If you know what to do to build your business but you can’t get yourself to follow through on it, you’ve got to shift from Perfectionist Thinking to Powerful Thinking. When you think powerfully, you are able to complete what matters most for your business without procrastinating, overcomplicating or overthinking.
In this episode I’m sharing examples of Powerful Thinking that have helped me and my clients build successful and fulfilling businesses. I also share why you don’t need to think ‘positively’ in order to think powerfully, why Power Planning makes it easier to shift your thinking and what to do when your brain offers you a perfectionist thought instead of a powerful one.
If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
If you want a little motivational boost from me in your inbox every day, you want to sign up for my daily Perfectionist Power-Up emails: samlaurabrown.com/ppu.
If you’re ready to become someone who consistently follows through on their plans without burning out, you want to join my coaching program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD). It’s for perfectionists who are building businesses. Sign up now and get started today at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.
I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.
Sam Laura Brown (Start of the episode)
Hello and welcome to today’s episode. So what I am going to be sharing today is about powerful thinking and the difference between perfectionist thinking and powerful thinking. This is one of the core things that we do inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done to get shit done without burning out and to be able to get more done overall without having to work more.
How we do that is by shifting from perfectionist thinking that has us complicate and overthink and procrastinate and get in our own way into powerful thinking. And I’ve been thinking about a few things recently. Number one is that inside PGSD I am constantly talking about your thoughts and feelings, the thoughts and feelings that are behind any action that you take.
I am using the self-coaching model. So I’m certified by the Life Coach School that was founded by Brooke Castillo. And they have a tool called the self-coaching model that helps you understand the connection between your circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions and results.
I love it as a tool. I use it when I’m coaching. I teach it inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, but I haven’t really talked about it that much on the podcast.
And I really want to bring it into what I’m doing here on the podcast because it is so incredible and also it’s going to give you such a good taste of what it is like inside PGSD because inside the program there’s a very practical approach to getting shit done with a mindset first approach. We are looking at how you are thinking and how that impacts your ability to get shit done in your business and shifting from perfectionist thinking into powerful thinking. So I’m going to be talking about that a lot more on the podcast and really bringing in the mindset side even more, the kind of like woo-woo intangible side even more because I talk about that all the time in PGSD.
And I feel like it’s just not really reflected at least recently here on the podcast. So that’s one reason I wanted to do this topic today. And another one is because if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, or maybe you’re inside PGSD, something I talk about is the growth mindset and the fixed mindset.
These are concepts created by Dr. Carol Dweck. They are now quite familiar terms with a lot of people. And hearing her talk about the fixed mindset and that perfectionists have a fixed mindset and the work of getting into a growth mindset, like I loved creating the growth goal and power planning and clean rest as tools to get from that fixed mindset into the growth mindset.
But it also didn’t really fully encompass what the work it is that we do and we need to do as perfectionist entrepreneurs to get out of our own way. So for quite a while, I have been looking for how to share and like, just what are the concepts of it? What is the shift that we are making? If it’s not necessarily just going from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, what is the shift that allows us to be able to go from getting in our own way to getting out of our own way or to not getting shit done to getting shit done and doing that without burning out and while taking care of ourselves and doing the things we’re getting done in a way that we enjoy and want to do them. And so it really comes down to going from perfectionist thinking, changing the thought patterns in your brain from perfectionist thoughts into powerful thoughts.
And this isn’t about positive thinking and just needing to think happy thoughts or like look on the bright side or what’s the silver lining or like trying to find a positive reframe. It’s actually changing the way you fundamentally think like your default thoughts, not just your conscious thoughts, but your default thoughts and shifting them one by one from having a perfectionist thought be the default thought in a certain area of your business to a powerful thought being the default thought in a certain area of your business.
And then if there’s a circumstance where your perfectionist thought comes up again because you are feeling unsafe and that perfectionist thought comes in as a protection mechanism that you are then able to guide yourself back into that powerful thought.
So that’s really what we’re doing. That is the work that I have been doing myself. That’s how I’ve gotten out of my own way.
The tools that we have, power planning being the core tool, is all to support you working with your perfectionist brain and understanding your perfectionist thinking and then shifting that perfectionist thinking into powerful thinking. So what I want to do in this episode is walk you through a few examples of a perfectionist thought or perfectionist thinking and then what the equivalent powerful thought could be. And I’m going to share some examples as well from my own experience.
I have plenty of that. I’ve also coached so many perfectionists entreprenuers inside PGSD on this. So I was like, do I make this into a whole series? I have so much to say on all of this.
But what I’m going to do is just keep this to one episode on perfectionist thinking and shifting it into powerful thinking. And I want to, before I get into the examples, share a few key concepts. So number one is that, and this is really important to understand, when we are looking at and solving the problem of like, how do I stop procrastinating on important business tasks? How do I stop overthinking them and making them so complicated because I want to make them so optimal that then it becomes so overwhelming and I get stuck and I can’t move forward?
