Podcast

Episode 373: 5 Life-Changing Lessons About Perfectionism From Carol Dweck (Repost)

In today’s episode I’m going to be sharing 5 life-changing lessons about perfectionism from Carol Dweck. 

I’ve actually been planning to record this episode for a long amount of time, but ironically, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do Carol’s teaching enough justice.

Carol Dweck has been someone influential in my understanding of perfectionism and my perfectionism handbrake. She’s helped me identify what it looks like to get out of the perfectionism mindset.

Tune into today’s episode to get a better understanding about perfectionism and getting into the growth mindset.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode373.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • Why Carol Dweck has been so influential on my perfectionism journey
  • What the fixed and growth mindset have to do with perfectionism
  • Why I incorrectly thought that I had a growth mindset
  • The truth about being willing to fail your way to success

Perfectionists Getting Shit Done will be opening for a special enrollment for 4 days only THIS WEEK!

The doors to PGSD will be opening at 6am New York Time on 8 December 2022 and closing at 11:59pm New York time on 11 December.

Perfectionists Getting Shit Done is my program for perfectionist entrepreneurs. It will have planning properly as a perfectionist and doing the most important tasks in your business in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way. And it provides the accountability to make your new-found productivity levels sustainable long-term, even if you prefer to lurk and learn from the shadows.

After this enrollment period, we don’t know when we’ll be opening PGSD again.

If you want 2023 to be the year you got out of your own way in your business, join the PGSD Waitlist at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd and be sure to sign up when the doors open at 6am New York time this Thursday.

Featured In The Episode:

Listen To The Episode

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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 perfectionist 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.

Sam Laura Brown

This episode is going to be incredibly helpful with your perfectionism journey and getting out of your own way. So about a year or so ago now, I recorded and shared an episode on five life changing lessons about perfectionism from Dr. Carol Dweck. And I’m going to be re sharing that episode today. So that you are reacquainted with those concepts. And even if you’re very familiar with the concepts of the fixed and growth mindset, I really encourage you to listen to this in full, because it’s one thing to intellectually understand what the growth mindset is. And it’s another to get into the growth mindset. And inside PGSD, that’s what we’re really focused on doing. In order to release your perfectionism handbrake, what you need to be focused on is getting into the growth mindset. It’s not about not being a perfectionist. Instead, it’s about becoming growth, mind growth minded, and the tools that we have inside PGSD that we use as the foundation of everything, clean rest, the growth goal and your power planning. Those are really the practical tools that you can use to get into a growth mindset, and to take the growth mindset from something you intellectually understand into something that you actually live. And so yeah, this episode is going to be all about that. And I owe so much to Carol Dweck, she is incredible. And I wanted to mention, before we get into that, in case you missed the announcement, that perfectionist getting shit done is actually going to be open for enrollment from the eighth until the 11th of December. So just very briefly, we had planned to do an enrollment for PGSD in January. But what we are doing instead is we are launching a self study course on power planning. And we won’t be opening PGSD for enrollment in 2023. That we know of yet. My guess is that we will be opening for enrollment at some point later in the year. But I really want to give PGSD the opportunity to evolve into a more advanced space when it comes to doing the perfectionism work and using the growth goal planning and clean rest as the tools to do that. And so what we’re going to be doing instead is we are doing an enrollment from the 8th to the 11th. So that for anyone who has been thinking about PGSD, if you want to sign up if you want to be in that and learning those tools, and getting the accountability and support and coaching and community, in order to get out of your own way and do the things you know you need to do, this is going to be your only opportunity in the foreseeable future to sign up. And then you are going to be as a PGSD are part of that evolution of PGSD into its next iteration. Which means you’re not only going to get PGSD in its current iteration, which has helped hundreds of perfectionist get out of their own way and really just show up fully and in a way that they feel super proud about and feeling super productive to. So it’s not just that iteration, but you will also be part of the evolution of PGSD into a more advanced space and somewhere that you’re really able to do the work that you need to do in a super supportive and judgment free environment and really reap the benefits of that in your business. Because when you between the things you need to do, and you’re doing them in a consistent, sustainable, productive and courageous way. magic happens. So I want to invite you inside PGSD if you have been thinking about signing up, so you can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to join the waitlist. And yeah, we’ll be opening from 6am New York time on the 8th of December until 11:59pm New York time on the 11th of December. So it is a shorter enrollment period than usual. So yeah, I want to invite you inside and without further ado, this is the episode on five life changing lessons about perfectionism from Carol Dweck.

