Advice for Perfectionists & Procrastinators

Perfectionism is often viewed as like this badge of honor. Oh, I'm a perfectionist. That's why I work so hard. That's why I am the way that I am. That's why I try to, you know, make sure that my stuff is as good as I can before I put it out. People proudly proclaim, I'm a perfectionist. Like it's this sign of high standards or like exceptional productivity. But the truth is perfectionism is just some sort of fear that is disguised as perfectionism. Perfectionism is the mask that you wear to hide some sort of fear that's behind it. Perfectionism is the excuse not to jump because it's not ready yet. I'm not ready yet. I'm still finishing this up. I'm still making it even better. But the real question needs to be, why am I afraid of jumping in the first place? Because the jump means exposure. That's why. The leap means being seen and putting yourself out there. And being seen means that I might be rejected or judged or other people might throw their opinions at me. That's the root that most of us don't want to name. And so instead, what do we do? We call it, oh, I have high standards. That's what we say. And once we understand this and we understand how much perfectionism is actually holding us back, we can begin to overcome it and live a life more freely. When you look at perfectionism, like what is perfectionism really? Perfectionism isn't about being perfect. In fact, perfection is a completely impossible goal. And you know it is. You really do know that it is once you take a step back. Like what is perfect anyways? You ever ask yourself that? So no matter how hard you try, there's always going to be something that you could have done better or differently. That's what we call perfectionism. Oh yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying to make it better before I release it. So what is it really about? Like I said, it's the fear that's behind it. And usually it's the fear of not being good enough, or the fear of failure, or the fear of judgment, or the fear of rejection, or the fear of other people's opinions. And if we dig even deeper than all of that, it's this fear that if people see the real you, the messy, flawed human, then they'll walk away. That's not a productivity issue. That's a wound. And a wound needs compassion, not criticism. The reason why we're afraid of putting ourselves out there is because we don't want to be rejected, or other people's opinions, or failure, whatever it might be. And so we're thinking if I am rejected, that's the equivalent of somebody walking away from me, and that's not the productivity. That's the part of me that really needs compassion more than anything else. And so we have these fears that pop up, and these fears can paralyze us, making us believe that if we work just a little bit harder, or if we just wait until everything is flawless, then we will avoid that pain, or that rejection, or that disappointment in some sort of way. And the example I always love, and I wrote about this in my book, for perfectionism, is basically if you go to a friend's house that you've known from work for 10 years, say, and you go to their house, and you happen to go into one of their rooms, and you realize, oh my God, there's all these beautiful paintings everywhere. And you're looking at these paintings, and you're like, oh my God, I didn't even know you painted. This is amazing. This is amazing, too. Why don't you put your art somewhere? Why don't you try to sell your art? And they're like, oh no, they're not ready yet. This one right here, it's almost done, but I still need to fix some things. And this one right here, I also need to fix some things. It's just not ready yet. I'm just kind of a perfectionist. Really, what that person is afraid of is showing their art to somebody and being rejected. Really, what they're afraid of is doing an art show and having a whole bunch of people come, and they see their art, and they look at the price tag, and they're like, oh my God, that's $1,000? I wouldn't pay $10 for that, because people feel like this is what I'm putting out, and this is a piece of me. And if somebody rejects this piece of me, then it shows me that I am a reject in some sort of way. And so it's not laziness. It's definitely not laziness. And so if you look at it, what is it exactly? Well, it's self-protection. Because if it's never out there for the world to see, I can never be judged. And we will be right back. Hey, if you've ever wanted to be coached personally by me, right now is your chance. I just opened the doors to Mindset 2.0, which is a 12-week system that's designed to help you finally break free from procrastination, to stop overthinking, stop holding yourself back so that you can create the life that you want. But the doors are going to close in just a few days, and the first few people who join are going to get a massive discount plus access to exclusive bonuses that I've never put out before. And so if you've been waiting for a sign, this is it. All you need to do is go to coachwithrob.com right now, once again, coachwithrob.com, or you can click the link that's down in the description, and I'll see you on the inside. And now, back to the show. And so perfectionism, more than anything else, is a coping mechanism. It's not a virtue. Sorry, guys. It's a way of controlling or trying to control the outcomes in an attempt to protect ourselves from vulnerability. The fear behind it, like if you look closely at perfectionism, you'll find that perfectionism is built on usually a different version of three core fears. Number one, the fear of failure. We're afraid of failing. But perfectionists often equate mistakes or failure in some sort of way with personal failure. If something goes wrong, then I think that it reflects who I am as a person. And this creates this immense amount of pressure to always do things right to avoid some form of future pain. But if you look at it, you can kind of reframe it. You can reframe and say, hey, like, messing up or failure isn't a reflection of my self-worth. It's more than anything else. It's a reflection of my willingness to try. I would rather have willingness to try than not do something. And so you can actually get more self-worth just from trying