Like, how do I actually do the things that will move my business forward? When it comes to the perfectionist thinking that creates the stuckness, that creates us overcomplicating things and overthinking things and procrastinating, it’s really important to stand that your procrastination today comes from the thoughts that you are thinking today.
Your overthinking today comes from the thoughts that you are thinking today. It all comes from how you were thinking today. And I say this because perfectionism, if you have been in this perfectionist thinking for a long time, it can really feel like, this is just who I am.
It’s just how I’ve always thought. Or like, maybe there’s one of your parents who was a perfectionist and had this thinking. So you feel like you inherited it from them.
Or there was a particular teacher or just like, it can be really easy to think, I have to go and dig back through my past to find the root of this perfectionist thinking. Or that I actually can’t change this thinking because of this circumstance that happened in my past. I can’t actually change the thinking because that’s just how my mom or my dad or my grandma or grandpa or whoever it was that was really influential that had perfectionist thinking that you can’t change that being part of your past.
So you can’t change today, but you can change today. I know this because that is what I’ve been able to do. That’s what I teach our PGSDers to do inside the program.
And it doesn’t mean that there’s never an appropriate time to explore the past and why thought patterns have developed. It can be really powerful to understand that. There’s a lesson in PGSD on that specifically, but the unlock is your actions and inactions today come from the thoughts that you are thinking today.
And if you are getting in your own way and not showing up how you want to be, you have perfectionist thinking today that is creating that for you today. I know I’m being repetitive and saying today, 20,000 times. That is on purpose.
It is coming from your thinking today. So to be able to get out of your own way, all you need to do is shift how you were thinking today. And you don’t need to shift every thought that you have.
We have so many thoughts going on constantly in our brains. What we want to do though, is just take one perfectionist thought that is derailing us, that is making us not follow through with a plan or making the plan feel so big that we can’t even make the plan to begin with and shift that to a more powerful thought. So let me share some examples.
The first example of a perfectionist thought is, if I get it right, people will buy. And this feels like common sense to our perfectionist brains. Of course we have to get it right.
And of course we want to get it right. Like we want to be good. We want to get it right.
We want the A plus. We don’t want to do anything sloppy, anything reckless, anything that’s not smart or intelligent to do. But when we have this thought, if I get it right, people will buy, it makes us feel anxious.
It makes us otherwise potentially feel determined to either feel like, if I get it right, people will buy, but I don’t know if I can get it right. So it’s better not to try at all. And that has you not doing the things you need to do.
Or it goes into, if I get it right, people will buy. So I have to figure out how to get it right. And then you feel very determined.
And from that feeling, you then spend a lot of time learning how to get it right. So if you’ve been in that pattern of procrasti-learning, where you are learning, but then not taking action on what you learn and just learning more and more and more and more, it is often from a thought of, if I get it right, people will buy. And I have to figure it out before I start selling.
So let me just go and research. Let me just go and watch a YouTube video or go and scroll or go and listen to a podcast or go and sign up for this thing. I just need to learn more because if I get it right, people will buy.
So I’ve had this thought pattern so many times. My brain loves offering me this thought pattern. If I just get it right, it creates a lot of comfort and relief.
If I just get it right, everything can work. I can finally feel like I’m good enough. I’ve got it figured out.
And particularly for me with launching and doing promotions for having people come into PGSD, my perfectionist brain wants to offer me that thought of if I get it right, if I send the right number of emails at the right time, if I do the right podcast series and I do everything just right, is this all or nothing thinking as well. If I do everything just right, it’ll work. If I don’t do everything just right, nothing will work.
And that has me, when I go into that kind of thought pattern, it has me procrastinate and put off doing the things for the launch and often get busy focusing on something else, doing a lot of overthinking and going into have I got the right messaging and spending days and days and days trying to figure out the right messaging when I literally already know the messaging back to front. So my perfectionist brain, when it offers me that, it’s coming from a good place. It’s coming from a place of wanting to be approved of by others and by myself, wanting to feel adequate and successful.
Like it’s coming from a place of wanting me, like this is the formula to feeling good. If I get it right, people will buy and I will feel good. However, as I mentioned, that thought pattern tends to not actually have us get it right and have people buy.
And sometimes we can just get so excited. I’ve talked about this in different episodes as well. And I spot this, like if I’m coaching you on a PGSD call, if this is going on, it’s so powerful to have this pointed out.
Sometimes we get so excited and feel so connected and so aligned, literally because we have the thought, if I get it right, people will buy. And then the hidden end of that thought we have is, and I’m getting it right. We feel so excited that we’re finally getting it right.
We’ve finally figured out the missing piece. We’ve finally got the right piece of content or written the email that in the most compelling way or whatever it is we’re doing, whatever kind of business you have, we get excited. Our perfectionist brain gets so excited when we think we’re getting it right.
But this also isn’t helpful. We tend to miss core fundamentals of business when we’re just so excited that we’ve finally got it right. We’re finally getting the gold star.
