Podcast

Episode 399: The Perfectionism Quiz: Your Results Explained

No matter how dialled-in your marketing strategy is, even if everything else is seemingly perfect in your business, if you neglect addressing perfectionism, you’re unknowingly sabotaging your own progress. 

Addressing your perfectionism is the missing piece that’s been holding you back for years…

In this podcast episode I chat through your results from The Perfectionism Quiz and put into words things that you might not have been able to articulate before. If you haven’t taken The Perfectionism Quiz yet, do it now.

Your results from the Perfectionism Quiz provide valuable insights into how perfectionism has been influencing your business journey. They shed light on the ways in which perfectionism may have been holding you back and impacting your productivity.

By understanding your results, you’ll gain a clearer understanding of how addressing your perfectionism handbrake will positively impact your ability to build your business to its fullest potential.

There are countless strategies to boost productivity, but without addressing the underlying perfectionism, your businesses progress and success will remain limited. 

The Perfectionism Quiz will give you the sense of relief to know exactly what is going on so that you can release your perfectionism handbrake, get into a growth mindset and do the strategic planning in a way that works for your perfectionist mindset so that you can build your business.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode399.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • The profound impact of overthinking, procrastination, burnout, all-or-nothing thinking and fear of judgement on your journey of building a thriving business to 100k and beyond.
  • How to interpret your results from the Perfectionism Quiz – you’ll gain valuable insights into how perfectionism has been silently influencing and shaping your business journey.
  • Uncover the secret to producing high-quality work without getting trapped in endless cycles of overthinking.
  • Unveiling the subtle ways perfectionists engage in procrastination. (Hint: typically perfectionists don’t blatantly procrastinate)
  • Understanding the signs and symptoms of burnout specifically experienced by perfectionist entrepreneurs.
  • Gain a deep understanding of how all-or-nothing thinking manifests in your business.
  • The ways fear of judgement holds you back.

Featured In The Episode:

Announcement: PGSD will open for enrollment on 12 June 2023 (for one week only)

If you feel behind on your $100k goal, it’s just because nobody’s taught you the different productivity rules that apply to perfectionists.

To make $100k you need to work smarter, not harder. And to do that you need to get your perfectionist mindset on your side. 

If your week is filled with lost time even though you’re always busy working, it’s time to take control of your productivity. The process is simple – set your Growth Goal, plan properly with Power Planning and then strategically tweak your way to $100k.

My group coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) is designed to get perfectionist entrepreneurs to $100k. The doors to PGSD will open on 12 June 2023 for one week only. To find out more about the program and be the first to know when the doors open, join the waitlist today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

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

In last week’s episode, I let you know about something that is going to help you really identify the impact that perfectionism and your perfectionism handbrake is having on your productivity when it comes to building your business. If you have been spinning your wheels getting in your own way, you know what you need to do to build your business, but you haven’t been able to execute that, then it is more likely than not that perfectionism is what has been holding you back and making you unproductive.

So the perfectionism quiz that I have created after working with hundreds of perfectionist entrepreneurs, is really there to help you understand yourself and understand what has been stopping you, from building your business to the heights that you know it’s capable of reaching. So in this episode, I’m going to just be chatting through the results for you so that you can understand based on what your dominant sign is, what that means about you, and how it’s going to impact your journey of building your business to 100k and beyond that.

If you haven’t yet taken the quiz, this is the time to do it. So you can go to samlaurabrown.com/quiz, it’s only going to take you a couple of minutes. And it’s probably going to be the most powerful most needle moving couple of minutes that you spend this week, because the insights that you’re going to get from this is going to unlock so much for you in your business. And also just put words to things that you might not have been able to articulate before, it’s just going to explain a lot.

It’s going to give you such a big sense of relief to know exactly what’s going on, so that you can then release your perfectionism handbrake, get into a growth mindset, and do the strategic planning you need to do as a perfectionist, like in a way that works for your perfectionist mindset so that you can build your business. So when it comes to understanding the results page that will have been generated after you answer the questions. So again, make sure you’ve done the quiz. Otherwise, this episode isn’t going to be as helpful as it could possibly be. So do the quiz and then come back and listen to this.

So on that results page, first of all, you’re going to get an overall score. So I just want to highlight if you have gotten more than 50%. That perfectionism is something that you’re really needing to prioritize working on, this is going to be a must for you when it comes to building your business. It’s not a matter of personal development, this is a matter of productivity. And building a successful business because of the way that perfectionism impacts productivity, it means that it’s not a nice to have, it’s a must, you need to be able to be productive to do the needle movers to have restful rest, like all of that matters so much.

