Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success Podcast, episode fifty-two. I’m your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way. 

When we were in school, the quest for perfection served us well, but in the real world, there are no straight A’s. As the perfect girl grows up, we’re in for a shock. The rules have changed. Everything we’ve been taught backfires on us. The behaviors that used to pay off for us, like being nice, polite, and agreeable end up costing us. 

In this episode, we get into the fact that playing nice doesn’t get us promoted into positions of power, and it certainly doesn’t get us raises. Being overly accommodating gets us into situations we don’t necessarily want to be In. Minding our manners leaves us angry because we didn’t say what we were really thinking. What earned us those coveted gold stars in the classroom doesn’t have the same effect in the real world. The real world doesn’t reward perfection, it rewards those who are brave. 

The pursuit of perfection sets us on a path that feels safe. Bravery lets us veer off that path that others think we should follow and onto one that’s more meant for us. Bravery lets us speak up and take a stand when we’re hit with workplace sexism or harassment. Bravery helps us get our work recognized and advance our careers. While perfectionism might feel good for a few fleeting moments, bravery powers us through the difficult times that can feel insurmountable.

By being brave, not perfect, we get to live lives that don’t just look good on paper, but actually feel good to be living. All the lessons we learned as little girls have real consequences on our life choices now that we’re all grown up. We were trained to please others and follow the expected path without questioning whether it was what we wanted.

I can honestly say that it felt like I was working tirelessly to get ahead, feeling the pressure to succeed at everything until, at some point, I realized that my professional accomplishments felt hollow. On paper, you would’ve thought that I had it made, but in reality, I was a bit lost and wondering if I was even on my dream path anymore. There were many days sitting at my desk in the office trying to hold back the tears of fear and regret, thinking back to myself as that ambitious graduate who believed I could do anything I set my mind to, realizing that I didn’t want this corporate job anymore, but I had no idea why I wanted to do instead. 

It seemed selfish and almost reckless to throw away all that I had worked so hard for, but it was no longer feeling good. I was worried what people would say. The ones that mattered surprised me and said, “It’s about time”. Like they could see it all along, unfolding in front of my eyes, even when I couldn’t see it. 

Many of us play our part until the ‘is this it?’ feeling starts to creep in. We are happier when we let go of this expectation, that our life has to be perfect, and I’m so much happier knowing that this isn’t where my story ends.

When you’re not doing what you were meant to be doing, your body knows, even if your mind doesn’t want to acknowledge it. It starts as a whisper and when you continue to ignore it, it develops into screaming just to get your attention. Your body is the ultimate litmus test. Your mind can play games but your body doesn’t lie. It was letting me know that it was time to make a change because I was miserable.

But I want to assure you that everything you’ve done up to this point is worthwhile. Nothing you’ve learned or experienced is ever wasted. Don’t feel guilty for not continuing with this original line of work. You’ve developed transferrable skills and spent years acquiring experience, and it will all be used. It will all come into play in what comes next for you. You may have had lessons to learn, so try to see it from that perspective. It’s what you needed at the time. 

If you’re anything like me, you set out to get your degree and get a secure well-paying job and you did it. It’s given you a baseline for your identity, and while there may have been things that went along with that that may not have been well suited to you, you showed up, you were responsible, and you were the grown-up. You did good work, but it has taken a toll on you. 

Now, you may be looking for permission to be done with that part of your life. Give yourself that permission and look forward to what’s next for you. 

Human behavior has always intrigued me. I’m fascinated by why we do what we do. So I began really looking into this perfectionism concept. I started asking the women I knew, do you believe that you need to be perfect? I had assumed that the answer would obviously be yes, but nearly everyone said the exact opposite. Then, I began to wonder if I was the one who had it all wrong. 

That’s when I realized they were giving me what they assumed to be the right answer. The answer that said, of course, they know that the pursuit of perfection is a waste of time and energy, yet their results were telling a very different story. It’s back to the fact that knowing isn’t the same as doing. That’s when I realized I was asking the wrong question. Instead of a binary yes or no question that might be construed as having a right or wrong answer, what I really wanted to explore was where we saw ourselves on a continuum of how driven we were to do everything in our lives to perfection. 

We do tend to hold ourselves to unreasonably high standards, and we do tend to believe that no matter the outcome, we should have done better. Perfectionism is a complex web of lifelong beliefs and expectations all wrapped up in fear. And while I used to think it was an admirable trait, I now work really hard to overcome it, but even when I do, it tends to be inconsistent and confusing because it’s what is so familiar and comfortable to me. I’ve grown accustomed to my unforgiving taskmaster and inner critic that’s always with me, rehashing and ruminating over my mistakes, keeping me awake when I really needed to be sleeping.