I wanted to record this to introduce you to Carol Dweck, if you’re not already familiar with her And to share some of the concepts that she teaches. At least these are my interpretation of the concepts that she teaches. And she has been someone on my journey with releasing my perfectionism, handbrake that has had such a profound impact. I think Brene Brown and Carol Dweck combined, have been the most influential in me understanding perfectionism and that perfectionism, handbrake, and what it actually looks like to release that handbrake and what needs to go into that Brene Brown, if you’re not familiar with her, listen to the episode in the show notes where I go into her lessons. But she talks about shame.

And perfectionism really is this strategy to avoid shame. And so her research her teachings has really helped me to understand that and what we’re trying to avoid with this whole perfectionist mindset. Carol Dweck has really helped me to understand how to really release that handbrake and how to get out of that perfectionist mindset and what that looks like because it was so helpful to learn about the shame side of things. And that Brene Brown shares a lot of tools that help with perfectionism, including shame, resilience, and that kind of thing.

But so much of the conversation around perfectionism is about these little cute mantras of done is better than perfect, just remember, nobody’s perfect. Don’t care about what other people think. All of those little sayings that we all intellectually understand. And yet, they’re so challenging to live in accordance with and I didn’t really know like, once I realized that my perfectionist mindset was working against me. I didn’t really know what it looked like for the alternative to happen. And then Carol Dweck, I came across her and her teachings, I think through a combination of Brooke Castillo and Tom Bilyeu I think it was mainly Tom Bilyeu, who’s an online creator and entrepreneur who introduced me to Carol Dweck through his YouTube channel.

And once I discovered her and learned about this growth mindset and the fixed mindset, which I’m going to be talking about quite a bit in this episode, it really started to click for me that I could get into this growth mindset without like I could release that handbrake without even having to just focus on releasing the handbrake. But by focusing on getting into this growth mindset, that handbrake that comes on, when we have our perfectionist mindset working against us would automatically start to release and it gave me something really tangible to be focusing on instead of just you have people say Just don’t be a perfectionist, like, okay, cool. What do I actually do? Carol Dweck was able to give and is able to give so many practical insights and tips around how to develop the growth mindset, which is at the other end of the spectrum to the fixed mindset. And the fixed mindset is what we have when our perfectionism handbrake is on. So all of that to say, Dr. Carol Dweck, she has been very influential. And I highly recommend that you check out her book called Mindset, which is where a lot of these ideas that I’m interpreting here and sharing with you in this episode have come from. And if you Google Carol Dweck perfectionism, she also has a talk, where she talks explicitly about that. And I just remember the day I watched that and just had all of these light bulbs go off in my mind, it just clicked things together in a way that had never made sense to me previously. It was really one of those things that you will always remember I will always remember when I watched that video, and it just really started to connect dots that I had never connected before. And I’m forever grateful to Dr. Carol Dweck for that. And for her work around psychology and creating these concepts of the fixed mindset and growth mindset, which are tools and concepts that we can use to help us to release our perfectionism handbrake so we can get out of our own way, get it done without burning out, actually feel like we are good enough.

And it’s really like getting out of this whole idea that it’s possible to be good enough, which means it’s possible to not be good enough to just really be in this place where we can be excited by challenges and learning and growing and really, truly doing that instead of over. We’re in the fixed mindset. We are learning and growing with an agenda that if we do that, then we’ll finally be loved will be what By the end all those things, but to really instead be in this place of, I’m actually going to do that for the excitement of it for the joy of learning and not just as a means to an end.

So with all of that said, I will get into these five lessons, it was challenging to figure out what these five would be. And again, I really wanted to justice, with how influential she has been on my life on my business on my personal development journey. But it’s very challenging to do that. So I’m just gonna chat through five lessons that really helped me so much. And I hope that they will help you. And if you have heard these before, if you’re familiar with her work, I hope that you will still listen to this again, and take that understanding you have to an even deeper level, and really be thinking about how you can apply what you know about this. Because when we do learn about the growth mindset, and the fixed mindset, and the concepts that I’m going to be talking about in this episode, it is very easy to intellectually understand these ideas, they make a lot of sense. But to live them is a practice to live them takes great courage and patients.