So that no matter how dialed in your marketing strategy is no matter how perfect, you’ve got everything else going on. If you don’t have the perfectionism piece sorted, you are going to be getting in your own way you’re going to be for example, in marketing programs, and you might get okay results but you’re not getting the results, you know, you could because you’re missing that execution and productivity piece that you keep getting stuck when it comes to okay now I need to go out there and post on social media but you’re not actually sharing your genius on social media because you’re scared of what people will think because of your perfectionism handbrake.

And so it means you kind of dilute down your message and the things that you want to say, which makes it really hard to get engagement on your posts, and therefore really hard to grow your audience so you feel like you’re talking to crickets, and that gets really discouraging, like, all of that comes back to your perfectionism handbrake. So this quiz is to really help you understand your perfectionism handbrake, and how that is coming on for you.

So there are five signs of perfectionism. Those are overthinking procrastination, burnout, all or nothing mindset and fear of judgment. And so when you look at the results page, again, first of all, at the top, you’re going to see a percentage. And so that percent is going to tell you how much of the time perfectionism is impacting your productivity. Again, if this is over 50%, you really need to prioritize the work on releasing your perfectionism handbook because it is making you get in your own way.

So then you will scroll down and you will be able to see the five signs of perfectionism. And what you waited for each sign as well as the one that you scored highest in. So what I want you to be paying attention to is just the one that you scored highest and most likely, if you can relate to what I talked about on this podcast, and the questions were really resonating with you, you probably scored over 50% in all of the five signs, and that’s totally common. And that’s not a problem at all. But I just want you to be focusing on the one that is biggest for you at this point in time.

And it can be as well like, you know, different stages of your life of your business and all of that you will have ones that are coming on stronger than others. But that doesn’t matter. Just focus on what it is for you at this point in time. And the reason I want you to just be focused on the one sign even though you might relate to everything I’m going to say in this episode about all the different signs. The one sign is that we perfectionist, regardless of what score you got for the all or nothing mindset. It is a sign of the perfectionist mindset, we tend to be in that all or nothing mindset.

So that means that when it comes to releasing our perfectionism handbrake and hearing about the five signs of perfectionism, that we can get a bit bogged down or overwhelmed, trying to focus on all those different areas of our perfectionism. And what this quiz really helps you to do is to pinpoint which of the five signs is most dominant for you, so that when you are working on releasing your perfectionism handbrake, you can really just be focused on that particular way that it manifests.

And you can know that because you will be doing the work on your perfectionism, that you will also be lowering your score, a lower score is better when it comes to your productivity, because this is about how much perfectionism is making you get in your way. So you will be able to lower your score in other areas too, just by virtue of focusing on one. But if you’re trying to focus on doing less overthinking, procrastinating less, not burning out, not being all or nothing, not being scared of judgment, if you’re trying to do that all at once. It’s overwhelming, and you’re not going to make as much progress as if you just focus on one thing, and are mindful of that when you are doing your perfectionism work.

I want to also mention, if you are listening to this episode when it is going out in real time, that next week, the doors to Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, my group coaching program are opening, they’re going to be open for one week only. So they open at 6am, New York time on the 12th of June. And they are going to be closing at 11:59pm New York time on the 18th of June. So make sure especially if you got over 50% that you write those dates down, and you get yourself inside PGSD in that enrollment week, because it’s going to help you and guide you and support you to do the practical work of releasing your perfectionism handbrake, this isn’t an intellectual pursuit.

It’s not a personal development pursuit. This is about productivity and building your business. And it’s really important to know that regardless of how smart you are, and I know you’re smart, because if you can relate to this quiz, and what I share here, like you are someone who is intelligent, you did well in school and all of that, that we tend to love to try and figure things out on our own. But you have perfectionist blind spots.

You need someone who knows how perfectionist thinks and who can see, sorry, I said thinks. Like it’s clue, who know how perfectionist think, and who can see those patterns and understand how your brain works. You need someone like how a hairdresser, when you get your hair cut, they will put that little mirror behind your head and say like, what do you think like you need someone who does the equivalent of that with your perfectionist brain to say like, Hey, I know you think you know that you’re spending a good amount of time on this thing. And it’s good to spend that much time on it.