So what we want to shift into, here’s an option and what I love for my powerful thought around this, is instead of, if I get it right, people will buy, it’s shifting into, when I sell, I make sales. And if I don’t make sales, then I figure out why and I solve it. You can tell from the energy of it, it’s a much more grounded, connected thought.
And there’s also thoughts as well that are really powerful around people want what I have to offer in the way that I want to offer it. Not in like there’s this magic formula, if I just have it be the right price with the right inclusions and the right messaging, then people will want it. And if I don’t nail every single one of those things and no one wants it.
And there’s a lot of marketing advice and content out there that perpetuates the perfectionist thought. Let me teach you how to get it right so people buy. We are constantly surrounded by thinking that echoes back that perfectionist thought, because those people also have that perfectionist thought, that there’s a right way and let me teach you it so it works.
That when we’re in that thought, that perfectionist sort of, if I get it right, people will buy. We tend to either go into the procrasti-learning and the research mode and then just like putting it off again and again and again, doing the thing that we want to do to actually have people buy. Or we just get really anxious, avoidant, hesitant, not doing it, pulling back, hiding, going into the back end of the business because we’re so scared that we won’t be able to get it right and then people won’t buy.
And that if they don’t buy now, they’ll never buy like that all or nothing thinking again. I know I’m mentioning quite a lot of different perfectionist thoughts, but they tend to have a way to pile on. If we think one all or nothing thought, then it’s very easy to have other ones too.
So we shift into people want what I have to offer in the way I want to offer it. And when I sell, I make sales. And if I don’t make sales, so it’s not like I’m entitled to making sales when I sell, it’s, I know how to make sales.
And if I don’t make sales for some reason, when I am selling, then I figure out why and I solve it. And this is really important as well. When I sell, I make sales because a lot of times what happens that in PGSD, this comes up in the coaching is someone will come and be like, I’m, you know, I’m selling this at the moment.
I haven’t made any sales. Be like, have you sold it? Like, have you told anyone like often no or once? And that’s because we have this thought. If I get it right, people will buy, but I’m not sure if I am getting it right or will get it right.
So then we don’t actually do the work needed to make sure other people know about it and sell them on it. So we want to shift from the perfectionist thought into the powerful thought. And here’s another thing as well to know when it comes to this is that the most powerful way to shift into a powerful thought is to find a powerful thought that you already have access to, that is already believable to you, that you don’t have to convince yourself of.
And it just feels like that’s so far fetched. So even for what I shared, depending on what level you’re at in your business, I am not in the beginning stages of my business. So I already have quite a strong self image around my sales ability and what I’m doing.
So if you’re not there yet, that’s okay. But you want to find, and we teach you how to do this in PGSD, to find powerful thinking that you can, your present day self as you are today can connect with, that is more powerful than the perfectionist thinking of, if I get it right, people will buy. It can even be shifting at first into, I’m willing to get it wrong and have people not buy so that I can figure out what works for me.
That can be powerful thinking. What can I think today that will give me power? And not like power in this kind of like power hungry sense, like it’s been such a revelation for me as I’ve had our kids over the last, Lydia’s five now, so pregnancy wise about six years, had four kids within four years in terms of the births and just like really going through so many shifts identity wise and in my personal life. And through a big period of that, I didn’t feel like myself, which is a common thing that people talk about in terms of such a big life transition as becoming a mother or becoming a parent is not feeling like yourself, especially when like just being in the depths of sleep deprivation and so many hormonal changes, body changes, a lot of demands, and just a big shift in how you operate in your day-to-day life that I didn’t feel like myself.
But I was like, I really started to unpack what is it? Like, why am I not feeling like myself? And what does it mean to feel like myself? When I feel like myself, how do I feel? Like, what is that feeling? If I had to give that feeling a name, what is the feeling I have when I feel like myself? And the feeling for me that I have when I feel like myself is I feel powerful and not in a way of like, I’m getting one over on someone else or anything like that. It’s really in this way of, I create my own reality. I’m in charge of my life.
And that doesn’t mean I control everyone and that like, I can control the universe. It just means that I take ownership and responsibility that I recognize the power of my thoughts and feelings when it comes to creating results. I don’t feel like a victim of my life or things are just happening to me.
I feel powerful that I have the power to influence my day, my week, my month, my year. I have the power and I am powerful. That is how I feel when I feel the most like me is powerful in a very grounded, connected, calm, often quiet kind of way.
I feel powerful that I am in charge of my life. So we want to shift from perfectionist thinking into powerful thinking to help you feel more you. If you can relate to what I talk about, I have a very strong hunch that you feel the most like yourself when you feel powerful and connected.
Part of the reason you listen to me, and if you’re in PGSD, part of the reason you’re in that program is you like being in my energy. I connect you to your power. When you listen to me, you feel more like yourself.
You feel okay being who you are instead of trying to be someone you’re not. If you can just finally figure out how to be someone you’re not, then you can finally be good enough. I help you connect in with yourself, your self-trust, your power, doing things your way.
