Perfectionism is stopping your business from growing but it’s not ‘toxic’ and I don’t recommend trying to ‘stop being a perfectionist’. Nor do I recommend writing ‘done is better than perfect on a post-it note or telling yourself ‘I am good enough’.
Tune in to learn what perfectionism actually is, the common misconceptions about perfectionism, the 5 surprising signs of perfectionism, how perfectionism is impacting your business and the 3 practical tools that will allow you to release your perfectionism handbrake.
I also share my own story with overcoming perfectionism to build a successful business and why you can do it too – even if you’ve been getting in your own way for years.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/482.
What To Do Next:
- Watch the free training: How To Plan Properly As A Perfectionist with Power Planning
- Join the waitlist: Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) – samlaurabrown.com/pgsd
- Follow me on instagram for more perfectionism advice: @perfectionismproject
If you’re ready to get out of your own way in your business, you want to check out my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. Click here to sign up today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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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
Today, I am sharing with you perfectionism, 101, and what every perfectionist entrepreneur needs to know about the perfectionist mindset, whether you realize you’re a perfectionist or you don’t, this is going to really help you understand why you have been getting in your own way, why there is a gap between your potential and what you know you’re capable of, and the way that you’re showing up for your business, and how to actually bridge that gap so that you can reach your potential in your business. I know that myself, my past self, and so many of my clients in my program, pgsd, we had this feeling of like I know I am capable of so much more, and yet I’m not actually able to get myself to do the things that I know I need to do, and feeling like you’re just stopping yourself from making progress, and that you are the problem. And so if that is you, if you can relate to that, I just want to share with you in this episode more about perfectionism and really helping you understand it in a way that makes you open to hearing about it and wanting to do this work versus so many people say like perfectionism is toxic, and just stop being a perfectionist.
And that is so unhelpful and isn’t going to help you get out of your own way. This is really important work for your business. I definitely would not be where I am today if it wasn’t for doing the work on my perfectionism. That was the biggest bottleneck for me when it came to building a business. I was smart and I could learn what I needed to learn, but my brain wanted everything to be perfect, and what’s more important is it didn’t want anyone else to see that I’m not perfect. So we’ll talk about that in a bit how perfectionism is less about doing everything perfectly, although we like that to happen, and it’s more about avoiding doing anything imperfect. And this is what has us holding ourselves back, getting in our own way, and knowing what to do, but not actually doing it. So I also wanted to start before I get into what perfectionism is, and a bit more about that. I just want to share a little bit about my story.
In case you don’t know who I am and you haven’t heard it before, because there is a really important reason that I do this work with perfectionist entrepreneurs, and that is because this was my work. So I started my business in 2013 as a blog, and it’s kind of like a miracle that I even did that, because I was commuting to my job, so I had a full time job that I was working, and I was also a full time university student, and so I was juggling that, and I was studying law and finance. So I graduated from that a couple years later, but I was studying, and I was going back and forth to this job as a receptionist at a hospital, and I just wanted something for my brain, and I was sick of listening to the radio, so anyway, I stumbled upon podcasts, initially about psychology. I was like, well, this is really interesting. And then that led me to business podcasts, and I just started listening to business podcasts.
And this is why I love having a podcast, because having someone in your ears, believing in you makes such a big difference. So I was listening to all these business podcasts, and people were talking about blogs and things like that. And so after about six months, I was like, maybe I could start a blog. And I tried a few different things. I initially tried doing a baking blog. I did one post on that baking blog. I was like, I actually don’t care about food. And talking about baking, as I was a university student, there was a particular subject at my university, the statistics subject that I did really well in and other people found it really hard. So I was like, hey, maybe I’ll do a blog about, like, this specific subject at my university, and how to actually ace it. And so I tried that, and I was like, I actually couldn’t care less about that. And at the same time, I stumbled upon the world of personal development.
My brother actually recommended a book to me, and I read that, I was like, Oh my God. Like, this is exactly what I want to be talking about and thinking about and like, also, I don’t know anything, and I just was so insecure. I had such little confidence in myself. And at the same time, I just had this feeling that I was meant for more than what I was doing. I have always been a person that people have come to for advice and wisdom, so to speak. And I just was, like, so intrigued by the personal development world, and also by hearing about blogging and having an online business. And so I was like, maybe I can have a blog where I’m talking about personal development.
At the time, was 22 years old, and I didn’t feel like I knew anything, and I didn’t. I’d really only just gotten into that personal development world. But I was like, Maybe I could just start this blog. And so I got started with my blog, and I did one post, and then I didn’t do anything for three months. I just completely shut down, like I froze. And I also didn’t tell anyone about it, like my now husband, Steve. I didn’t tell him about it. I did it at the library. I remember this so clearly. I did it at the University Library when I was meant to be studying. I set up my domain. My blog was called Smart 20s, and like, how to make the most of your 20s, because that’s what I was trying to figure out.
And I started this blog, and I wrote a post, and then I was just so, so scared that someone I knew would read that post and would laugh at me, because in that post, I didn’t even share an opinion on anything. I just wrote a post about a concept that I had heard and basically said that I liked it like there was none of my own opinion in there, and many of my following blog posts. After like, three months of being frozen, I stopped listening to podcast episodes. I just felt like, Who do I think I am? I eventually got the courage to listen to podcasts again and keep going. I really just felt like I had this massive motivation issue because I just couldn’t get myself to post. And when I posted, I just edited and edited and edited the published post, and I just was sharing links to YouTube videos and other bloggers blog posts and saying, like, Oh, I like this, and I like that, like, I literally wasn’t sharing an opinion. I didn’t have anything for sale. I didn’t basically have any kind of opinion service, anything that I was offering.