There are two types of perfectionism that plague many of us: 

1. socially prescribed perfectionism (we think other people won’t accept or value us unless we’re perfect)
2. self-imposed perfectionism (we’re the ones pushing ourselves to reach our own impossible standards)

Either way, it’s a nagging presence that’s constantly reminding us of all the ways we have failed to meet our own expectations and those of others.

Now we’re smart, savvy women who intelligently know the pursuit of perfection is absurd, yet it still rules our lives because we still buy into some outdated myths about what being perfect will do for us. Over the years, I’ve tried many things to overcome my perfectionist tendencies. Some have been more successful than others, at least for a little while. 

For many perfectionists, myself included, procrastination is common, but I’ve learned the hard way that procrastination is not a good strategy for coping with perfectionism. At the end of our lives, we do not want to be tormented by regret for all the things we haven’t gotten around to doing. 

The root cause of procrastination is fear. It’s a fear of making mistakes and a fear of not having the control we think we need. I have promised myself that I will do everything I can, not to wind up plagued by this kind of regret. I definitely have a perfectionist streak and I still procrastinate at times. I can now see the link that my procrastination is a symptom of my perfectionism. 

It’s also a protective strategy my brain employs to stop me before I make a mistake, but then it becomes a bit of a habit. It’s that terrible feeling when you know you need to be doing something, but you do pretty much anything else in order to avoid it. So instead, we have to learn to appreciate our mistakes because that means we’re trying new things. 

The act of taking an idea and making it real means bringing it from a state of perfection in our minds into a state of relative imperfection in reality. That’s exactly where I get caught up in trying to be perfect. I don’t even want to get started because I’ve convinced myself that my idea will never reflect the vision I have in my head of what I want it to be. But it needs to exist before it can be improved, before it has a chance of being what we ultimately want it to be, and the more practice we have making mistakes, the better. 

We should be going out of our way to put ourselves intentionally in situations where we’ll screw up. And while that sounds like a good plan, I have to admit that makes me very uncomfortable. I want to embrace ‘done is better than perfect’, but I’m not fully believing that for my own work. I have a visceral reaction to doing ‘good work’ when I have outrageously high standards for myself.

I tend to see my work as a direct reflection of me, not just something I do. So when people criticize my work, it feels like they are criticizing me personally. I struggle to graciously accept feedback in the way it was intended, as helpful and constructive. I’m reluctant to finish things when they just don’t measure up to what I was expecting of myself. And then I’m judging myself by saying I don’t finish what I start. 

It’s hard for me to admit now, but I used to think my perfectionism was a strength. I do realize now it’s a weakness and something I need to watch for every single day. I am now trying to reframe my obsessive attention to detail as conscientiousness, but even that’s a stretch.

My perfectionism affects me more on my personal projects than on my work endeavors. Somehow, I’m able to put my best work into my work assignments and then submit without the same concern. Perhaps it’s a question of confidence. I’m confident in my ability at the office. I’m good at my job. I know what needs to be done and how to do it, and I know when it’s done.

I seem to have less perspective on my personal projects. I’m still trying to embrace the saying that ‘progress is better than perfection’. Done is done, except when it feels like it’s never done. Sometimes it feels like I’m settling. 

I’m still learning that good enough is not necessarily a bad thing or a cop-out. There is such a thing as fit for purpose, and that’s really another way of saying it’s good enough. It’s more a matter of releasing myself from unrealistic expectations because more time and effort doesn’t always equate to better. I keep trying to tell myself to find that balance because, after a certain point, there’s definitely diminishing returns. 

But what does good enough mean? How much is enough? 

With knowledge and skill, it seems you can never have enough, but that’s a trap. When I’m feeling insecure, my ‘tell’ is that I fixate on getting more and more education and acquiring more credentials. I become preoccupied with how much experience I have. Then, I come to believe that I need to know more before I’ll consider myself up to the task or even remotely qualified. 

I’m reluctant to jump in and learn as I go because I’ve convinced myself that I must know it all before I’ll make that leap. I’m striving to be an expert, yet I’m still uncomfortable with seeing myself as one, when really I already am. It feels too presumptuous. I feel like if I’m going to declare it, I’d better be able to back it up, and I have a hard time believing that I can so I worry what others will think. 

It’s hard for me to stop researching, feeling that need to acquire more knowledge, because I’m convinced that I need to know a subject backwards and forwards before I’m comfortable offering an opinion. I feel like I need to know everything there is to know before I’ll consider myself remotely competent, when I’m already capable of doing it well. But there will always be one more book to read, one more class to take, one more certification to earn, before I can consider myself an expert. 