And it’s really important to not just intellectually understand these ideas, but to be reflecting if you’re already familiar with them, reflecting on where can I be in even more of a growth mindset? And what are some practical things I can do to help myself achieve that? PGSD? Obviously, we teach that a lot in the program, and on the coaching calls, and all that kind of thing. But that’s what I want you to be thinking about in this episode, if you’re already familiar with some of these concepts that I’m sharing. So first of all, the first lesson, I guess it’s the 101 is what the fixed mindset is, and what the growth mindset is. Now the way that I’m going to explain it is my interpretation of what Carol teaches.

I don’t say it in the exact same words that she does. But this is how I have interpreted it, which I have found helpful on my own journey. So I’m just going to share that with you. I’m not reading exact quotes here from Carol, just so you know that bit again, mindset, that book is really going to provide all of that to you. I don’t just want to read all these quotes from the book, you can go and listen to, or read the book yourself. So we have the fixed mindset, and the growth mindset. And again, when our perfectionism handbrake is on, we have that fixed mindset.

And when that hand break is released, we’re in the growth mindset, that’s kind of the easiest way I found to think about it. The growth mindset, big misconception around it, is that if you love personal development, and you love learning, then you were in a growth mindset. And when I was introduced to these concepts, I thought, 100%, I have a growth mindset, I love self help. I love learning. I believe that I can grow as a person, like I have a growth mindset tick next, like I didn’t even look into it. The first few times I heard about it, because I just thought, cool. Growth Mindset is important. I have one of those. And it wasn’t until I really understood what a growth mindset is that I started to understand. There were areas of my life where I definitely wasn’t in a growth mindset. So what are they the growth mindset is where you believe, and this is demonstrated through your actions, where you believe that your intelligence, your talents, your abilities can be improved upon with effort and with practice, which sounds like a basic belief that everyone has. But when we really look at this being demonstrated through your actions, it tends to be revealed to us that we don’t believe this.

So someone who is in this growth mindset, they actually live by the mantra that it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. If you presented someone who has a growth mindset with a button and a you just said, if you press this button, you can instantly achieve all of your goals, they wouldn’t be interested because they aren’t achieving goals as a means to an end. They are interested in the journey, the growth, overcoming the obstacles and the challenges and the whole ride there. They’re not just interested in the result, someone who is in the fixed mindset and I like to think of these as being on a spectrum. So it’s not an all or nothing thing. You’re either fully in the growth mindset or fully in the fixed kind of on a spectrum somewhere between the two. In the fixed mindset. We believe that our talents, our ability, our intelligence, a fixed they can’t be fundamentally changed. And so when we are in this kind of mindset, we to see everything we do as creating evidence for whether or not we are good enough. And I’ll talk about this more a bit later when I talk about shrinking your world. And this is something we do when we’re in that mindset. Because we want to keep having everything be natural, because if things feel natural, and that’s a sign that we have this talent and intelligence and ability, so we want things to be natural and effortless. We’re scared of wasting effort, we see effort as a sign of inadequacy. When we’re in the fixed mindset, we tend to intellectually understand that it’s better to have tried and failed and to have never tried to all that you have to fail your way to success, blah, blah, blah. But when you look at the actions, that someone in that mindset takes, it’s very obvious that actual belief, the one that creates feelings and actions for them, is that is better to have not to trade than it is to have failed, because by not trying, you’re able to protect your identity as being someone who is talented, and intelligent, and who has certain capabilities, and abilities. But when we actually try things, it might be revealed that we are somehow lacking those natural abilities. And so we tend to not do things unless they’re going to be perfect.