There are so many ways to do things that you already know so much, have so much. There’s no big insufficiency or inadequacy that we just have to fix so you can finally have the missing piece and it all clicks together. I connect you into your power and I invite you and help you find more of it too.
That is part of why you keep coming back and listening and why you feel better after listening to this than before you started listening to this. I know for me with my coach, that’s one of the big reasons why I love her being my coach and listening to her coaching. Particularly, it’s one thing to listen to a podcast episode, but listening to me coach the same way I listen to my coach coach.
Coaching someone, hearing someone get coached into their power is so transformative. I just love being in the energy of someone who helps me connect to my power. This is what we’re doing.
We’re shifting from perfectionist thinking that has us not feeling powerful. When we’re in perfectionist thinking, we feel like everything has to be just right. We have to have the right energy.
We have to be perfectly motivated. We have to make sure everything goes exactly as planned because we’re in this thought of when we’re in this perfectionist thinking of I can’t handle much. I can’t handle things not going perfectly.
I can’t handle bad feedback. I can’t handle things not working instantly. We don’t feel powerful when we’re in perfectionist thinking.
It is not our highest self when we are in perfectionist thinking. So we shift into powerful thinking and your powerful thinking will change. My powerful thinking in the beginning was just like I’m willing to do it and have it be super bad.
Even when I started my blog in 2013, my powerful thinking because I was just too embarrassed to even tell anyone about it, including my husband, Steve. I would have already been dating for seven years at that time. But my powerful thought was I want to do this even if it’s really embarrassing.
I want to do this. I want to try this. There’s something about this, about me being able to share online about personal development even though I’m so in my own way.
There’s something about this that is calling to me and I want this even though I’m so embarrassed by myself for wanting it. I do want this and I am going to try it. I used to have thoughts of even if like I have to just, if you imagine like walking along, even if I just have to walk so slowly or I start walking backwards or I just stop like I’m frozen, I just stop altogether.
That’s okay. I’m just going to keep trying as best I can because I want this and if I persist, I will succeed. That was a big mantra that I had to support me, like a powerful thought.
If I persist, I will succeed. Almost everyone quits because sure, we all know what to do to build a business. There’s no secret about the how-to of a business.
But emotionally, it is challenging, especially with a perfectionist brain. It is emotionally hard to build a business. So almost everyone quits.
Almost everyone has a perfectionist brain in that way of thinking. It’s what the schooling system and society really enforces. And it is emotionally hard, even though you intellectually understand building a business, it is emotionally hard to put yourself out there, to try and try and try and try again and to do that in public.
It is emotionally hard, especially when you’re having perfectionist thoughts. So I had the thought, if I persist, I will succeed because almost everyone quits. So if I just don’t quit, then I will automatically be in the top percent of people doing it just literally because I didn’t quit, because so few don’t quit.
That was such a powerful thought for me to just help me keep going. Now I’m able to be in the powerful thoughts of, I know how to make sales and I sell. And if I don’t make the sales and I figure out what happened and I solve it.
As an entrepreneur, that’s a very powerful thought for me. And also I have thoughts about why what I’m doing is so important in the world, why you want it, why I’m going to keep inviting you in to be a PGSD again and again and again until you are in there because it matters. I have thoughts about that as well.
I’ve developed more and more powerful thoughts as I’ve gone on. And I’ve learned how to notice my perfectionist thinking as it comes up and shift into powerful thinking. It’s not about like, it’s wrong to have perfectionist thoughts.
You shouldn’t think that way. It’s killing your business. Like any of that kind of language around perfectionism tends to really be like naughty, bad, bad, bad.
Stop being a perfectionist. It’s killing your business. So unhelpful, so impractical.
What we want to do is hold space for perfectionist thinking. There’s a good reason our brains think that way. We’re trying to protect ourselves.
It comes with the best intentions. We’re wired for survival. We’re trying to survive.
It’s a survival pattern that worked for us in childhood or earlier in our life. At some stage, it makes sense that we think that way. It is not a problem that we think that way and something that’s wrong with us that we have to like stamp out.
It’s none of that. It does, however, make it really hard to find your power in business and to build a business you love in a way that you love.
So all we want to do is hold space for the fact that your perfectionist brain is going to keep generating these perfectionist thoughts to try and keep you safe, to try and keep you in the cave, to not have you put yourself out there, that’s risky, to not have you try things, that’s risky, to not have you try things multiple times, that’s embarrassing. It’s going to keep offering that. So we hold space for that.
We don’t judge it or shame ourselves for that or make it wrong. And then we invite ourselves into powerful thinking, into the kind of thinking that allows us to show up even when it’s scary, to have a go, even when our brain thinks it’s embarrassing to try again and to be seen to be trying. We invite ourselves into that powerful thinking.
Power planning is such a great tool for this. I was talking about this today in Ask a Coach inside PGSD and I also talked about it on the call we had as well. But one of our PGSDers who joined the program a few weeks ago, she was saying that she’s power planned out her week and she’s been really enjoying doing her power planning and has seen that to be really helpful already.