And yet I felt like such a fraud, and I was just laughing at myself. And so I was so scared to be laughed at by anyone else, so I hid it from my loved ones, who are very supportive people. I didn’t tell my family about it. I didn’t tell Steve about it. I didn’t tell my friends about it. It was like this dirty little secret that I had that I thought I could have a successful online business that involved me talking about personal development, which is crazy to say now, because it is such a big part of who I am and what I’m known for as well in my friendship groups and things like that, that all of my friends know about it, and I share about it very openly. So it’s just like worlds away. But anyway, there’s 2013 and then 2014 and then 2015 and then 2016 like there were three solid years of me getting in my own way and trying to do the things I knew I needed to do. Like, I’m a smart person.
So amongst that time I graduated from university, I started working at one of the top accounting firms, because I was like, Well, I just need to, like, keep progressing along. So I started working in insolvency accounting, and I just kind of like kept going through the motions, like university wise and career wise, and my plan, I mean, hope had always been like, by the time I am graduated from university, I will have a business that can support me, but I didn’t actually have anything for sale during that time. Like there was no way to actually have a business that would support me because I was too scared to offer anything for sale to eventually, in 2016 I created an online course, but I just felt so scared of all of the criticism from others that would come, like the refund request, the hate, and also the self criticism that would come from showing up and putting myself out there and people not liking it, and so we’ll talk about this in a second, but this is really what perfectionism looks like for so many people.
And there are different ways that perfectionism can manifest. I’ll talk about the five signs that I’ve discovered after now working with over 1000 perfectionist entrepreneurs in my program and having a decade of experience in this arena that it really shows up as us holding ourselves back, getting in our own way, and although we want to do things perfectly and be perfect and get it right and make the right decisions about our niche or our strategy or whatever it is we’re doing, what happens is because we don’t want to make mistakes, we think we’re wrong and inadequate, and we only see flaws that we end up overthinking, procrastinating, burning ourselves out. That’s such a big one for perfectionist entrepreneurs, whether you’re aware of the burnout or you’re just constantly overworking, and it’s fine because you love working like there’s that burnout element where we are just exhausted by our thoughts that we’re not good enough, and it has to be perfect, and we have to be better, and we have to work hard, and we have to do more, and we have to achieve bigger goals, the all or nothing, thinking, if I’m not doing it perfectly, then don’t do it at all.
And then there’s also the people pleasing and the fear of judgment that comes along with that, that we are trying to be liked by everyone, to be liked by our customers and clients, to be liked on social media, and oftentimes this has us watering down our marketing that we’re not really showing up with our personality, or we’re not sharing any of the more controversial or direct opinions that we have about things, that we’re just trying to be liked by everyone, to follow the Rules of business. Like to post a certain amount of times that this person said I should post, or to offer this kind of price because this person said I should, and we’re just trying so hard to get it right that we don’t actually do the ultimate right thing, which is to show up, put ourselves out there, give it a go. Course correct, like be willing and open to feedback about it and not taking that personally, but to instead adjust and keep working towards the goals that we have, and oftentimes as perfectionist, there are so many goal setting mistakes that we make, and I really like the first thing you do inside my program is that a growth goal that gets your perfectionist mindset working for you instead of against you, because perfectionists really make so many mistakes with goal setting because we’re so scared to find out that we aren’t capable of achieving goals.
So we either have crazy unrealistic goals, or we have really vague goals, like, I want to go full time in my business, or we have no goals at all, or we have like, 17 goals. Like we have a goal about absolutely everything. Like you have every area of your life you have a goal for, and then within that, you might have, like, three specific sub category goals that you’re working towards. We love to do that, because then we get to feel productive without having to feel like a failure. Because if you fail at any of those goals, well it’s because I was so busy with all the other goals that I have. So when it comes to really, like getting out of your own way and overcoming perfectionism, and specifically how I did that work, because I wish I had a program like perfectionist getting shit done, and that’s why I created it, because I had to really figure it out by myself, piece it together, learn from all different places about mindset and psychology and productivity as well, because perfectionism has such a big impact on productivity when it comes to business.
Of course, it can impact other areas of business, and it does things like leading and delegating team building operations like everything like that. But ultimately, and particularly in the early stages of business, perfectionism has a massive impact on your productivity, on your ability to actually take an idea from being in your head to meeting reality and doing that without overthinking and exhausting yourself from the overthinking, procrastinating and leaving things to the last minute if you Didn’t know most important things in business never have an external deadline, like they never have a last minute. So if your strategy is to leave things until the last minute, that is a big problem in business. That’s something I help my clients with, because you have to actually be able to do certain things in a self initiated, self motivated kind of way. We burn ourselves out, like there are just it’s so impactful on a business when the business owner is in perfectionist thinking.
And so I am so passionate about helping perfectionist entrepreneurs. I see that as my mission in the world is to get perfectionist entrepreneurs out of their own way, because you have a business that is different to the kind of business I could create, but perfectionism is stopping it from growing, and stopping you from actually implementing the knowledge that you have. So by me helping you with the perfectionism piece, you’re then actually able to implement and execute and do that confidently and calmly and without burning yourself out and to create the impact on the world you want to create, and also, just for yourself, have a really profitable and fulfilling business as well with the work life balance, so to speak, that you want that is really important work to me. I believe in it so deeply.