But actually, perhaps you’re overthinking and here’s why it could actually be done in a quarter of the time and be higher quality if that was the case. Even though we can do our own self coaching and things like that. That is going to help us have a few breakthroughs here and there. We need someone to show us our thinking because we have those perfectionist blind spots. No matter how smart we are. Everyone has those blind spots.

And it’s really important to to just understand I’m not gonna go too much into it in this episode. But reclaiming last time, like perfectionism and your perfectionism handbrake and like the overthinking and procrastinating the burnout, all or nothing mindset, fear of judgment, all of that creates lost time in your week. And if you don’t actually have the support with your perfectionist blind spots, if you don’t have the tools that actually work for your perfectionist mindset, so you need to have strategic planning tools that actually take your perfectionist mindset into consideration.

If you don’t have those, your week is going to be littered with lost time with scrolling with comparing sales pages and going down that rabbit hole. With overthinking social media content. It takes you 60 minutes for a post instead of 15 minutes. So the last time that is being caused by your perfectionism handbrake is so costly, it’s about 780 hours if you’re doing like you are three hours a day of lost time on a work day, 780 hours per year in lost time that’s 20 full time working weeks of lost time that your perfectionism handbrake is likely causing you conservatively.

And that’s even if you’re someone who loves being productive, you love planning, you love all the things like that. Your perfectionism handbrake is making you get in your own way. So that’s why it’s really important to understand your perfectionism handbrake, and this quiz is here to help you do that. But again, I want to invite you into PGSD, if you got over 50% for your overall score, so that you can get out of your own way and build the business you want to build hit that 100k goal and beyond that.

So let’s dive into each of the five signs, I just want you to understand a little bit about how this might be showing up. Can you might relate to all of this, it’s going to be very common for perfectionist to relate to all these but just be paying extra attention to the one that is most dominant for you. And then when you go into PGSD, instead of having to be focused on your whole perfectionism handbrake and releasing that you’re going to be able to be laser focused on the area that’s going to be most impactful for you.

So first of all, we have overthinking and this is something that we perfectionist are incredibly familiar with. And it’s really important to just know with overthinking that, when you are in the habit of overthinking, it can feel a bit reckless, not to be overthinking not to be over preparing not to be spending so much time perfecting and polishing like we don’t really remember, or if we’ve never heard of it, we just aren’t even aware of this, but the law of diminishing returns and the fact that say for example, with a social media post, it takes 15 minutes approximately, let’s say to get it to a point of high quality work.

We perfectionist we want to do good quality work high quality work. And that’s achievable pretty quickly. And then that 45 minutes after that, that takes us to that one hour mark that is just tweaking, and you know, rewriting the caption again and again, or if it’s a video where we recording it, or we’re trying to get the captions on it just right, or all these different things that just go into creating something that isn’t actually any higher in quality, like maybe the tiniest bit bit honestly, someone on the other end isn’t really going to notice the increase in quality, you don’t really even notice the increase in quality.

It just feels like okay, cool. I’ve spent a lot of time on this. And also I’m so used to overthinking as I said, it feels reckless not to and it also feels like well, what am I going to do with all my time if I’m not spending, you know, an hour on the social media pose and not to go down this rabbit hole. But we often overthink more comfortable tasks or more familiar tasks, because they keep us busy. So we don’t have time for the needle movers because the needle movers are scary to us because of our perfectionism handbrake and the way that we’re thinking about ourselves the relationship we have with success, and what that means about us.

So we tend to just keep ourselves busy with things and that can come up as the overthinking. So we love being diligent and getting everything just right. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we tend to take it a little too far. This is where analysis paralysis comes in. And we ruminate on important decisions. So a big thing with if overthinking was your biggest sign for you that you are likely someone who is quite indecisive, it takes you a long time to make a decision. And when you do make that decision, you second guess it or you’re not really committed to it.

So you find yourself just making a different decision a few weeks later, say for example, when it comes to your niche, maybe this is something you’ve over thought, and that you spend a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect niche. And then you’re like this is that I’ve had that moment of clarity. And then it’s like, you know, three weeks later, like no, this is it and you have another moment of clarity. So that is a result of overthinking that comes from your perfectionism handbrake we want everything to be perfect. We want to avoid doing anything imperfect.

And this relates back to really what perfectionism is, which is a strategy to avoid shame. And it’s less about doing everything perfectly. It’s more about avoiding imperfection, because imperfection feels shameful. It feels like we’re risking relationships. When we’re imperfect. It feels like we might be rejected or abandoned. So we’re really trying hard to make sure everyone likes us. Everyone thinks we’re smart. And of course overthinking stems from that. Of course, if you are scared of doing things imperfectly and other people seeing that and what might flow from that, then you’re going to be spending a lot of time perfecting things.

