediately helped to remove the story, because I could see it was an illogical like, it had this illogical beginning. But it might not also be helpful at the same time. Because if you look back and you’re like, wait, no, that is logical. Of course, I’m not good enough because I’m like, still in the story, then it might not be helpful. So I don’t want you to go back, searching through your past, and that’s more on the therapy side of things, rather than the coaching side of things. But if you know, or if it happens to come up on your personal development journey that can create a big aha moment.

So a few examples in school. Other ones was that I always did all of my assignments and study at the last minute. And this is such a common thing for procrastinators, I mean, and perfectionist. Same thing. I was always cramming, and I really had this identity around being a good Cramer, which made me feel extra Smart, because I could still do well at the last minute. I didn’t need all of the time that normal people did, and I wasn’t really thinking all of that consciously, but in hindsight, I can see it, and so even though it caused a lot of stress and burnout and guilt and procrastination and overwhelmed to operate that way. It worked in school, because the last minute eventually came and I would have to get to work, but when I started my blog, there was no last minute, and that’s when there really started being issues around perfectionism.

But for me in school and also my accounting job as well, if I was leaving things to the last minute, there at least was a last minute, and I could end up doing at least possible work, usually a lot better than that. And I think the school system really reinforces perfectionist thinking, the fixed mindset, because you are rewarded for the results. And there is no reward associated with the process and with the effort. And so we learned that the only point of it all is to get a good grade, and if we get a good grade, we’ll get praised. And so you would think that that would make us really try our hardest and never want to procrastinate and never want to put anything off, but because that feels really vulnerable when you’re in the fixed mindset, because you believe that your achievements are a reflection of your worth as a person, it’s actually it feels much better to procrastinate, because if you don’t do as well as you had hoped, you can blame procrastination and kind of deflect the burn and deflect the failure and point your finger away from you, instead of having to point your finger at you.

But at school, at least, my experience has been that I was really praised for getting good marks, and I wasn’t praised based on the process. And a really great way to get in the growth mindset, which is the mindset you need to be in to overcome perfectionism, to have that effort based praise is really part of that formula, and I didn’t receive a lot of that at school. And if you are praising others around you, or you have kids or anything, it’s so amazing to praise people for being courageous, for being thoughtful, for being intentional, for showing up, for the level of effort, they’re putting in praise those things, and then people want to put in an effort, even if they might not succeed. But when we only get praise for getting good results, that means when someone thinks they won’t get a good result, they choose to just give up.

And it’s so interesting to see this in our membership community, because we set, well, it’s an option to set an impossible goal, which is one of my favorite personal development tools. It’s a goal designed to make you feel shit, basically, it brings up all of the work you need to do. And perfectionists really struggle with it, because you have to learn how to pursue something that might fail, that you might fail at, and most of us have in our arsenal this strategy of, if I might fail, it’d be better to quit, or it’d be better to be busy with other things, or it’d be better to not try to subtly give up. So having this impossible goal really forces you to get into a growth mindset. Really, the only way you can achieve an impossible goal is to get into a growth mindset. But that is, yeah, it brings up a lot of work to do. And by the way, I know if you mentioned the fixed mindset and the growth mindset a lot, and if you don’t know what the growth mindset is, it’s a it’s different to being interested in personal growth.

I will link up in the show notes, which will be at samlaura brown.com/episode162, a few of the episodes that I’ve done about the growth mindset, in case you’re interested in exploring that. We also dive into it in our membership community as well. But I want you to just know at least now that they are on a spectrum, at least this is the way I think about it. So there’s a fixed mindset at one end, which is the perfectionist mindset. Perfectionist have a fixed mindset. And then there is the growth mindset at the other end of the spectrum. And actually, in our membership community, we have a quiz that you can do to see where you are on this scale, and you will be at a different place in different areas of your life. So you can go in there and do the quiz about health and fitness or relationships or your career, and if you can relate to what I talk about on this podcast, is a very good chance that you will be most in a fixed mindset when it comes to career and academics and anything relating to intelligence.