And also I had to, as I was saying, figure it out as I went and learned from so many different places, and I just got so frustrated with all of the perfectionism advice. So initially I didn’t realize I was a perfectionist. Like, the first couple of years, I used to write all these blog posts about how I was trying to stay motivated, and, like, what I could do to be more motivated and why I was struggling to stay motivated. Like, I really just thought I had this motivation issue, and I did so many things to try and stay motivated. You can probably relate to some of these. I was buying new equipment, like a new camera and a better microphone, packing my calendar with to do items like I felt so behind, and I just thought like, if I could just do more and like, finally, do the things that I can finally, like, be on top of everything.
I was buying domains for like website domains every time I had an inspiring idea. I was watching lots of YouTube videos about successful entrepreneurs. I was waking up early and doing a morning like personal development morning routine. I was buying a new website theme and setting that up, updating my branding, creating a content calendar for Instagram with like content pillars and a theme for each day I would go and buy these beautiful paper planners and new pens and beautiful journals like I know so many of my clients as well love this, like going to a stationery store and getting to buy all the new stationery to try and motivate yourself updating my Instagram bio to try and perfectly capture what I do in one sentence and then another one was like organizing and styling my home office to just try and create a really beautiful work environment that would motivate me to actually do the things that I needed to do.
But as you might be able to tell, those things didn’t actually work, and while they did give me little spur. Of motivation and feeling like I had my shit together, they didn’t actually solve for the underlying problem, which was my perfectionist thinking, the way that my brain was thinking about myself and my business, and the perfectionist Thought and Feeling patterns that were going on which made me overthink, procrastinate, burn myself out, be in the all or nothing mindset and be people pleasing and holding myself back due to fear of judgment. So it didn’t matter how beautiful my journal was, or my work environment, or if I got the domain or whatever, that didn’t actually help my business to grow. What helped was learning how to do the work on my mindset, to be able to change that perfectionist thinking into a more growth minded thought, into a thought that allows me to actually show up and be willing to put myself out there in the world, to have others potentially not like it, and to be willing to just keep on going, and to not interpret failure and mistakes as being there, being something wrong with me, but actually being able to think in a much more entrepreneurial mindset. Of of course, I’m going to mess things up.
I’m figuring it all out as I go, as we all are, and I’m going to keep going and learn from this. And I know so many of my clients like really identify with being educated and loving learning, but what happens for a lot of perfectionists is we love procrasti-learning, and this might be you, if you have a lot of degrees and certifications and qualifications, or maybe you’re waiting to start your business until you have the perfect qualifications, or you do a lot of different online programs about particularly a lot of strategic things like different marketing strategies and things like that, that you are someone who loves learning, but you probably don’t do a lot of doing with the learning, who just always trying to learn more and more and more so you can get it right and not make mistakes and not waste any time and not waste any effort.
And what I have seen, and it’s so painful for me to see this, and it’s why, and it’s why, and it was my own experience too, but it’s why I’m so passionate about this is because it can lead to years, if not decades, being completely sold out in your business, and that only creates more and more frustration that you feel like you were trying so hard to build your business and you’re not actually building it, because you were stuck in that procrasti-learning And procrasti-researching and just trying to get the right niche and the right messaging and the perfect product, and like, get all your ducks in a row so that when you launch it, everything can grow perfectly. That isn’t how business works, and that’s just another reason that it’s so important to do the work on getting out of your own way, releasing your perfectionism handbrake, so that you can actually make decisions and not second guess them and change them immediately.
Make decisions, implement those decisions, learn from that implementation. That is really the cycle that you need to get yourself in to not be getting in your own way. But it takes a lot of courage, a lot of willingness and mindset work, which is what I support my clients with inside my program, like I guide you through the simple steps to do that and give you the practical tools and the support so that you can actually get out of your own way and show up the way. You know you can show up like you are a smart person, you know what you need to do, but you struggle to actually do it and not get caught up in that overthinking and procrastination and then burning yourself out when you have a big spurt of motivation, there is a better way, and I am just so proud of the tools and the ways that I have developed over the years of working with clients to actually do the practical work on releasing your perfectionism so you’re not going to be sticking a post it note on your desk saying Done is better than perfect.
Or, like, when people just say, like, it’s so toxic perfectionism, just stop being a perfectionist about it. Like, good enough is good enough. Like, if you’ve heard that and you’re still in that perfectionist thinking there is nothing wrong with you, those aren’t actual practical strategies to help you. And so I love teaching what will actually help you, but I want to share a little bit more as well about what my business looks like now, just so you can see the contrast. So in 2013 when I started, and like, for the first few years, I just had, like, single digit page views, pretty sure they were all me, and I wouldn’t share with anyone, like anyone about my blog about my business goals. I didn’t really even know what my own business goals were like. I wanted to be able to go full time in my business. I didn’t know when I wanted that to be ASAP. I didn’t actually like when that was my goal. I didn’t even have a plan to do that that would actually make sense, because there was nothing for sale that I was offering and like I wasn’t taking the action required.
But I really wanted to be full time in my business, but I was just so embarrassed about it, so ashamed that I ever thought it could work, and I just felt like I was breaking all the rules because had my law degree and my finance degree, also a diploma in French, and I should have been following the corporate path, and I was, but I knew that that wasn’t for me. Me, and it was just so unfamiliar for me as well, to not be following the rules and doing what everyone else was doing. And I just had, like three it took me three years to make my first dollar in my business. That happened in September 2016 I started in August 2013 and I was trying so hard in that period, like I did, a lot of early mornings and evenings and weekends and time when I was meant to be studying, I worked on my blog and on the train to work, I’d be writing blog posts like I was trying so hard, but it took me my it took me three years to make my first dollar, and I had my first six figure year where I made over $100,000 in 2019 and that is the year that I went full time in my business as well.