And does this sound familiar? So in that fixed mindset, if you were presented with a button, and someone said to you, if you push this button, you can achieve like whatever business goal you’re working towards, at the moment, push this button, your chief that goal, we would want to push it because we are achieving that goal as a means to an end as a means to having our self worth validated. Or, like when we’re in this mindset, we don’t really have much self esteem. And our self worth is tied to outcomes and results and success. So we want to push the button so we can feel good enough, at least that’s what we think would happen. When we achieve the goal, we’re wanting to achieve it as a means to an end as a means to feeling good enough. So really, in this place where we’re wanting to succeed, it’s kind of this challenging place to be in which I’m sure you can now appreciate that you want to succeed. So you can feel that you are actually good enough. But at the same time, you don’t want to try things because you don’t want to risk demonstrating that you’re lacking any kind of natural talent or ability. So we have this tricky situation where you want success, but you don’t want to try. And this creates a lot of procrastination, overwhelm burnout, a lot of waiting, and all of those signs that come up those symptoms of your perfectionism handbrake being on because we’re kind of grappling with, well, I want to be successful, but I want it to be effortless and instant.

And if you have noticed that you’re in a bit of a rush towards your goals, that impatience is this fixed mindset and wanting to achieve the goal so that you can feel good enough and get this sense of relief. And that impatience is this tension between those two, and that we just want to achieve the goal already. So we can finally relax our shoulders a little bit and be like, Okay, maybe I’m not as inadequate, as I’ve been thinking that I am. But of course, that isn’t a strategy that actually works. As soon as we achieve that thing, especially when we’re the fixed mindset. We don’t even stop and give ourselves any credit or take the lessons that we’ve learned along the way. We just set another goal and try to achieve that goal because then we’ll finally be good enough and we just keep moving these goalposts further and further away. Whereas someone who is in the growth mindset gets their self esteem and satisfaction and fulfillment from the journey itself.

From being courageous from practicing resilience from overcoming obstacles that actually literally excited and motivated by setbacks. Someone in a fixed mindset, who has the handbrake on rather than being the growth mindset with the handbrake release, when they’re in the fixed mindset, feelings like disheartened, disheartening, is that a feeling? Feeling disheartened, feeling discouraged? Those are feelings that come up because we are making our lack of progress means something about ourselves and our worth. Whereas someone who’s in a growth mindset doesn’t do that. They really have their self worth detached, which allows them to be more courageous and more resilient because it doesn’t feel like their self worth is on the line. So they’re not afraid to try things, and they’re not afraid to keep trying things until they work. So that’s a little bit of an overview of my understanding. I have the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The other thing, the second lesson, I guess I want to go on to following that is that you can set up situations in a way that put someone into a fixed mindset or put someone into a growth mindset more readily.

And this is so helpful to know that we can really do things for ourselves that will make it easier to release our handbrake and get into that growth mindset. And actually, you if you’re a PGSDer, yeah, you probably wouldn’t even be too aware of this. But everything that we do in PGSD, and the way that we interact with everyone, and code with everyone and all those different things, we are setting things up in a way that makes it easier for you to get into a growth mindset without you even realizing it by taking these principles that Carol Dweck teaches, and not only teaching them directly through the PGSD process, but also in the subtle ways that we set up the PGSD process, for example, and that we praise accomplishments and result in all of those different things.

We’re doing it in a way that is going to make it easier for you to be in a growth mindset. So when it comes to this, you can think about, okay, what are some things that put someone into a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. And, of course, you can’t really put someone into a certain mindset, we are in control of our mindset, it is coming from our thoughts, and we have power over them. So we don’t want to be thinking about like someone has the power to put you in this mindset or that mindset. But we can do things that make it easier for someone to have fixed minded or growth minded thoughts. For example, as I said, in PGSD, we do things that make it easier for you to have growth minded thoughts.

But there are some ways of doing things that make it easier for someone to have these fixed minded thoughts. So for example, the classic one that you’re probably familiar with, is being praised for either being talented, or being smart, or intelligent. They seem like very good things. And we’re probably all guilty of praising people for those things. And we do it with good intentions. But when someone is praised for being smart, as opposed to, for example, being praised for the way that they approached the learning process, or the lessons they learned along the way, or like a more process based praise, Carol Dweck calls it process praise.

So if someone is praised for the, for being smart, or maybe for the result they got so for getting an A, for example, then that person, it’s easy for them to think I’m getting approval here, because I did something that’s smart. To keep getting approval, I need to keep appearing to be smart. And the best way to appear to be smart, is to only do things that I already know how to do, or that I’m already good at. Or if I’m not good at them that it’s uncommon to be good at them. So I can blame it on that. Or, and here’s where some of those symptoms of the perfectionism handbrake coming on, come in. Or if I procrastinate, then I can blame procrastination, for my poor result instead of having to blame lack of intelligence.