And there will also be an area of your life where you’re probably very much in a growth mindset without really realizing it, and you can actually learn lessons from that area of your life and apply that same thinking to another area, which we go into in the membership, which I love doing. But anyway, so just recognize that it’s not like, Okay, well, I’m either a perfectionist or I’m not, or I’m in the fixed mindset, or I’m not. I’m in the growth mindset or I’m not. It’s a spectrum, and the work we are doing to overcome perfectionism is getting you moving closer and closer towards the growth mindset and but you have to have a growth mindset about getting into a growth mindset, meaning that you have to be willing for it to be messy and a process, and you have to praise yourself for the effort along the way, and you have to be willing to fail at it, and you have to be willing for it to be challenging. People in a growth mindset love a challenge.

Perfectionists intellectually love a challenge because they identify as someone who loves learning, but when they are met with a challenge, they typically quit. So at least, if not in beginning, they will later on in the journey. But I want you to think about the fixed mindset and the growth mindset as being on a spectrum, and we are doing that work to move you closer and closer towards a growth mindset and and I feel like in some areas, I like in all areas, I’ve moved closer to the growth mindset and but in some areas, it’s been more challenging than others. As I mentioned all the time, I am on this journey with you, but in school, I always left things to the last minute, and I just really had this strong story that I just do my best work under pressure. It’s just a fact. It’s just an observation, when that actually wasn’t true. I was just so scared of showing up fully ahead of time, because then if I failed, I wouldn’t have anyone to blame or anything to blame, but myself.

Another example is with French at uni. So I have a law degree, I have a finance degree, and I also did a Diploma of French, which, that alone, is really the sign of being a perfectionist. But anyway, so I did French, and I had done a little bit of French in school and went on the French trip, which was super fun, but I did that in uni as well. I was so self conscious though about my pronunciation of French words, so I basically didn’t speak throughout the whole thing. Even when I needed to practice an oral I just wrote it out over and over again, because that’s how I tend to memorize things. I like doing it that way, and then I just basically say it once on the day of doing it. So because of that, because of my fixed mindset around it, I was so scared to look dumb that I’d rather not practice.

And then, because I didn’t practice, I obviously ended up like not looking super smart, because I couldn’t even speak French, even though I had this diploma and had technically done kind of if I did advanced French, but I definitely did at least intermediate French, and I was good enough at test taking to make it through the whole thing. But it meant I and have ended up with this diploma in French when I can’t really speak it. Can understand a bit of it. It’s getting less and less because I haven’t been practicing. But I ended up having, in a sense, wasted that experience. I haven’t, I don’t think of myself as having wasted it, because I learned so much about myself through that experience, but in terms of the French knowledge, I was just doing the bare minimum because I was so scared of failing in front of the class and saying something and everyone laughing all of that stuff, so I didn’t say anything, basically, unless forced to.

And because of that, I didn’t learn. And because of that, then I ended up just not really being able to speak French, which is such a shame, and that’s because of being in that perfectionist mindset. But I think during that time, there wasn’t really enough pain for all of this to come up, because being a perfectionist really served me in a lot of ways. So there was no real desire to overcome perfectionism. It was really when I started my blog that I really noticed things, and I was doing French after I had started my blog, so there’s overlap here. But it was when I started my blog and I left this world of deadlines and accountability and everything that I really started to realize that there was a problem. I started my blog, and I actually talked about this. I think it’s episode three, where I go into my blogging journey up until the point at which I recorded that episode, which was at the end of 2017 but I haven’t actually done too much in the way of literally, like writing blog posts since then.