So I worked in accounting. And then in 2017 I decided to return to the receptionist job, not the exact job, but the similar kind of job, and at the same place that I had so that I’d have more time to work on the business. So I made that, that leap, that transition, when I only made like $3,000 total in my business, and I definitely couldn’t support myself from it yet, but I had done a course launch, and that took so much courage, but I burned myself out so bad. But anyway, I did that, and I decided, okay, I’m actually going to really go all in and back myself. And I made that change, and then in yeah, 2019 I left that part time job, and I was full time at that point in my business and making over six figures.
And then since then, in total, my business has made over $2 million I work three days a week. I have three little ones, Lydia, who is three, and then Jack and James, who are twins, who are 18 months old. So I have my family, my husband, Steve, and we renovated our house, actually, in 2021 so we have, like, I just have a completely different life. I haven’t worked in the, like, corporate world or anything like that for five years now, being comfortably full time in my business, I’ve had two maternity leave periods. And also, like, I just actually have so much more confidence in myself like I when I started, I could have never had a podcast, and even just a thought of, as I said, sharing any kind of opinion was just completely foreign. Now I have nearly 500 podcast episodes at the time of recording this, I can record just with short notes and like trusting myself to know what I’m talking about, and to say it well, and to say it in a way that will resonate with you and to attract in the right people.
And I’ve helped so many clients, and I just have a life that I never thought was possible when I started, because of the way that our perfectionist thinking works, is that even though you know you’re so capable, your brain likes to think you’re really incapable, and there’s always this tension between, like, knowing you have so much potential, but then also being full of fear and self doubt and imposter syndrome. And, like, trying to reconcile the two. I was like, I know I’m capable of big things and making an impact, and also I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, and can I really help people? And if I try, they’re all going to be angry at me because I’m so unhelpful, or whatever it is like, if you can relate to that, you were definitely in the right place.
So when it comes to perfectionism and understanding what that is, because, as I said, like releasing your perfectionism handbrake is what will have the biggest impact on your business. If your perfectionism handbrake is on, yes, you need a marketing strategy and a sales strategy and like all of those kinds of things. But the people that I work with, they are smart people who have typically learned those things already, or who have the ability to pick them up as needed along the way, where they are getting stuck is with taking action, with showing up, with putting themselves out there, with making decisions and actually following through with those decisions, instead of going back into the procrastin researching and the procrastinating and the procrasti-learning, they are not getting shit done, and you need to be able to get shit done and do that without burning yourself out and from a place of calm, not from a place of inadequacy, where you’re trying to hustle and hustle and you’re constantly behind and you’re rushing and rushing and rushing and burning yourself out. That is not what the goal is.
We want to have you getting shit done in a calm, sustainable way, and putting yourself out there bravely doing the courageous things you need to do, resting without guilt. That is all really important when it comes to actually releasing your perfectionism handbrake. I again, not for, like, writing things on the post it notes. You can do that if that’s helpful, but I want you to have real things that actually work and actually help you do this work. And after working with so many people, I have really distilled that down into something that is very simple for you to learn and very simple for you to use effectively. So when it comes to perfectionism, and like, what perfectionism actually is. There are a few ways that I like to talk about, and I know I’ve shared my story and a bit about it in that way, but let’s just talk about, like, what is perfectionism in a more direct sense?
So I love Brene Brown’s definition of perfectionism, or like, the way that she talks about it. So you might be familiar with Brene Brown, she is an incredible shame and vulnerability researcher, and she talks about perfectionism as really being this belief, and this is so important. It’s the belief, if I just look perfect and do everything perfectly, I can avoid shame, judgment and blame, and how really perfectionism is a protection mechanism against shame, essentially like because when we blame ourselves or get blamed by others, we feel shame, and when we are rejected by others and like abandoned, neglected, all those things we’re trying to avoid, we feel that painful emotion of shame, which research has proven to be physically painful when you experience shame. And it’s so ironic, because we perfectionists shame ourselves so much, and yet I love thinking about it and just hearing Brene talk about it, and other people too.
And like deducing that perfectionism really is a strategy to avoid shame, we are wanting to avoid gathering any evidence that we aren’t good enough, because we feel like we aren’t good enough, and it’s too painful to have any extra evidence on top of that. So we hold ourselves back and we try to avoid doing anything imperfectly. Of course, we try to try and do things perfectly, but most of all, perfectionists, we are trying to avoid imperfection, and we hold ourselves back and get in our own way, and we don’t take action, and we don’t publish our work, or we take too much action, and if you’ve been doing that for a while, it probably feels like the normal amount of action, but we overwork. We’re constantly busy in our brains, because we are trying to avoid that shame.
We want to get it perfect. We don’t want to be imperfect because of what we’re going to make it mean about ourselves. And of course, there can be other things going on with your brain as well, like neurodivergence, for example, ADHD, but perfectionism and that perfectionist thinking, if that is there as well, that is going to have you holding yourself back and getting in your own way, even if you solve for the other things that are going on in your brain, you need to actually directly solve for your perfectionist thinking if you are holding yourself back because of these perfectionist thought and feeling patterns. So some of the misconceptions around perfectionism are that perfectionist are perfect people, like people who actually manage to do everything perfectly.
And I think, like, for me, why I never identified initially as a perfectionist, and had to, like, figure out that I was a perfectionist, because I work with so many people who come and meet me and they’re like, Oh, I already know I’m perfectionist. Everyone has already been saying that my whole entire life, but I didn’t know that about myself, because I thought like, I’m way too disorganized and way too messy, like I have all of these cups of like half drunk tea around my desk and like piles of paper in my office and whatever, like, I’m just not perfect enough to be a perfectionist.