Or if I’m overwhelmed, then I can blame overwhelm and being busy or the same with burnout, I can blame that, instead of having to blame lack of intelligence, like we end up having this real identity around, wanting to appear to be smart all the time. And because that’s not possible, especially if you’re doing new things like building a business, we’re doing something new all the time, we end up withholding effort in the subtle ways. And when we’re in that fixed mindset effort is a sign of inadequacy. That’s what we think. So withhold effort and all these subtle ways, procrastination being the main one and all the different forms of procrastination. We do that so that we don’t have to take a direct blow and say, Oh, no, it’s actually maybe my lack of intelligence and skill and ability and talent. Instead, it’s a procrastinations fault, or it’s something else’s fault.

We have all these sneaky little ways of letting ourselves off the hook. So praising someone for being smart and intelligent, is something that will make it easy for them to be in a fixed mindset. And this might be why, for example, this is my experience, at least that I and I’ll talk about this in a second that you can have be somewhat different on the spectrum in different areas of life. For me, where I’m most towards the fixed mindset end of the spectrum I have Have that perfectionism handbrake on the hardest is where it relates to smarts and intelligence. So, school for me, I definitely had the handbrake on for that. And also business, because in my mind, I’ve made that like an intelligent pursuit, if that makes any sense. So those things are where those areas where I have found myself to be most in the fixed mindset with that handbrake on, and I’ve needed to do the most work to release it.

There are other areas where, for example, perhaps a hobby, where I haven’t associated that with being smart. And I find it much easier to be in a growth mindset around that. So that’s just something to be aware of. And also, when you’re interacting with others to be aware of that, too, that if you are praising them for why you’re so smart, and well, you did so well. That’s great. And we want to be encouraging to others. However, we don’t want that to be the main kind of praise that we are giving, because especially a years and years of being told, Wow, you did so well, you’re so smart, we really start to think that I’m only loved when I’m smart, I’m only loved when I achieve certain results. And this then seeps over into, okay, well, I’m just someone who loves being productive. When really underneath all of that, we love being productive, because we think the more I do them while achieve, and I get praise and love and acceptance, from achievement.

And so that’s how we feel guilty when we rest, all of that other stuff that I talked about quite a lot on this podcast, and that we cover inside PGSD as well. So we don’t want to be blaming others for having this fixed mindset for being this fixed mindset and saying, Well, my parents praise me like that. And my teachers did. And of course, I’m blaming them for that. They meant well, and most likely as well, like there wasn’t even at that time, a conversation around this, like now, in schools, people talking about fixing growth mindset, it still continues, oh, that there’s praise for grades and all of that, and a really heavy focus on that. But if you are a similar age, to me, it’s very likely that you when you were getting that kind of praise, like there was no no one knew any better.

Like people weren’t talking about these kinds of concepts. And it was said with good intention. So we don’t want to be blaming anyone else. And as I said, like I’m guilty of giving that kind of praise as well. It’s just like, it’s, it feels so natural to do that. So we don’t want to be blaming anyone else for that. But we can really take this in, as give ourselves a responsibility of setting up our own situations in a way that makes it easier to be in the growth mindset, which includes, for example, process praise, and praising ourselves for the way that we showed up for the journey, rather than just praising ourselves or beating ourselves up for the result that we achieved. But be mindful of language. And yeah, it’s just it’s so powerful. I love though that we can set up situations that make it easier for someone to be in a growth mindset. And we can stop setting up situations that make it easier for us to be in the fixed mindset. The third lesson is kind of based on all this I’ve already been talking about. But perfection is when the handbrake is on shrink their world, so they can be perfect at everything.

And this is for me like it was just such a life changing lesson when Carol Dweck explain things in this way, that it really clicked for me how much I had shrunk my weld, so that I could be good at everything that I was doing. And that I could if I wasn’t good at it, I could have an excuse as to why I wasn’t good at it, for example, in school that I left it to the last minute. So if I didn’t do well, then I could blame that. And if I did do well, then I got to feel extra Smart. So just taking a look yourself at where you might be shrinking your world and saying no to opportunities.