So this means that when we’re overthinking oftentimes, good work often doesn’t even get published, or it takes far longer than planned, which means we struggle to get anything else done and make real progress towards our goals. So it’s really important to recognize if overthinking is making you get in your own way. And your quiz results will tell you if this is the case, it’s not about when it comes to the overthinking piece, it’s not about like, now going to under thinking things and just being reckless and putting whatever out there. Sorry, I’m just trying to get my words out today.

Putting whatever else out there, you are able to keep in mind that law of diminishing returns just do what needs to be done to recognize a point where it is high quality work, and any more time spent on that isn’t going to improve the quality and then you ship it, you put it out into the world, and you move on to the next thing that you need to do. Overthinking takes up such precious time and mental energy that could otherwise be spent put into consistent social media content and completing what’s most important, the mental drama from it is exhausting, as you probably already know.

So it’s really important to know that learning productivity strategies that will help you overcome perfectionism means that your tendency to overthink will naturally reduce the quality of your work will get even better. And you’ll be able to achieve your goal so that it’s 100k much more quickly and easily. So maybe procrastination was your biggest sign of perfectionism. And this is something that I mean, I know this so intimately now that I could, it feels like I always knew this.

But perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand. A lot of times, we really tend to associate perfectionist with that neat organized more towards the over preparing side of things. And yes, we over prepare. And yes, that is a form of procrastination. We’re just staying busy with that thing and trying to control everything, rather than just getting it done to that good enough quality and then moving on to other things.

But procrastination, putting things off until the last minute putting things off until the perfect time. That is a result of our perfectionism handbrake, were scared of doing things imperfectly, and having other people see us do imperfect work, especially when it comes to business and things that are related to our intellect and how smart we are, that we don’t want to feel like an impostor. And like, other people might question what we’re doing. So we tend to put things off until we have the perfect circumstances.

Or for example, if you’re someone who does your best work at the last minute currently, like you’re putting things off, and, and it’s working well for you, so to speak, because you managed to pull it off and get it done. Like this is how I worked through high schools through university, I have a law degree a finance degree, like I’m very familiar with needing to produce high quality work and being able to do that under pressure. But really, it’s about understanding that the reason this happened is because at the last minute, that’s when we finally get into this mindset of okay, well, I don’t have enough time to make it perfect. So I’m just going to get it done. And it’s going to have to go out like when we get the work done early.

It invites this overthinking, it invites us to be like, Whoa, maybe I need to tweak that or this vulnerability. Most importantly, if like, what if I do my best work? And I put it out there. And it’s not good enough, saying the example of school like what if I actually study for that exam, fully. I do the practice exams, everything like that, and then I put it out into the world. And I fail, or I don’t get the A+, then that’s going to mean something about ourselves. When we’re in that perfectionist mindset, we make it mean something about ourselves.

So when it comes to the last minute, if we procrastinate and leave things until the last minute, it means that if we do well we get a little you know, ego boost. And we can say, Well imagine how well you would have done it if I’d actually tried harder if I’d actually given a full effort. I didn’t even really try that hard. Like have you ever said that? I didn’t even really try that hard. And I still did well. And then there’s if you didn’t do well, you can say well, I would have done better if I tried harder.

So either way, you get to feel smart. Unfortunately, when we protect our potential like that. It’s very unproductive because we don’t actually get to reach our potential. But when it comes to that last minute, it’s that at the last minute, we’re finally like, Okay, well, it just has to be done now. And when it’s before the last minute, we feel like we have so much time and enough time to make it perfect. So it has to be perfect.

Whereas when it’s the last minute, we’re like, Well, I don’t have much time. So good enough is good enough, and we can get it done and we can kind of get out of that analysis paralysis, overthinking and all of that that goes on. So perfectionist often do more procrasti-working in that flavor of procrastination than like, you know, watching Netflix and that kind of thing not to say that we don’t scroll through our phones and do that kind of thing.

But we love being productive. We love planning, we love organizing all of that kind of thing. So when we are procrastinating, we’re still going to be working on the business, but we’re just going to be doing the less important tasks and kind of pushing off those needle movers until the deadline or until unfortunately, in business, there isn’t that deadline for a lot of important things that isn’t that last minute.