So if you were interested in this, or you’re wanting to start a blog, or you’ve started a blog, and you’re finding yourself getting in your own way, then I highly recommend that episode, because I really go into the ins and outs of this. But I when I started my blog, I found myself hiding it from basically everyone. I didn’t want to tell a single soul in my real life, because I felt so embarrassed about it that I thought everyone else would think the same thing that I was thinking about it. So I didn’t even tell Steve. And we dating at the time for six years, five, at least five years. I was just too ashamed. It was like, showing everyone the real me, even though, at the time, I was only writing one or two sentences and linking out to other people’s articles or YouTube videos, I didn’t talk in the way that I took now I didn’t have all of these opinions and advice to share.

I was literally just like, oh, this article is interesting. Oh, check out this. I used to love, I still love Steve pavlina. Look him up if you don’t know who he is, he has some great wisdom. But anyway, I would link to people like him and just be like, Oh, this is cool. But even though I wasn’t sharing an opinion, I still just was like, who am I to be sharing this? And I also felt really ashamed to like let others know that I was interested in personal development. I think a lot of people are ashamed about their love of personal development, because so many people talk about self help as if, like, the only reason you’d want to do that is because there’s something wrong with you. That’s what broken people do. They do self help. And I actually talked about this in a previous episode. I’ll find it and link it in the show notes if you were interested. But if you’re feeling ashamed of liking personal development because it implicitly means there’s something wrong with you, then that’s definitely an episode to go and have a listen to. But I really felt that way.

And I felt like, who am I to be doing something different? I didn’t know anyone in my real life who had a blog, and at the time, it was 2013 it was, there was still, at that time, already well known, quote, unquote, bloggers, but they were mainly fashion bloggers. But it was still quite a new thing. And still, I mean, most people in my life don’t know what I do, but back then, a lot of people weren’t even familiar with what a blog was. They just thought if they knew about it, that it was this online diary or something. And I just felt so ashamed and embarrassed, and I it was just like my dirty little secret that I didn’t want anyone to find out who the real me really was, so I was hiding it, and eventually I got up the confidence to tell people, which felt I actually shouldn’t say, the confidence, the courage, because it felt mortifying. I remember in the early days of telling a few different people like I physically was shaking thinking about going and looking at my blog.

And there’s also a day that because I had a separate Instagram account for my blog instead of my personal one. Now they’re all combined, but I had a separate account and had started suggesting it my blogging account to people who were following my personal account on Instagram, and when I realized that there were people in my personal real life who knew my blog existed. I just had this, like, I don’t think I’ve had a real panic attack ever, but I just felt physically overcome with the shame and the panic of what like, I just kind of put it into words, and now it seems so trivial, but it was so real at the time, and I’m so grateful for all of these experiences, because if I had not had those experiences, I would not be able to teach anything that I’m teaching today.

Because I have lived everything that I teach and experience it, and being stuck and stopped by perfectionism, not just for a day or a week or a month, but for years. So I started the blog in August 2013. I hid it from everyone. And also, the other thing was, it wasn’t like I hid it from everyone, but everything was going super well. I hid it from everyone in my real life, but also I found myself, it’s so funny to think, like I didn’t realize I was a perfectionist, but I was editing blog posts even after they’d been published, so I’d publish and then I would go and edit it. And I actually ended up, in the early days, forcing myself to post every day for a month, so that I didn’t have time to go back and edit the posts that were already published. And that really helped me create momentum.

And also feel like every post was less of a big deal because there’d be another one coming shortly after, even though, like, literally single digit page views, most of them were me. So it wasn’t like there were all these people reading it, but I just felt like even if the strangers of the internet see it, they’re gonna judge me, like I wasn’t thinking that consciously, but from my actions, it’s very clear that that’s what I was thinking. And so I just thought I had a motivation problem. And I remember, actually, when I went to Europe in the European summer of 2014 I just remember this blog post that I wrote about motivation and my struggle with motivation, which you might know now, I don’t talk about that kind of thing, and I don’t see having lack of motivation as a problem. That is what will happen when you are putting yourself out there and doing scary things, and the key is to learn how to not feel like it and do it anyway and do it for your future self.