This might not even be saying a blatant No, but you keep putting things off. But just saying no to things. Because in your mind, it’s better to not try than it is to fail. Again, we intellectually understand that it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. But if you can look at your life objectively, and say, Where am I living by this mantra that it’s better to not try than it is to fail and then practicing a little bit of courage, which means feeling scared and doing it anyway, but practicing some courage there. And saying yes to those opportunities, even when your legs are trembling and just noticing like even just the awareness of oh wow, I’m saying no to this so that I’m not risking failure or a lot of times as well. We do this because we don’t want to be too successful. We say no to opportunity.

Unity’s because we’re scared that it will fail. But also we’re scared that it will succeed, and that we won’t be relatable to others anymore, we won’t have the same connections and same relationships that we do with others, especially if you have relationships that are built on bonding over struggling, that it’s very scary to think about succeeding. So when people say, perfectionism is fear of failure, or fear of rejection, no, it’s about fear of shame.

And often we associate shame with succeeding, as well as shame with failure and rejection, too. But this lesson is really just about noticing, where you are shrinking your world and saying no to opportunities, or not putting in a full effort to certain opportunities, so that if it doesn’t work out, you can blame lack of effort, instead of having to blame lack of talent or ability or intelligence. The fourth lesson is one I’ve mentioned that you can have a different mindset in different areas of your life. And I was so empowered when I learned this, that if we take, for example, just some broad areas. So you might have business, maybe you have school, if you’re studying something, or you have your relationships, you have health and fitness, you have spirituality, there’s all those different kinds of broad areas, finances, for example, that you can have a different mindset in each area, you’ll be somewhere slightly different on that fixed to growth mindset spectrum, in each area of your life.

And that means that you can identify which area of your life you are most growth minded in, and examine how you think about that area of your life, how you think about challenges when you experience them in that area of life. And you can take that mindset and apply it to an area of your life where you are wanting to release that perfectionism handbrake and get more towards a growth minded end of the spectrum. So for example, one of the ways that I did this was I started with health and fitness, I was still in a lot of ways. In a fixed mindset. Initially, when it came to health and fitness, I was very much like all those signs that you’re hammering us on the all or nothing mindset, burning outs, feeling overwhelmed by it or procrastinating, being scattered generally, like all these everything’s going on, but particularly the all or nothing mindset. And I would, after a few weeks of consistently working out, I would withhold effort and stop working out. So that instead of feeling inadequate, and feeling like the workout wasn’t working, that I wasn’t good enough to get the result, I could blame, subconsciously I could blame, lack of effort. And I was very much in this all or nothing cycle when it came to working out, which got very frustrating because I was putting a lot of effort into my health and fitness and not actually experiencing much change.

Once I learned about this, I started applying these concepts that I’m teaching or sharing in this episode to health and fitness. Because, again, I was towards the fixed minded end of the spectrum, but not as much as I was when it came to business. So I started really looking at process praise, and doing different things to get myself into a growth mindset. really being focused more on the journey than on the result, those kinds of things. And I started to become very consistent with my workouts and I became the fittest that I had ever been.

And not just that I had a different relationship with myself a much more empowered one. And I no longer continuously felt inadequate, I was able to have goals, I still had similar goals from the outside, but I wasn’t achieving them just as a means to an end that if I can look a certain way, then I can finally feel or stop feeling inadequate. Instead, I got so interested in actually like that journey of improving my strength, and doing all these different things which had the result of my appearance changing and much more dramatically than I ever had when I’ve been focused directly on appearance, which is the irony of it. In business when we’re so focused on I just want to be successful. I don’t care about the journey. I just want to be successful so I can feel good enough. That’s when we tend to create the least success but when we can really be so they’re for the journey and the ups and downs and the lessons along the way. We end up achieving all of the other goals that we really struggled to achieve when we were in that fixed mindset. So It had the impact of not only me achieving the goals I’d had previously, but also just me having a different relationship with myself and much more nurturing and understanding one, I was way less self critical. And it was so incredible to go through that journey. And I actually did a whole episode specifically on that, I will link that in the show notes.