And then she’s having a hard time following through with her plan. And I said, you’re right on track. This is exactly where I would expect anyone to be.
That there’s planning in a way that works for your perfectionist brain, super powerful. We want flexible structure. We want to have a realistic plan that’s connected to your goals that you can actually follow through on, really important.
Before we look at following through, we want to make sure what we’re trying to follow through on actually makes sense. So then the other piece of it is to be able to follow through with your plans, even when your perfectionist brain tries to stop you, to be able to power yourself up. And that’s what I’m talking about in this episode, is how to, in the moment when your brain wants to offer you a perfectionist thought to stop you, and it will yell at you, it will yell at you, do not do that.
Or, hey, let’s do that other thing that you’ve been putting off. Now that you’re trying to do this other thing that seems worse than that, let’s just do that. So often our brain will procrastinate on something until we have something worse that we need to do.
And then it will be like, okay, let’s do that thing we’ve been procrastinating on, because now that seems like a good option. So it’s knowing that it is normal for your perfectionist brain to offer that and to keep offering that. My perfectionist brain still offers that.
It is not wrong. It is not a problem. I hold space for that.
And I shift into powerful thinking and my power planning allows me to see exactly when that needs to happen. Because of that flexible structure and the way that power planning works, I can see when I go into perfectionist thinking. I have a tool that helps me have great awareness over that.
And then I can shift into powerful thinking to be able to get that thing done, often in less time than I even planned for in the first place. It’s really cool. I love talking about it and I have for so many years.
So I want to share a few more examples. The next one is, I don’t know this is a perfectionist thought. I don’t know what I’m doing.
And also there’s lots of ways this can manifest, just a general, I don’t know. I don’t know the right way to market my business. I don’t know the right way to sell.
I don’t know the price. I don’t know the need. We can have, I don’t know, for days and months and years.
There can also be the perfectionist thinking that creates imposter syndrome. I’ve thought about this so much. I will do an episode specifically on imposter syndrome.
Maybe I have at some point in the past, but I have lots of thoughts to share about it. But I really feel that imposter syndrome is just the all or nothing. It’s just a name for the all or nothing thought pattern of, if I don’t know everything, then I know nothing.
Like I’m only not an imposter or not a fraud, or like I’m only legitimate or only a professional or an expert or whatever, if I know a hundred percent of everything on that topic. And no one can meet that criteria. No wonder everyone feels like they’re an imposter.
When there’s this really unrealistic way to think about what it means to not be an imposter and what it means to actually be legitimate at something. Because the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know, the more nuance you get to see, the more there is to explore. So it could come up in different ways of either like you haven’t decided that like certain decisions and you’re just in I don’t know land with those decisions, or you’re in that imposter syndrome of if I don’t know everything.
So say for me, well, I don’t know everything about perfectionism. So that means I’m an imposter. Well, no, I’m not an imposter.
I know a lot. I know way more than the average person. And if you actually Google, because I Googled this recently, if you Google what an expert is, or one of the synonyms for expert, I can’t remember exactly.
Essentially, it said that you know more than the average person, like you have an above average understanding. I definitely have an above average understanding of perfectionism. Do I know it from every which way that anyone in the world could ever possibly talk about it? No, I love exploring and learning more and like figuring it out and all of that, but I know so much.
And so for you, it might be there’s an area where you know a lot more than the average person, and you’re definitely at least a step or two ahead of many people, but because you don’t know everything, then you think you know nothing. And then you might be going into that procrasti-learning of, okay, I need to then know everything. And then that feeling will go away instead of actually, it’s just a perfectionist thought error that’s happening.
So for me, this like, I don’t know what I’m doing, really came up for me in 2022, when I was having the most successful year I’d had in my business, and my perfectionist brain decided that even though I was being the most successful I’d ever been in terms of results and revenue, and like having the best client sign up for PGSD that we’d ever had, and just like having amazing results, because I had even bigger goals, and of course I did, I’m the kind of person that loves having big goals to grow into.
I then decided I don’t know what I’m doing, because if I did, I’d hit every goal. Ironically, and this even happened like a week ago, is that I had a goal to achieve, I achieved it very easily, it was a revenue goal, and in like, very little work required, very aligned and connected, it was just very, like textbook, exactly what I want to do. And then I wanted to keep adding more to the goal, because it felt like, well, if I just achieve that goal so easily, then obviously it wasn’t big enough.
So it’s just really interesting to look at like my perfectionist brain, if I achieve a goal, it says, well, the goal wasn’t big enough, and if I don’t achieve a goal, then it goes into, well, you don’t know anything, because if you did, you would have hit the goal. There’s no pleasing my perfectionist brain when it comes to goals. So, and I love having the growth goal and like having that as a tool for goal setting as a perfectionist, so important, but that aside, my perfectionist brain decided that I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know how to solve PGSD, even though I literally was doing it very, very successfully.