But at the time, I was just so struggling with consistency and showing up and posting that I just thought I just have this big motivation problem. And yeah, I just really thought that was actually the issue. And I know for a lot of perfectionists, it’s so liberating to realize that you have this mindset that so many others have, because you can actually start to see, hang on, this isn’t a motivation issue. Because when I thought it was a motivation issue, it meant that my solution to that, the only solution I had was okay. I just need to learn how to stay motivated. I need to maybe listen to some more inspiring things. I need to like all those typical things to stay motivated. And it didn’t work.

I was just trying to do the same things, but try harder, without actually resolving any of the beliefs that were stopping me from taking action, and it was stopping me from feeling like it, the beliefs of of course, you’re not gonna feel like it when you believe you’re being judged and that you’re not good enough and all of that shit. So I was just trying to solve the wrong problem, and I see so many perfectionists trying to solve the motivation problem when motivation isn’t actually the issue to be solved. It’s normal not to be motivated, but if you can actually see, hang on, this is perfectionism, and that’s just a set of beliefs, and it’s possible to actually do things to change it, and it actually doesn’t involve trying things harder. You actually just have to do things in a different way often. And I can definitely account for this, and I know my clients can and our members can that when you get into the growth mindset, things become so much more easy, and you become more successful too.

So it’s been such a game changer for me, for all of these pieces of the puzzle to come together, and I can’t remember, sadly, an exact moment when it dawned on me that I was a perfectionist. I was thinking about, should I go back and listen to some of my first podcast episodes, or go back through my blog? Because I’m sure when I had the realization that I talked about it, I know I had these realizations, like one of the big ones I had that I remember is when I realized that perfectionism is about shame, and it’s not about fear, because for a while, for maybe a year or two, I was writing about perfectionism, but I thought perfectionism was just about fear and avoiding fear. And that is true, but it’s that layer deeper. It’s about avoiding the fear of being unlovable and the fear of disconnection, which is shame. So it’s that layer deep, but like, the only reason we fear failure or judgment is because of the story we have about what that means about ourselves.

Most of us have a pretty shitty story that it means something is wrong with us. So I can’t remember. I wonder though, if at some point I have written about this, if you can think of one, and you know, send me a DM. I’d love to figure out this moment, if it existed, but I feel like it was more of a gradual realization of all of these different pieces coming together. And that’s why I love this personal development work, because you won’t get everything you need all at exactly the same time. And then you can wipe your hands and be done with it. It’s this lifelong process of, like that cliche of peeling back the layers of an onion, but it really is, because for a while I just thought I had a motivation problem. Then I kind of realized I was a perfectionist.

But then I just thought perfectionism was about fear, and then I realized, oh, wait, it’s actually about shame, with the help of Brene Brown, and by the way, I wanted to mention episode 158. Was dedicated to lessons that I learned about perfectionism from Brene Brown, so check that one out if you’re interested. And also in Episode 59 I shared the lessons I learned from her incredible book daring greatly, and a lot of those were about perfectionism. So if you are new to this, or you’re wanting to really dive into perfectionism, those are some great episodes, because Brene has been so helpful, and she helped me have that realization that it was shame that was really what was underlying perfectionism, and help me connect some other dots, which was really great.

And actually, now I’m talking about it, I remember so I had the epiphany that I felt ashamed about mum dying when I had watched a Oprah and Brene Brown interview on YouTube. Thank you YouTube and Oprah and Brene. And then I went to the landmark forum a couple of weeks after that, I want to say. And I remember when I was there, I was like, Oh, well, I’ve just had my big breakthrough, and so I’m all set. And then it was at the end of that, on the last night, that I had the big breakthrough around like, holy shit. It was at this point that I decided that I wasn’t good enough, and that’s been coloring my whole life, like it was that other realization before that paved the way for that bigger breakthrough, which was just so magical to see. And I definitely went to that event with my guard up. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a three day personal development event, and I definitely went to it with my guard up, but they design it in such a way that the hours are so long that by the end of it, you really have your guard down.