Yeah, but actually that was the perfectionism that I was so scared and uncomfortable with, like being on top of things and having this calm in my life. Because if that was the case, and I still wasn’t able to achieve my goals, that I would have nothing to blame, and I would feel more inadequate and like that whole inadequacy, like, that’s what we’re trying to that’s why we want to be perfect, because we don’t feel like we are, we feel like we’re inadequate. And so it can manifest in so many interesting and different ways for people. But when you can really begin to understand that perfectionists aren’t perfect people. Perfectionists are people who are wanting to feel perfect because they don’t feel like they are. We’re wanting to avoid imperfection and having others find out we’re not perfect. And perfectionist are the people who feel the least perfect, so to speak, and most people, this is how I like to think about it, with your perfectionism handbrake.
Everyone has one, like everyone has these perfectionist thoughts available. They are widely available in society and in schools and from other people as well. They’re easy to adopt. And it’s just really a matter of like, do you have that perfectionism handbrake turned on, or have you released it a little bit? Or have you released it most of the way? And so it’s not a matter of like, you’re either a perfectionist or you’re not. Like, that’s a perfectionist way to think about it, that all or nothing mindset that we have, but we can look at it as everyone has a perfectionism handbrake that they can pull on when you’re feeling unsafe.
That’s when we pull on that perfectionism, when we’re feeling vulnerable, when we feel like others might criticize us, when we feel like they might not like us, when we feel might like we might be rejected or abandoned, or we might be left alone and having to fend for ourselves, and all of those kind of things that we will go to perfectionism and turn on that perfectionism handbrake to try and create safety for ourselves, like our brain is doing a beautiful thing when it turns this perfectionism handbrake on, it is a survival tactic that worked in childhood, that you trying to please everyone and be perfect and fit in and do everything well and not make any mistakes and not have anyone see your flaws.
Like that helped you to get the love you needed from your caregivers, whether that was your parents or someone else, or the teachers at school that were there as well, that it worked, not in terms of like you achieving the most that you could, because that’s such a big misconception that people think they are successful because of their perfectionism, and yet it is you are successful in spite of your perfectionism, because when you can calmly work when you’re not driven by inadequacy, and you can rest without guilt, and you can make decisions and actually follow through on them and take on negative feedback without making it mean something about yourself like that is what creates long term success, both in your business and in your personal life.
I know there are so many examples of people who have been driven by inadequacy and never feeling good enough. Who have achieved a lot of signs of outward success, like just the financial side, for example, they have house, an amazing house, cars, whatever. But I really like to think about success, and I think it’s really important you do too, if you don’t, as not just being in one area of your life, but in all areas, and really it’s about your relationship with yourself. Like, how do you feel about yourself when it’s just you and you? Like, do you actually like yourself, as cliche and corny as that is to say? Like, are you actually happy with yourself? And it’s not to say that there’s never anything that can be improved, but when we’re trying to improve ourselves and be better from a place of inadequacy, we always end up focusing on the things that don’t actually matter or aren’t as impactful, and we end up neglecting the areas that really do need the work.
And so it’s really important, and such an important piece of this, and we do this a lot in perfectionist getting shit done, is learning to find sufficiency and adequacy, so that from that place, you can then identify what’s not working, or you can then identify what needs to change, and change that it’s always different. Once you have found that sufficiency, it always ends up being that the area that you actually need to improve is an area you’ve been completely neglecting, or like has been such a blind spot, because you’ve just had so much drama around, like trying to improve things and be better at things that you’re already sufficient at, or there’s sufficiency in so anyway, that’s a story for a different day, but you are not successful because of your perfectionism.
It’s in spite of that. And my story, and many of my clients stories are such a great example of that. Like, I was a high achiever in school and in my jobs that I had as well. Like, I did a good job, but I also didn’t do as good a job as I knew I could, and there was so much burnout as well that was going on and leaving things to the last minute. Like in my university days, I would do so many, like, all nighters at the university library to get the assignment completed, like, start to finish the night before, and I got good grades and, like, reinforced that, and so I’ve had to learn unlearn so much of that when it comes to entrepreneurship, because it’s very different to when you are studying, you have a professor there to keep you accountable and tell you, like, here’s how to do well, and I’m gonna tell you just exactly what you need to do to do well, and then here’s the exam, or here’s the assignment, and all you need to do is meet this criteria.
Like that is not how business works. In business, there are so many right answers and there aren’t external deadlines or accountability for a lot of the important things, like, you have to learn how to actually get yourself to do what needs to be done, even when there is no one saying like this has to be done today, and unless you want to create a business for yourself where you have really demanding clients or a really demanding team, where you have all these really strict deadlines for yourself, because that’s the only way to make yourself do anything like to me, that’s not why I started a business like that. Isn’t freedom. I want to be able to have control over my time and, like, getting to choose when I do things, versus having to use other people as a way to keep me accountable. Like I love teaching self accountability and self support, and being able to, like, get support from others, but not having to only get that like, you can also provide that to yourself as well. It’s a skill anyone can learn.
I love teaching that inside PGSD, so it’s really important to know it’s a hard one for perfectionists, like, we’re like, but I am successful because I leave things last minute and I do my best work at the last minute, or because I haven’t I’m an over preparer, and I always prepared and prepared and prepared and prepared and prepared. Like it just really feels like those strategies are, like, I’m willing to work late into the evenings, wake up early, work on weekends, and like, do all the things that I know it can feel so hard to let go of. And also, what I have found to be true time and time and time again, there have been no exceptions to this. Is that you will be more successful when you are more in the growth mindset and working towards that than you are in the perfectionist mindset.