And then from that place, I made a lot of decisions that then also took me further out of my power. I hired a marketing manager from a place of, I don’t know what I’m doing, and someone else knows better than me. And I literally said on a podcast episode at the time that I released that, like, I’ve gotten us as far as I can take us.
No, I hadn’t. I had not. But my perfectionist brain was very convinced of that.
And I have compassion for that. I was facing uncertain times in my personal life, about to have three babies under the age of two. My brain went into like, let’s just lock everything down.
We don’t, we don’t want to grow. We don’t want any uncertainty. So I had this thought, I don’t know what I’m doing.
And from that place, I made decisions that further perpetuated and gave me evidence that I don’t know what I’m doing. And a lot of the work I’ve done over the last few years has been untangling that and seeing that I do know what I’m doing. I know what I’m doing.
And that has been my most powerful thought overall in the last, I’d say five years, when I’m in the thought of, I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it. And I’m taking great care of myself at the same time. It’s not like, I know what I do.
I’m doing and I’m doing it. I’m just barreling through and who cares about me? No, I’m taking great care of myself at the same time. And because I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it, I’m clear.
I know what goal I’m working towards. I know the way that I’m working towards that goal. I know exactly when I’m working.
I know what I’m going to do in my work time. Power planning, super helpful. Like this is a key thing too.
Structurally, just in terms of a system, for me, when it’s easiest for me to think the thought, I know what I’m doing, it’s when I’m power planning. Because power planning literally has me know what I’m doing, has me deciding things, has me having a direction, has me having a focus. So when I’m in this place of, I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it, I don’t have to overwork.
I work within the work hours that I have. I have time to spare. And I know this, I’m in this at the moment and have been for the last few weeks really powerfully.
I’m going for walks. I’m playing tennis. I’m seeing my friends.
I’m not squeezing in work in extra times. I’m making decisions. I’m doing uncomfortable things.
I’m doing things easily. I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it. So I don’t need to be working all the time.
It doesn’t mean I’m perfect. It doesn’t mean I never procrastinate. It doesn’t mean I never overthink.
My perfectionist brain sees me having this great time and is like, that can’t be right. That can’t be safe. So I still have to hold space for my perfectionist brain offering me all of these.
If you think about a waiter with hors d’oeuvres on a platter and coming around like, what about this? What about this? That’s what my brain is doing often. Oh, even with this episode, here’s an example. I was writing out what I want to have this episode today be about.
I did the PGSD call and I’ve been thinking, as I mentioned, about wanting to have an episode specifically about thinking, the power of your thoughts, really the mindset side of things, and just honing in on that. So I was writing down ideas and then I came up with the idea for this episode. Then I was like, should I have a whole series on this? I just wanted to make it so elaborate.
I’m like, okay, maybe instead of recording it today, because I have in my power planning, record a podcast episode today. Instead of doing that, let me just delay it till tomorrow and maybe next week, but that’s okay because it’s going to be this whole series. Just wanting to make it such a big deal and so optimal.
Our perfectionist brains want to optimize everything. What I did was I held space for that. That’s okay that my brain wanted to take me there.
I caught it within a minute and then I directed back to, but I’m recording an episode today. What’s something that I can speak about today? Then I wrote my notes just like handwritten in a notebook and I’m recording. Even though my perfectionist brain is like, let’s do a whole series on this and let’s see.
All of that, yes, and I plan to record an episode today. I’m committed to that. I’m recording it, even though my brain thinks this isn’t the optimal way potentially to do it.
Now I’m in, I’m like, this is great, but ahead of time, my brain just wants to fancy it up. I recently did an episode called Do It The Unfancy Way. Really great one to listen to.
It’s the same concept from a different angle. Doing it the unfancy way is a powerful thought approach to not have to go the optimal way, which is the perfectionist thinking, but in doing it unfancy has us doing it sufficiently and actually getting it done and actually doing it in a connected way that people on the other end resonate with. I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it.
When I think that, I feel very certain and sure of myself. Then from that place, it’s so much easier to trust myself and make decisions and follow through on those decisions and to keep following through on them even when they don’t instantly work. The next one I want to share, I have four.
I’ve shared two already. I mean, I’ve shared a bunch, but I’ve shared two already of the four. The next one is the next perfectionist thought.
If it doesn’t work out instantly or doesn’t work instantly, it will never work. That’s that all or nothing thinking of, and I get it, especially if you already feel like you’re so behind, you’re like, this has to work right away. Then we make, especially the first time we do anything, we make it such a big deal because if it doesn’t work now, it’ll never work.
It has to work now. Then we have to go and make sure we do more research and more practice. If you’re doing, one of our PGSDers was doing practice podcast episodes to help practice instead of just publishing the episodes and just like more and more practice, because we have this fear of if I do it and it doesn’t work instantly, then I’m going to go into despair because it will never work.
For me, an example, because I mean, I have a million stories for each of these that I could share, but one example of this is I believe it was in the year, in the year 2020. In 2020, I did a webinar called how to triple your productivity, just like a core concept, just another angle of what I’m talking about here is how to do the things you need to do. I did that and we had one sign up for perfectionist getting shit done.