And that’s kind of what I had the big breakthrough, which is awesome, but yeah, I love impersonal development, how there’ll be all of these little pieces of the puzzle that are kind of coming together at different times. And I love as well, that I’m documenting all of this because I know so much more about perfectionism and mindset and personal growth than I did when I started the podcast. And I think a lot of us ashamed, feel ashamed to be growing in public. And I know there are definitely times where I’m like, oh wait, I’m feel like I’m giving advice that I used to say the opposite of, but that’s part of personal growth and evolving. And I think it’s so attractive to see that in others. I love being able to see someone grow before my eyes.

It’s just, I think, one of the most attractive things to see in men and women, anyone we’re like, oh my god, it’s so inspiring. Look at them growing and being willing to change. But a lot of times, we don’t want to put ourselves out there until we’re fully formed, because we don’t want to be seen to have been changing our opinions on things. And I think, like this is a side tangent now, but we see in the media that people are condemned for changing their opinion. If you look at politicians and public figures, if they change their stance on a certain issue, then people make it out like they were lying before, or what’s the deal, and they’ve got an agenda and all of this stuff. It’s like people just change their minds. We can change our minds.

So I just want to encourage you if you have been holding back because you don’t want to ever feel like people know you’ve changed your mind on something. I feel like I’ve changed my mind on a lot of things, and I’m so grateful that I have been willing to have the courage to evolve in public. And yeah, I encourage you to do the same if you have been wanting to do that, but thinking, Oh no, I don’t know everything yet, so I can’t share. It’s actually through the process of sharing what you know that you’ll learn more. And even if you don’t know everything, it’ll still be helpful to people like I there’s so much I don’t know, and I’m only 28 I’m like, right at the beginning of everything, and so I don’t know everything, but I do know some things, and hopefully, by me sharing my journey with all of this, I have been able to help you, and will be continuing to help you.

So that’s really what I wanted to share, that I mean, there really was no big epiphany that I was a perfectionist, but just all of these kinds of things building up to that realization that I had, and then once I really realized it, and it was about shame. And then I was introduced to Dr. Carol Dweck and the growth mindset. And I’m pretty sure I was introduced to that by Tom bill you, who I have spoken about before. I love him. Just the way he articulates everything is incredible. And he introduced me. Me to Carol Dweck work on the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, and she talks about perfectionism and how the fixed mindset when you’re in that you really shrink your world, and all of those things had such a big impact on my understanding of perfectionism and my understanding of myself, and it has allowed me to take all of the work that I’m doing to a deeper level.

There are still many layers to go, but I really want to encourage you, no matter where you are in your journey, to let it be okay. There’s a lot you don’t know about yourself yet, and that you’re still gathering all of the pieces together, and to really see it as exciting, that there’s still so much that you have to learn, and instead of it being frustrating that you’re self sabotaging without knowing how to stop it, to let that be something you can be curious about and looking forward to and seen as a great challenge instead of a great problem. So yeah, for me, that wasn’t like this aha moment, but it was really noticing in school and growing up that I was doing a lot of hiding and procrastination, and I don’t mean I was hiding in plain sight, like hiding the real me and a lot of perfectionists, especially in relationships where we care about the other people, but also in relationships where we don’t.

We are so scared to show the real us, because then if we get rejected, it’s more painful, but if we show them a fake version or a more likable version, then one we think they’re more likely to like us, but also, if they rejected us, then at least it won’t hurt as bad because they didn’t really know us to begin with. So that’s something to be aware of. And I noticed that I was just hiding away the things about me, like all my quirks and things that actually make me me, hiding them away and always trying to fit in. I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast too, but I have noticed before that when I’m if I’m like, looking for clothes or something, and I will see something and I’m like, I don’t really like that. Then I see someone else, and they look interested, and I’m like, Oh, maybe I do like that. I’m like, What the fuck sorry. Just stuff like that.