It’s quite an old one. But I hope you find it helpful if you do want to look at the growth mindset as it relates to health and fitness. So I took those lessons I really thought about, okay, what worked for me, when it came to health and fitness, like, what were the thoughts I had that really put me in that growth mindset? Or how did I approach my goal, so it was easy to be in that growth mindset. And I applied that to business. And because I had practical, firsthand hands on experience, with getting myself into a growth mindset with health and fitness, it was so much easier to take the lessons and just transplant them from one area of my life onto another. Rather than being like, Okay, I’m starting from scratch when it comes to business.

And I have no idea how to get myself into this growth mindset. So I really encourage you to be thinking about the different areas of your life, and identifying in what areas do you find it the easiest to be courageous, or you don’t have results wrapped up in your self worth or you’re willing for things to require efforts? So another example quickly of this is relationships. Do you believe that relationships should be effortless? And not require any work at all? Or do you believe that relationships do require effort and that they don’t have to feel natural 100% of the time, that’s a much more growth minded way to approach relationships than when we’re in this fixed mindset. And this is constantly throughout movies, and media. This idea, it needs to be love at first sight, it should be effortless and natural. And you just click it’s a very fixed minded way to approach relationships.

So you might be like, Oh, I’m actually quite in a growth minded relationship. And then you can think about how do I think about relationships? And how can I bring that over into my business? The fifth lesson is really just that you can change your brain that you can get yourself into a growth mindset, you can release that perfectionism, handbrake, I think learning about these concepts, and really saying that you can get into a growth mindset. And the beauty of it too, to get into a growth mindset, you have to have a growth mindset about the growth mindset, it’s very matter in a lot of ways, because it’s not going to happen overnight. If you’re just trying to get into the growth mindset as a means to an end, it’s not going to work, you really have to be willing to be on the journey of getting into growth mindset, and the ups and downs that come with that. But you can change your brain. And there are really tangible and practical things that you can do in order to change your brain.

So just learning about these concepts and how we can set things up in a certain way and encourage ourselves in a certain way. And that have a significant impact on the way that we think about ourselves and think about life was such a life changing lesson for me. I obviously have learned that from different people, besides Carol Dweck as well, in different ways, but just seen this clear, fixed mindset growth mindset, thinking of them as being on the spectrum. And literally, when you are getting more towards a growth mindset, you are changing your brain and changing the biochemistry and changing the way that you think it’s just, it was so fun to realize that and to then have like that’s a growth minded thought to have.

So it automatically even puts you more towards a growth mindset to have that and a lot of us like, I would have said before all of this, oh, yeah, I believe you can change your brain and neuroplasticity, and all these different things. And yet, if you looked at my actions, I was very much in that fixed mindset. It’s better to not try than it is to fail. And if I do fail, that’s a reflection on my lack of intelligence and ability and talent. Whereas in this growth mindset, we truly believe that we can change our brain and therefore, if we fail today, that doesn’t mean anything about tomorrow. So I hope this episode has been helpful. I love sharing her teachings. And again, mindset is the book by Dr. Carol Dweck, where these teachings have come from this was just my interpretation on it.

But I hope it has helped you to understand perfectionism a little bit more and to give you some more language around that to help you on your journey of releasing your perfectionism handbrake. So that was the episode on five life changing lessons about perfectionism from Carol Dweck, I hope it has been really enlightening and has just really got you thinking about how to get out of your own way and the practical steps to do that. And really since recording that episode, the Growth Goal power planning and clean rest, which are all tools that I teach inside, PGSD and coach on, those have really become the tools to get into a growth mindset and to take those practical steps.

So that it goes from something you intellectually understand and know about to something that you’re actually living and breathing and reaping the benefits of. And I know for myself that when I first came across this growth mindset concept, and I learned about the different things you can do, such as process praise that I mentioned in this episode, to get into a growth mindset, what really helped me was developing my own practices around things like that, to have me integrate that into my daily life, and being able to do that without thinking about it. And that’s what power planning grows, goal clean rest. That’s what that is.

So as I mentioned at the top PGSD is gonna be open for enrollment from the 8th to the 11th of December. I want to invite you inside especially if you’ve been thinking about joining PGSD or you are planning to join in January, we’re not going to be opening in January, we are only opening from the 8th to the 11th. And then we don’t know when PGSD will be open again. So you go to samlaurabrown/pgsd to sign up for the waitlist or if it’s a period where the doors are open. That’s also where you’ll be able to sign up and join us inside. I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I will talk to you in the next episode.


Author: Sam Brown