I can’t remember if I even had a specific goal at the time, but no one, like I did that people on that webinar were giving amazing feedback. I finished that presentation. I went out, no one had signed up.
At the hours after that, no one had signed up and I just felt so disheartened. I put so much work into that webinar. I knew what I was teaching was super valuable.
I knew that having someone sign up for PGSD was going to be amazing. If they found that valuable, a hundred percent, that’s the next step to take. I just remember feeling, I went for a walk.
I just remember it feeling so heavy and just so disheartened. It’s also okay to feel disheartened and to feel feelings like disappointment, but then what we tend to do in our perfectionist thinking, this is why we don’t like disappointment is because when we’re disappointed, we tend to make ourselves wrong or make something wrong or someone else wrong. We kind of just skim past the disappointment straight into judgment and blame and shame.
In that case, I made it wrong, the whole thing that I did. I kept changing the different topics to try and find the right topic instead of actually, I think maybe the person who signed up, signed up a day or two after that, there was a lag of them signing up. I went into, okay, that mustn’t have been right.
I need to now change it instead of doing it again a few times, refining it. Not even just refining the words, but actually being in convicted energy when I’m saying it, all of those intangible things that create sales that come from our thinking and us shifting it. When we’re in powerful thoughts, we make sales.
When we’re in perfectionist thinking, we tend not to make sales. When we do, it’s very hard. It feels like a fluke.
It feels very hard to repeat and it burns us out. Really a powerful thought to shift into and how I think about that kind of thing now is the first attempt is the starting point. If it doesn’t get the results I want, I create a theory as to why and I try again.
I’m willing, another thought with this is like, I’m willing to keep trying again and again until I figure this out. We won’t get into the nuance in this episode of when to keep going and when to pivot. That’s something that’s great to be brought to a coaching call in PGSD or to ask a coach because there’s nuance there with like, okay, but when is enough enough? But to look at for the first attempt, that isn’t the point at which we go, okay, that’s not going to work.
Sometimes you just get such a visceral feeling that you know, okay, this is not for me. For example, before I had my blog, smart twenties, which was for me, but it was very uncomfortable, but it was for me. I did a baking blog called Samantha baking and cause I loved all these baking bloggers at the time.
And I did an, I did, I was going to say an episode. I did a post about a cake and I was like, I do not care. I, it wasn’t like this.
It’s so uncomfortable. I was like, Oh my God, this is not for me. I just really don’t want to do it.
Like I don’t, I don’t have any drama about it. It’s just a clean. No, I, I actually I’m not a foodie.
I don’t care to talk about food all day. Like I definitely, I don’t have an interest in this. It was so great to try it.
I’m so glad that I did because probably to this day, I’d be like, I wonder if I’d ever given that a go because I do enjoy baking, but I was like, Oh, I actually just enjoy baking. I don’t want to have to like take photos about it or like write about it. Like I still love looking at recipe blogs and like recipe tin eats is my favorite.
Um, but I want to create one. So like sometimes you just get a hard, no, like this is, this is just a hard pass for me. But most of the time, if it’s something that you actually want to be able to do, like you’ve got to keep trying and we need to shift into powerful thoughts and out of this perfectionist entitlement of it should work right away.
And especially if I’ve tried really hard, it should work. Trying hard. Isn’t the determinant for something being able to work.
It is an ingredient like putting effort in giving something to go is an ingredient, but we can get into this perfectionist. I did a whole episode on perfectionist entitlement, highly recommend into these perfectionist thought patterns of like, well, if I put a lot of work into it, it should work. And that’s not how the world works.
And then that disconnects us from and decreases our willingness to try again. So we want to shift into powerful thinking of really getting into, I pose a theory for why it didn’t work. And I, I pick myself up and I have another go.
And if I’m embarrassed or if I’m disappointed, I let myself feel that. And then I, I move on. This is why having PGSD and having coaching and community and just a process to follow with this, to build up your resilience, all of it is so powerful because it is really hard to attempt something alone.
And then to just keep going and going and going for it again, like there’s a skillset to be developed there with resilience. And when we’re in perfectionist thinking, we have a very low level of resilience. When we’re in powerful thinking, we have a high level of resilience.
And the final one I want to share, the final, final, final perfectionist thought is I can’t handle negative feedback or people being unhappy with me. And such a massive thought for me, especially, I mean, at every level, but especially in the beginning of just this like, who does she think she is? When I started my blog about personal development and I really knew nothing about it. Like I was just sharing, documenting what I was learning as I was learning it.
I didn’t share any of my own opinions on anything. I didn’t have opinions yet on anything or like, it was only after a few years of being into it that I was like, oh, actually I’ve, now that I’ve played around with it, this is what works for me to create habits. And this is what works for me for this.