This is definitely a function of insecurity. It’s time I understood that I don’t need to know everything before I start. It’s okay to pick up knowledge as I go along, and it’s okay to rely on the knowledge and skills of others to fill in those gaps. Being an expert comes just as much from doing, as it does from credentials. 

I’m an achiever and by most standards considered successful, but I struggle to see myself that way. I still have a ton of insecurities related to my level of knowledge or skill in the professional arena. Those feelings crop up most in times of transition, when faced with a new challenge or when tackling an unfamiliar or high-profile assignment. 

I sense the expectation to be ‘that good’ every time, when sometimes I have no idea how I pulled it off the first time. Then, I find myself asking, how did this happen? Do I even deserve to be here? They’ll expect me to be competent down the road and I’m not at all sure I will be.

I see one success as unrelated to the next. I’ve done well up to now, but as the disclaimer goes, “Past performance is not indicative of future results”. I’ve even caught myself thinking that maybe I should take a job far below my abilities or aspirations because I’m not deserving of mentally challenging and financially rewarding opportunities, all because I don’t think I’m good enough. 

No one seems to understand what I’m going through. Those closest to me dismiss my self-doubt and insist that I’m worrying about nothing. They have grown impatient when their reassurances of my ‘brilliance’ are constantly brushed aside. They want to be supportive, but when I perpetually agonize over striking out, only to consistently hit it out of the park, after a while, my most staunch supporters find it hard to sympathize. 

These irrational fears were sparked early on. I now understand that I’m not the only one who feels this way. I guess feeling like this is normal and to be expected. It’s one of the many reasons why fully capable people feel like imposters. I know for me, it started from an early age. When I came home with all A’s, my parents would ask what happened to the marks when I didn’t get perfect. That just perpetuated my perfectionist tendencies. I always did well, so my parents came to expect it. 

Kids today are lavished with praise, no matter what they do. But if everything you do is considered remarkable, you never learn to differentiate between good and great. 

We have grown so dependent on constant validation that if our professors or employers fail to continually feed that, we start questioning our performance. There is so much emphasis placed on effort over outcome, where everyone gets a trophy just for showing up. I think this creates confusion because there’s a lack of correlation between results and praise. 

Those early messages we receive about achievement, success, and failure run deep. It might take a lifetime to uncover and overcome childhood messaging, but we can start right now, rewiring our thinking in the moment by eliminating these types of thoughts.

Some of these were my favorites, maybe they sound familiar: 

• If I were really smart, I would always know what to say. 
• Never raise your hand unless you are a hundred percent sure you are right. 
• Don’t ask for help, it’s a sign of weakness. 
• Always overprepare because you are less likely to be criticized. 

I want to invite you to swap that old rule book for more reasonable rules. Reframe competence in more realistic terms, you just might instantly feel more confident. Even if you are extremely motivated, success is rarely satisfying because you believe you could have done better and you should have done better. Because with perfectionism, nothing short of perfect is acceptable. 

It’s a hard habit to break because it’s self-reinforcing. When you expect yourself and your work to always be perfect, it’s not a matter of if you will be disappointed, but when. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you’ll never act. 

Adopt the startup methodology of putting a version out there, getting feedback, improving on it, and then creating a new and improved version. This doesn’t just apply to new consumer electronics. It can also apply to you in your career. You can always course correct as you go. 

At some point, we have to decide for ourselves that it really is good enough. You don’t have to give up your high standards or your quest for excellence, but not everything deserves your hundred percent. Be selective about where you put your efforts. Don’t waste time fussing over routine tasks, where adequate effort is all that is required. Don’t agonize over everything because sometimes, good is good enough. 

Perfectionist tendencies are actually a barrier. It doesn’t enable your success, but rather it inhibits it. Perfectionism, at its core, really has nothing to do with getting it right or having high standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move forward. 

Talent has remarkably little to do with greatness. You can learn to do any number of things, if you’re willing to work at it, with repeated practice, based on targeted measures and goals. Natural talent isn’t required to be competent, and having talent doesn’t guarantee success. With practice, we get better. And when we get better, we feel better. So effort is far more important than natural ability. 

Challenges are often opportunities in disguise. And remember, real success takes time. 

And that’s it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Understanding Perfectionism at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode fifty-two.

Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I’m on Instagram @cindyesliger and my email address is info@cindyesliger.com. And if you liked this show, please tell a friend. Subscribe, rate, and review. 

Until next week, I’m Cindy Esliger. Thanks for joining me.