And not just in terms of your finances and your business, though, that will definitely be the case, but also in terms of your personal relationships, being able to have hobbies and actually your relationship with yourself, being able to trust yourself, being able to rely on yourself to do the things that you know you need to do. That is part of what success looks like. And I really want to and love teaching a holistic approach to success, because our perfectionist brains, they just want to be liked, and want all the validation and approval from everyone else, and that has us tending to hyper focus on certain like outward signs of success, and that can be different for everyone, but we want to be able to actually value our relationship with ourselves and actually having time for things other than work.
And this is spoken as someone who loves working and business, and it took me so much mental like mindset work, to be able to be willing to consider that rest was part of getting out of my own way, and would make me more productive and would make it easier to achieve my goals, like I had to sell myself hard on that, and then when I experimented with it, and Then with my clients, like it works, but you have to be willing to release your perfectionism handbrake, enough to be willing to try something else, and that’s what I hope this episode and other episodes on this podcast help you with, so that you can join us in pgsd and do the work on releasing your perfectionism handbrake, it is simple, and anyone can do it, but first, there’s a willingness required to learn a different way of doing things. And typically, when people sign up for PGSD and start working with me and learning how to do it, they have just gotten sick of themselves really.
Ultimately, they are so sick of trying so hard and like knowing that they’re getting in their own way, and they’re not doing the things that they know they need to do, and they have learned things and like, yes, they don’t have perfect knowledge yet, but they know what to do, and they’re not doing it. And there’s that like, gap between where you know you could be and where you are now, and that gap is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you feel like you’re getting more and more behind. Typically, people sign up for PGSD once I like, Okay, I know that my brain wants everything to be perfect and like this just isn’t working, and I’m just gonna try a different way of doing things. So typically, that’s what people sign up.
So the five signs of perfectionism, I’ve mentioned them already in a few different ways, overthinking, procrastination, burnout, all or nothing thinking and people pleasing. Maybe I even mentioned them before I cut. I can’t remember, but you need to hear them multiple times to start really understanding how this mindset is making you get in your own way, and why your business needs you to overcome perfectionism. So the way I like to talk about it, as you’ve heard by now in this episode is releasing your perfectionism handbrake. You don’t have to overcome perfectionism or try not to be a perfectionist. Instead, you have a perfectionism handbrake that is on because it helps you feel emotionally safe. That’s a beautiful thing. Well done brain for keeping you safe, and now what you’re learning to do is feel safe without having to have everything be perfect.
This doesn’t mean becoming sloppy or negligent or reckless in your work. It’s actually quite the opposite. When you stop being so concerned about your own inadequacies and feeling incapable and overwhelmed and all the different things, you can do much better work and be much more connected with others. And it has an amazing impact on your finances and your goals, your business, your personal life and everything else but your perfectionism handBrake is coming from your present day thinking. So a lot of times people like, oh, you know, my parents shouldn’t have praised me the way that they did, because they praised me. And this is one thing, like when you were praised for being smart and intelligent, then our brain goes, Okay, so I need to get good grades to be loved, and I need to achieve and be successful to be loved.
So I will focus, like, hyper focus on that, because that is like for my survival. And so it can be easy to blame, like, okay, the way the schooling system was, or my parents, or whatever else. And a lot of times as well, when people think like, oh, it’s genetic, because my parents are like that too. Like, it’s more so, like, you’ve just adopted their thoughts and even though you had, and this is so important to note, that we can look at like, hey, it’s like the past, but you can’t change the past. But your perfectionist tendencies, the overthinking, the procrastination, the burnout, the all or nothing thinking and the people pleasing that is stopping your business from growing and stopping you from doing what you need to do, that is coming from the way that you are thinking today. Many of those thoughts will be thoughts you’ve having, been having for a few decades now, or at least a few years. But that doesn’t mean they’re coming from the past.
They’re habitual thoughts, but they can be changed. They’re coming from your present day thoughts, and that is a beautiful thing, because that means you can change your perfectionist thinking and release your perfectionism handbrake. If it’s the past fault or our schooling or our parents or anything else, we are helpless to actually change it. And then what happens? And I get asked about this all the time when I’m on podcast interviews, like, how do you manage perfectionism? How do you manage, you know, procrastination or overthinking, like, I’m not about managing that is not what I teach what I teach you to do is how to get into a different mindset, which is the growth mindset. And this is a concept that Carol Dweck, Dr Carol Dweck created that really just embodies everything that we as perfectionists are working towards.
So instead of trying to stop being a perfectionist, which is like, how do you even do that? What does that even mean? Instead we want to be more growth minded. So when we’re in the growth mindset, we believe, not just like intellectually understand, but we believe that our talents, our intelligence, our abilities, can be improved upon with effort and practice. And when you were in the growth mindset, and I like to think of the growth and fixed mindset, or perfectionist mindset, as being on the spectrum, it’s not you’re in one or the other. When we’re more towards that growth minded end of the spectrum, we actually live by the mantra that it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried it all and not. It’s better to have gone through the motions and then failed. Like, well, I’m posting consistently on Instagram, or I started my website and got it set up. Like, no actually trying, like, being all in, going full out, not in a burned out way, where you’re just overworking, but actually giving it a genuine effort and also allowing yourself to rest, because that’s what we do when we give something a genuine effort.
Like, if you think about a workout analogy, if you actually want to get fit, then you need to say, train for like, an hour a day and have a plan that you’re following, and you need to rest. If you are like, Okay, I’m gonna go to the gym for eight hours a day, not effective. That isn’t actually what works. And so when it comes to being growth minded about business, we naturally begin to include things like rest, because you need to actually let your brain recharge. It needs to recover. It burns a lot of calories when it’s thinking the same way that like your muscles and when you’re actually physically working out like your brain gets a workout when you’re working. It needs time to rest as well. So when I have you be more in this growth mindset versus the perfectionist mindset.