And so important projects make, maybe you want to do a launch, maybe you have things in the backend that need to get cleaned up. You just delay that week after week after week, month after month after month. Because that last minute that comes in school, when the professor is like, Okay it’s due on this day, you often don’t have that for a lot of things in business. And even if you have clients and you’re delivering work to them by deadlines, or customers that you’re delivering a product to or whatever that looks like, there’s going to be a lot of important business tasks that don’t have a last minute that you need to set for yourself and adhere to for yourself.

So if you’re always relying on that external pressure, because your perfectionism handbrake is on, you’re not going to actually be able to do the important things you need to do to build your business. But just know, things like revenge, bedtime procrastination, comes into play here, as well, we will often fluff around at the end of the day, because we had so much pressure on ourselves during the day, that at the end of the day, we’re like I can finally just breathe and just be because I’m not putting this pressure on myself. And it has this whole knock on effect that then the next morning you’re sneezing your alarm and like this whole thing.

So it tends to not be this blatant procrastination, it’s more the busy work, it’s more the doing the things that don’t matter as much. So that you are then just pushing off those needle movers. So if procrastination is going on for you, if that’s your biggest sign, you need to know that when it comes to solving, they’re scrolling social media isn’t your real issue. So anti procrastination strategies, like turning your phone on airplane mode, doing a social media, detox, etc, then not going to get to the root of the issue.

Scrolling less is nice, for sure. But know that mastering productivity strategies that address perfectionism, like working towards a growth goal is something you learn inside PGSD and we support you it is what will have the biggest impact on you hitting your 100k revenue goal. Now let’s talk about burnout. So, we perfectionist if this is your major sign that you have of perfectionism, then you already know a lot about burnout. I don’t need to tell you all the things, you experienced it firsthand. And it’s very, very painful.

I used to be someone like I literally now haven’t burned out in years, because I’ve done the work on my perfectionism handbrake, and I’ve released that, and experienced the benefits of that now in the business that I’m able to do really intense work and have those intense periods and it be completely sustainable, which is so fun. But I used to be someone who would burnout very routinely, like, especially if I was doing a launch. Yes, hello burnout. That was a whole emotional roller coaster that ended in me means take a week or two if not more of the business because I just was zombie. I live that way in school as well. Like really just those last minute pushes.

And I did well I got the grades and things seemed to work. But it just was a horrible experience to be stuck in that cycle. Because anytime I’d start to really be feeling productive. It was this kind of feeling of like how long will this last? Because I didn’t know because of my perfectionism handbrake, how to be productive in a sustainable way.

So if this is one of your biggest signs or your biggest sign, then there are a few things you might be finding. So you’re always feeling behind, you have an inability to be completely present with your family, like you might be there physically, but mentally, you’re just not fully there. You’re experiencing an undercurrent of stress and pressure in almost everything that you do. You’re struggling to get into flow with your work. It takes you longer to complete tasks than planned.

You’re increasing like you’re very just indecisive and overthinking like you have an increased amounts of those. Do that makes sense why where did that I hope you know what I mean, you have increase indecisiveness and overthinking and a decrease in productivity or a sense of ineffectiveness in your work. So it’s important to know that pressure you put on yourself to achieve big goals, which is very common for a perfectionist to do. It’s coming from a well intended place because you know, you have potential and you want to reach that potential.

But there are better ways. So the reality is that working in an unsustainable way is making you less successful than you could otherwise be. And adopting productivity strategies that help you overcome your perfectionism is what will allow you to work smarter and get more done in less time without burning out. So the fourth sign is overthinking, no.

I’m recording this at the end of the day, in case you can’t tell. The 4th sign is all or nothing thinking. So this is that flavor of thinking of if I can’t do it well then I’m you know, it’s not worth doing at all. So this is something that especially tends to come up for social media like you might find in your health and fitness journey, that you are a bit all or nothing with your workouts or with healthy eating.

But when it comes to your business, you’re either posting consistently on social media every day, you’re not even posting it all. And you’re just completely ghosting people, your followers, or you are either full steam ahead with your goal, you’re so into it, you’re so excited about it, you’re doing all the things that need to get done. Or you’re just very busy with the next shiny object that’s come along, you kind of like forget about your goals and get focused on other things.

And this is a big one that I had not that many people talk about. But it’s such a big thing, that maybe you fantasize about going to a cabin in the woods for a week, where you’d have zero distractions to derail you, because then you’ll be able to just be productive like a robot, you just be able to get everything done. Like this is how we think when we’re in that all or nothing mindset that like I just need these perfect circumstances to be able to get anything done, it’s this very dramatic way of thinking, we don’t see shades of gray, it’s really just all or nothing, as the name suggests.