I still have a lot of those thought patterns that I have to catch myself out on. But if you can have a look at your not your past, in the sense of, like, trying to figure out where things came from, but just looking at past tendencies or present tendencies that you have and seeing if they do align with any of these perfectionist tendencies or procrastination people pleasing all or nothing, overthinking, having no goals or vague goals, or 10 goals but never one clear goal that you’re really going for, those things can be really helpful, because it’s not about labeling yourself as a perfectionist and being like, okay, this is me. I’m in this is me. I’m in this little perfectionist box now, and that’s who I am. It’s really about just having that language. This is a language thing. If you have the language of perfectionism, you can actually begin to explore it and to change those perfectionist beliefs.

So it’s not sticking this label on you, saying this is the way you are, and just learn how to manage it. No, you can change those beliefs, and it’s important to know too, in terms of speaking about things from the past, like the reason that I was being a perfectionist when I still been a perfectionist, when I had that realization that I had in my childhood, decided I wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t because of the childhood stuff. It was because I was still having those thoughts in the present day. The perfectionist tendencies, which are actions, are caused by our feelings, and our feelings are caused by our present day thoughts, not our childhood. It’s so important to recognize that you might have started a pattern of thought in your childhood, but it is not your childhood that has created what you’re doing today. It is the story you have today, the thoughts you have today, the way you view yourself today. And that’s the best news, because we can’t change our past, but we can change our stories that we have about ourselves, and some of them won’t feel like stories.

They’ll feel like facts. They’ll feel like observations. Because we’ve thought it for so long, our brain is just like, Yep, this is true. It will be dismissing all the evidence that it’s false. And just as I have said in this episode, like warping reality so you see what you expect to see. So that’s just something to be aware of, that it’s not caused by your childhood, but that pattern of thought probably began in your childhood, and it’s probably been brought unchecked into adulthood. And now you can be like, hang on, I don’t actually want to have these thoughts, and you can do the work to change them. It’s the work we do in PGSD together, and it’s what I talk about here on the podcast. So yeah, recognizing those tendencies in school was helpful. But it was when I started the blog that I was like, hang on now that there’s no last minute, I’m not actually getting anything done.

And why am I being all weird about this and hiding it? And it just raised a red flag for me that I hadn’t seen before. Because when I had that red flag. Flag in school, I was still doing well, so it was like, oh, it’s not really a red flag, but with the bug, it was like, Oh, wait, this is actually a red flag. And so I had a lot more motivation to figure out what was happening. And then through my pursuit of personal development and discovering Brene and Carol and other people like that, and like, I can’t even there’s so many different pieces that went into it. Brooke Castillo and her work has also been a huge factor in my personal development journey. So all of that coming together helped me realize I have these thoughts and that I’m not my thoughts and they can be changed. This isn’t the way I am, but I can identify if I have this language now around perfectionism, I can actually figure out how to overcome it, and now that’s why I teach what I teach, and why I’m so so grateful and passionate for this work and for all of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way and still learning the hard way. I hope that by sharing them, I can make the journey a little easier on you.

Outro
If you enjoyed this episode, I want to invite you into my coaching program called Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. It’s for perfectionist entrepreneurs. And inside, you’re going to learn my simple, proven process for how to get out of your own way. In your business, you’re going to be taking consistent action without burning out, even if you have a full time job, you’re a parent, you have a health issue, you’ve got a lot on your plate. That’s exactly who we help inside PGSD, we teach you. We have you master how to show up for your business and stop having the productivity issues that are being caused by perfectionism that are making it so so so hard to grow your business, even though you know you have the potential to have a successful business. We teach you how to work with your perfectionist mindset instead of against it, so you can be showing up consistently and sustainably and your business can finally grow. So to find out more about the program and to join us inside today, go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

Author: Sam Brown