And so here’s another way to think about it. I’m presenting you with just different ways to be thinking about perfectionism so you can really start to understand it. So when we’re in the perfectionist mindset, we believe that our abilities, our intelligence, our talents, are pretty much fixed, that they can’t be changed. Like you can get a little bit smarter and maybe increase your IQ a little bit, but if you’re not good at math, you’re just not good at math. If you’re not a runner, you’re just not a runner. Like if you aren’t someone who is good with words, you’re just. Good with words. Like, it’s that kind of thinking that so many like, I’m just not good at cooking. I just can’t keep plants alive.
Like that idea that if you can’t do something now, you could never do it, that is the fixed mindset and perfectionists are in that fixed way of thinking that has us then feel vulnerable to criticism and to other people saying we’re doing things wrong because we feel like we can’t actually change, which you might be someone who loves personal development and like, of course, I can change. But if you’re also like, I’m just not good at cooking, I just am not a runner, like and saying that kind of thing, or I just can’t do social media like, that means that you are actually fundamentally believing that even though you can personally develop in terms of, like, improving and getting a little bit better or a little bit faster or whatever, that you can’t fundamentally change yourself in the growth mindset.
We believe we can fundamentally change our talents and our abilities and our intelligence. So we’re in that perfectionist mindset. What we do is we try and protect our potential. What we try to do is, especially if you believe you’re a smart, intelligent person, and you’re thinking this perfectionist way, any evidence against that is a sign that you’re not good enough is a sign that you’re inadequate. And so what typically happens is, when you’re in this perfectionist thinking you only do things you think have a very high chance of succeeding. Or, for example, it might have looked like in school, you only take subjects you think you’ll be good at, or you only when it comes to your business, you only go on social media platforms you think you will be good at. Or you have a plan that you you only take action when you’re pretty sure it will work, or maybe 100% sure, and you can never be 100% sure on business.
So you probably haven’t taken much action if that’s the approach that you’re taking. And so we just are so scared to get any extra evidence that we’re not good enough, because we’re already believing that we’re not good enough and that we can’t be changed. And so we don’t want to get any evidence that, like we as we are today, which is fixed pretty much, is bad, because that means we’re bad now. We’re bad forever. We’re bad always. No one loves us, no one wants to be around us, and we’re gonna die alone like our brain. It comes back to that survival. Our brain’s job is to keep us alive, and that means being connected to others. Shame is the fear of disconnection from others, and so it wants us to be liked, to do well, to be successful.
So our friends and family applaud us and love us, and so when we are in this perfectionist mindset, we live by the mentor that is better to not try than it is to fail, or it’s better to not try things that might not work than it is to fail. We’re scared of wasting effort. We see putting effort into something that doesn’t work as a sign of inadequacy and that it’s a waste of time. And this is because when we’re in that perfectionist mindset, we’re so focused only on the result and not the journey or the process or developing the skills. Because we’re not thinking in terms of skill sets. We’re not really thinking that our skills can be improved upon dramatically. We’re thinking we can, you know, learn a little. I could learn social media. I could learn this. But can you go from being someone who couldn’t do any public speaking to someone who can confidently public speak, to someone who hates math, to someone who loves math, someone who is growth minded believes that.
It doesn’t mean you have to do all of that if you don’t have the desire to do it, but you are capable of fundamentally changing yourself. And when we’re in that perfectionist mindset, we are so quick to see anything as a waste of effort, because we aren’t thinking in terms of skill sets that we’re developing when we put an effort into something. And so if we don’t get the result, and we don’t get it quickly, it’s a waste of effort, because no good comes from effort except a result. And so if no result came it’s a waste. We want to be in that growth minded way of thinking that there are so many benefits of putting an effort in, not just a result. And a lot of times, especially in business, the results you want will take a lot longer to work or more effort to work like we tend to underestimate the time span required or the volume of work required.
We have a lot of perfectionist entitlement. I recently did an episode about that we have a lot of perfectionist entitlement going on that, like, if I do this, then that should happen. Or if I’m smart, then I should have a successful business. Or if I’ve been in business for five years, I should be successful by now. Like that kind of perfectionist entitlement. So we want to get into the growth mindset, and in a second, I’ll talk about the practical way to actually have yourself do that, and when it comes to just what I was saying about perfectionism coming from your present day thoughts, it’s not even I don’t want to be thinking in terms of like general thoughts, but there are very specific thoughts in different situations that are creating perfectionism for you, and the avoidance that tends to come with perfectionism or the overworking and all the like over in, there tends to be a lot of overing or undering.
When it comes to perfectionism, we’re just trying to do like that, all or nothing mindset, which is one of the signs that we’re going all in, and then we’re either doing that or not doing anything at all. And kind of just like going back and forth between the two, but the tools. I teach really, help you identify the specific perfectionist thoughts that are coming up in different situations, so that it’s not just a general like, you know, when people say, like, just believe like, I am good enough, it’s so vague, it’s so unhelpful. I don’t teach that approach. What I love to do is have a very specific way. Like, how is perfectionism coming up for me when I’m writing a sales email and getting really intimate and familiar with that, and then doing the mindset work to change that specific thought in that specific scenario, the benefit being how you do one thing is how you do everything.
So changing specific thoughts in one area tends to have a really positive ripple effect in every other area. But I love getting specific with it so you can actually do the work on getting into that growth mindset and getting out of your own way, releasing your perfectionism handnrake however you want to think about it, it’s so important not to just be like, well, I am good enough. Like I am worthy. I am deserving. I just I have found that to be so impractical and not actually effective, so I don’t teach that. So when it comes to just playing this out a little bit more, I’m just going to go through to go through this briefly, but I am a life coach, school, certified coach, and one tool that I’m constantly using is the self coaching model.