And I started to figure out about perfectionism and like piecing a lot of things together, but I didn’t have any opinion that I was even sharing, but it was just this like, who does she think she is? Kind of thought like that. It’s not okay for her to do that. That like, that if I shared it with anyone, I’d get laughed at.
It’d be so embarrassing. Like the, like physical pain embarrassment that I would feel if anyone was like, what’s a blog? Like, what do you, what do you think you’re doing? Sharing stuff like that? Like, oh, are you interested in that kind of stuff? Like any question about it, I just felt like that was negative feedback. Even just a question, not even like a bad question, just like a question and having people be unhappy with me or like not liking me as if I have some kind of magical way to make everyone in the world like me.
And I think as perfectionists, we tend to go into this, like, if I’m just so small and so quiet and I’m always hiding, then no one can dislike me at least because they’re not really interacting with me. But if we look at shifting that into powerful thinking, now I really have the belief I can handle bad feedback. Like I’ve got bad podcast reviews.
I’ve had bad reviews of everything I’ve ever done pretty much that have come to my attention. And I now know how to handle that. I can handle it.
I’m okay with people being unhappy with me. I’m okay with people not liking me. It doesn’t mean I don’t take on feedback and consider it, but my own self-confidence and self-image isn’t so wobbly that I just instantly adopt anything else that anyone says to me.
But in the beginning, as I mentioned before, it was just really this like, I don’t know if I can handle bad feedback, but I’m willing to put myself out there and figure that out if that does happen. Like that was the powerful thinking was just, and we talk about this all the time in PGSD, increasing your desire and your willingness. You don’t have to be in this thought of like, I can do it and I’m the best or any of that.
Power is in willingness. I’m willing to give it a go. I’m willing to get bad feedback and feel like I don’t know how to handle it and then get support with handling it and figuring that out.
Like posting an ask a coach, coming to a call, sharing in your persistence log. Like I can, I don’t know that I can handle it, but I’m willing to expose myself to that possibility. And I’m willing to trust that future me can handle that and can survive that.
The same with someone being unhappy with me. If you’ve had any idea for a product, a service, a program, a podcast, a YouTube channel, anything like a substack, anything like that. And you’re having a hard time getting yourself to do it.
Often there is just a thought in there, a perfectionist thought that is really the flavor of, I don’t know that I can handle, like, I can’t handle bad feedback on this. I can’t handle people not liking this. I can’t handle people judging me for this.
I can’t handle being bad in public. I did an episode years ago called what if I’m bad at it? Because our brain’s like, I can’t be bad at things. It’s so embarrassing to publicly be bad at things.
Except that is part of the recipe of success is being willing to be bad, to be bad in public, bad according to our perfectionist brain that only wants perfection. So willingness, that’s how we increase our power. Desire, I want to.
And I talked about this and I’ll wrap up shortly. I talked about this on a PGSD call recently that I was coaching someone, I’m following through with their plans. And they’re like, no, I should shift into like, I get to do it.
I get to record. I think they were recording a podcast or whatever it was they were doing. I get to do it.
I don’t know about you, for me, I get to has never been a powerful thought for me. It doesn’t feel like for some people, I think it is like I get to do that thing. And so many people don’t.
But for me, that hasn’t actually been anyone to pay attention to your body. What generates power for me, for me, it’s, I want to, I have the desire to, I’m willing to. Willingness is so huge.
I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to try it. I’m willing to be embarrassed.
I’m willing to be uncomfortable. Willingness is powerful. Want and desire is powerful.
Knowing is powerful. I know what I’m doing and I’m doing it. Not I know what to do, but I can’t do it.
No, I know what to do and I’m doing it. So this is the kind of thinking that we shift into inside perfectionist getting shit done. Two main things we do.
Number one, planning in a way that works for your perfectionist brain. Number two, following through with your plans, even when your perfectionist brain tries to stop you. And it will.
We shift from perfectionist thinking into powerful thinking. Powerful thinking that’s already available to you. You don’t have to do a whole bunch of thought work and self-coaching on it to get yourself to believe it.
It’s just something that gives you a power up. Something that allows you to step into, okay, it’s not going to be maybe as amazing as I want it to be, but I’m willing. I’m going to have a go.
I’m going to try. I’m going to take the next step. That is how a business is built through that willingness and through that desire, through that powerful thinking.
We’ve got to hold space for the perfectionist thinking and shift into that powerful thinking. It’s my favorite thing to do. You can join us today and get started right away in PGSD, the links in the show notes.
So I want to invite you in shift from perfectionist thinking to powerful thinking without beating yourself up for the perfectionist thinking. That is the key. That is the secret.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode, and I will talk to you in the next one.
Outro
If you struggle to build your business due to procrastination or overthinking, or maybe you keep burning yourself out, I want to invite you to join my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. Inside, I will teach you my proven process for getting shit done as a perfectionist entrepreneur. In case you didn’t know, perfectionists can’t follow the same productivity advice as everyone else.
When we do, we get in our own way. So let me teach you what works inside the program. It’s simple and anyone can learn.
To sign up today, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. I’ll see you inside.