So know that this impacts so many different areas of your business, it really is as well, one of the reasons that you find it really hard to celebrate yourself. Because you have this all nothing standard of if you didn’t achieve your entire goal in the entire way that you wanted to achieve it, then you didn’t achieve anything at all. And you can very quickly be in this place when nothing ever feels good enough, hence part of why perfectionist always feel behind.

So just know that you don’t have to go to a cabin in the woods to be more productive. And by adopting a perfectionism and productivity strategy that helps you overcome perfectionism, and escape the traps of the all or nothing thinking you can reach peak productivity levels and hit your 100k goal. So it’s so helpful, I think to just see that, okay, for example, all or nothing thinking that’s my major sign of perfectionism. And I’m going to be focused on having a productivity strategy that really supports my perfectionist mindset.

And I’m gonna be paying attention to all and I think thinking in particular, so say for example, with your power planning with your weekly review, and reflecting on all of that you can be looking for, like, where’s my all or nothing thinking showing up this week, let’s talk about finally fear of judgment. This is the final sign of perfectionism. So, one of the reasons we want everything to be perfect, is because we don’t want to be judged, because if we are judged, we will feel ashamed.

Judgment and the pain of that can feel so intense. And you’ve probably heard this before. But it’s really a primal primitive experience that we’re having that to be ostracized from the tribe to be rejected from those around us, especially when we’re growing up, we need our caretakers to be connected to us, we need them to be supporting us and loving us because we aren’t self sufficient yet. So we’re so scared of judgment.

And while you’ve probably always been scared of being judged negatively by others, and wanting to look smart, and have everyone think that you know, you’ve got your shit together, and that you are someone who, you know, for example, even when it comes to just little things like you’re just someone that is nice, is friendly, like just all that people pleasing comes in for sure.

So I’ve always wanted to avoid being judged, it just reaches a whole new level when building a business. So some of the unproductive ways it comes up is holding back your true genius in your social media content, which I’ve mentioned, this causes low engagement need to hold back even more. It’s like this cycle of like, you’re not showing up fully because of fear of judgment. So you hold back. And then because you’re holding back, you don’t get engagement because you’re not getting engagement, then you’re scared to really like actually show up fully. Because you don’t want to be talking to crickets, you don’t want to feel like everyone’s laughing at you and judging you.

And so your engagement only gets lower, and then you get more deterred and all of that whole thing. So maybe you’re turning down opportunities for PR or networking. Because your business isn’t big enough, yet. That’s how it feels like I need to have a more successful business to be able to warrant taking up someone else’s time or them connecting with me. And you’re getting caught in the comparison trap.

So the truth is that you need to really start to understand how this specifically is impacting your business and to also just recognize that, you know, people say like, stop being scared of judgment doesn’t matter what other people think. Like, it’s primal, that we care about what other people think. And so, you really, it’s you really need to know it’s normal to have some fear of judgment, but it doesn’t have to be debilitating.

Like it doesn’t have to be this debilitating level, especially if this was your dominant sign of perfectionism that it would be added debilitating level So there are productivity strategies you can adopt, like power planning that will get your perfectionist mindset working for you instead of against you, which will reduce your fear of judgment and help you confidently build your business in a way that feels good to you.

Even when friends and family are watching from the sidelines, you can see that they’re viewing your social media posts, maybe they’re even liking them, and you’re like, Oh, that’s so embarrassing them, they’re liking them out of pity or whatever it is that you can really start to actually care more about what you think about you, and really be able to show up fully and put yourself out there even when people you know, are watching.

If you’ve ever fantasize about moving to the other side of the world, when no one knows you so you can just actually be yourself. Like, it’s so powerful to know that you will have fear of judgment, but it doesn’t have to be at that level. So I hope it’s been really helpful to understand more about your perfectionism, handbrake and the way that’s impacting your productivity.

Again, I want to invite you to join us inside PGSD, the doors are opening on the 12th of June at 6am New York Time for one week only. So you can go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd to sign up for the waitlist and to find out more about the program. So I invite you to do that. I hope you have enjoyed doing the perfectionism quiz. And that’s really open your eyes to the biggest needle for you when it comes to building your business which is releasing your perfectionism handbrake, get into a growth mindset. Doing that strategic planning that works for your perfectionist mindset that is the key to building your business. So I hope it’s been helpful for you and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Author: Sam Brown