So this is just a way to articulate that our thoughts create our feelings, which create our actions and our results. We have thoughts about a certain circumstance, but it’s our thoughts that are the most influential factor, and our feelings as well. But the feeling is being generated from the thought that we are having, and sometimes we don’t have awareness about the thought, and it just feels like a feeling comes up, but really starting to understand, like there’s a thought there that you can have a look at, and then do the work to change that thought, typically, to something that is still believable to you without doing a lot of mental work, like, not going too extreme from believing like, this has to be perfect to then going to like, it doesn’t matter if I do a good job at this. Like, that’s not helpful when I’m trying to do that.
But I’m just going to go through with you what this looks like in practice, just so you can see the connection. So say, the circumstance is that you have a goal for your business of $100,000 a lot of my clients are working towards that goal or going full time in their business and an equivalent amount of money for that. The thought you might have, and this is something, and there are so many different options I could have put here is this, whether it’s an Instagram post, your niche, whatever it is, this has to be perfect, or my business won’t be as successful as it could be. So as a perfectionist, you feel a lot of pressure. So you also there’s mainly, I think, two feelings that come up. Typically, it depends on the situation, pressure or feeling incapable, which often manifests as overwhelm. When we feel overwhelmed, it’s because we’re believing we’re incapable.
So the action you take from that feeling is trying to get everything done that you can think of, that long to do list that you’ve got, overthinking tasks, over preparing, procrastinating on what matters, burning yourself out, trying to do what you think everyone else will like, like watering yourself down in your marketing, your sales, like you don’t want to be pushy, and the result is your business isn’t as successful as it could be. That thought creates that result. Alternatively, another option. There are so many to choose from, but another option the circumstance, your goal for your business is $100,000 the thought is, I know what I’m doing, and I trust myself to do it. well, from that place, from that thought, you feel either confident, clear, calm, typically you’re feeling like that, then you create a clear goal.
This is one of the first things you do in PGSD, you create a clear goal. You create a clear plan to get your goal. You plan out your week, you follow through with your plans and adjust your plans as required. You complete your work and you publish it, you let yourself rest your body and your brain, you like yourself more so you don’t need everyone else to like you. And the result is you do what you need to do, and you do it well, that is the work we’re doing in PGSD is getting you from feeling like every little thing has to be perfect or there’s no point doing it at all, and just being so busy doing all of the thinking and preparation about how to get it perfect and not actually doing the things to having you, trusting yourself, creating a clear goal with a plan like you will learn how to do all this inside PGSD.
Having a goal, having your plan that considers what’s actually important versus what isn’t, and being able to be the person who can follow through with that from a place of calm and self trust, who can course correct as required, who can rest in their body and their brain, you can mentally switch off, teach you how to do that too and like yourself more, like you actually develop a relationship with yourself. The result is you’re able to get to that goal. So I’m just going to quickly wrap up by sharing the process for doing this work and the practical tools. I love a practical approach. If you can’t tell learning and hearing about like, just stop being a perfectionist. It just really doesn’t work. And I get so frustrated by all of that advice, and because, especially if you are between zero and $100,000 as most of my clients are in PGSD. That actually getting yourself to show up and take action and do the things you need to do is the bottleneck, and perfectionism is stopping you from doing that. Yes, perfectionism can manifest in different ways at different stages of business, 100% but in that stage, it’s really having you get in your own way and stopping you from being productive. So I love teaching productivity tools that work for your perfectionist brain.
So first of all, you’re going to set your growth goal. This is a goal that gets your perfectionist mindset working for you instead of against you. It’s a 12 month revenue goal set in a really specific way, designed with all of this taken into account, so it starts to do the work on you, getting out of your own way for you like all of this just has baked into it all the philosophy that I’ve just shared with you. The second step is to plan your week properly as a perfectionist with power planning. So instead of a time blocking method or things like the Pomodoro method, or a long to do list or a paper planner, those things don’t work for our perfectionist brains, you need to actually plan your week in a way that gets your perfectionist mindset on your side. And so that is power planning.
And in the link, in the description, or the show notes, or whatever, you will find a link for how to learn more about planning properly. Then there is also within that, the step of following through with your plans, 80% of the time we want to have you actually, like not being all or nothing about if I’m not doing perfectly, I won’t do it at all. Following through with those plans, those plans have taken into account that you’re not a perfect person. They’re still going to get you to your goals. And this is because our brain, like 80% follow through is actually 100% but your brain is thinking like 200% is actually what’s required, and so 80% follow through is completely sufficient. And you’re going to rest without guilt. I call that clean rest. You’re going to rest without guilt. Mentally switch off when you’re not working. That is the process you’re going to repeat that you’re going to keep working towards your growth goal with your power planning. Rest without guilt. That is a practical process.
All of the mindset work that you need to do on your perfectionism comes up as you do that, and all of those steps support you with your perfectionist work that you need to do. So it not only gets your perfectionist mindset on your side, but it will reveal to you when perfectionism is making you get in your own way and actually give you a way to solve for that. Inside PGSD you learn self coaching. You also get coached and get a lot of personal support too, because we have so many perfectionist blind spots, so that you can get out of your own way and your business can grow. So I hope you found this episode incredibly helpful. Please share it with anyone who you think is a perfectionist, or they already know they’re a perfectionist and they’re getting in their own way. I hope you’re having a beautiful day, and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the wait list for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today. Go to SamLaurabrown.com/pgsd.