than by attaching your self-worth to if you fail or if you succeed or what other people think of you. People who never fail are usually the ones that never risk. And if you don't risk anything in your life, you risk everything. Failing at something doesn't make you a failure. Everyone has failed at something. The most successful people in the world have failed more times than the unsuccessful people have tried. And so failure and success are not two opposite things. They're really two sides to the exact same coin. In order for me to get to having a successful life and to getting to whatever success means, joy, happiness, love, massive business, multi-millionaire, whatever it is, I need to fail on the way as well. And so that's one of the biggest fears that really holds people back is the fear of failure. The second fear that pops up in that is the fear of judgment. Many people who are perfectionists fear being judged by other people because they probably had a lot of judgment in their childhood. And so they worry that if their work or their paintings or their appearance, whatever it might be, isn't flawless, then people will think less of them. And this constant need for approval leads to endless tweaking and refining and often preventing them from finishing any task. Social media has only amplified this fear to toxic levels. You put up a post, one post, and you get one comment or you get one meh reaction, and our inner critic just like can spiral, right? But you're not other people's opinion of you. You are who you decide to be even when nobody claps. It's not about what other people think of you. It's what you think of you. And that's really what is the most important in life. So that's the second fear that's really important in that. And the third fear that's really important is the fear of vulnerability. At its core, perfectionism is about trying to avoid vulnerability. So by striving for unattainable perfection, perfectionists think that they can protect themselves from criticism or rejection or shame. But vulnerability is part of being a human. Avoiding vulnerability with other people, even especially in a romantic relationship or with your children, but just in general, avoiding it only leads to more stress and frustration. So vulnerability isn't a weakness. Vulnerability, when you really look at, like when we think about being vulnerable, we think that other people will think that we're being weak. But when we see another person who's being vulnerable, we never think they're weak. We're always like, oh my God, that person's so courageous. And you have to realize you're going to have people think that your vulnerability is courageous. They're going to see you put your paintings out and be like, oh my God, that's amazing. I want to put my paintings out. You can't build a meaningful life without it. Perfection isn't achievable. It's just perfectionism is fear-based. It's also really unrealistic. It can lead to a lot of burnout or stress or frustration or anxiety. And so what we need to do is we need to overcome our own perfectionism. So how do we overcome perfectionism if it's this deep-rooted fear? Well, one of the biggest keys is to learning to embrace imperfection. To look at imperfection as a beautiful thing instead of something that we're trying to avoid, and to look at something that seems like this huge task that we need to go after and go, how can I take this and make it smaller steps so it's not this huge thing I need to go for? How can I take some more manageable risks? And then look at my risks, and as my fears start to come up, start to work through my fears as they come up. So let's talk about some strategies to help with this perfectionism that you might have. The first thing that I think is really important is to shift your mindset around it, and to shift your mindset from perfection to progress. I care about progress more than perfection. One of the biggest shifts that you can make is moving from this perfectionist mindset to a progress mindset. So rather than aiming for everything to be perfect, focus on just progress and growth. Look at something and think, what can I learn from this? How can I improve next time? And when you start embracing this mindset, it encourages you to have action and to fail in some sort of way, and to learn, okay, well, if I do fail, then I'll learn from it. So failure isn't necessarily bad, and it reduces this fear of failure that you have. For example, if you're waiting until a project is perfect before you share it, recognize that once you share it and get feedback, the feedback can improve it. And so if you're looking, you go, well, then I should probably share it as soon as I possibly can, because that will help me progress more. And that's what I'm focusing on, which is progress, not perfection, which leads to more success in the long run. And so progress just says, hey, take the next step, one small step at a time. That's really how momentum is built. That's the first thing. Second thing, start acknowledging your fears. Perfectionism thrives on avoidance. And so we avoid putting ourselves out there because we fear, once again, rejection or criticism or failure in some sort of way. The more that we avoid these failings, the more that those feelings actually have control over us. And so it's time to acknowledge the fears that are behind your perfectionism, and sit there and ask yourself, what am I really afraid of? If I want to take action and I'm not taking action, I'm afraid of something. It's that simple. You're afraid of something if you're not taking action when you want to be taking action. What am I really afraid of? Another way of asking yourself is, what am I trying to protect myself from? When you identify your fears, they lose power, because fears, when they're in our brain and they're not written down and talked about, are weird and obscure, and they seem like they're these huge things. But when you write them down, you're like, that's really not that bad. Fear becomes less intimidating when you name it and just confront it directly. And fear loses its grip on you when you expose it to the light. And so one of the things I recommend is keeping a fear journal. Whenever some sort of fear pops up and you notice it, take your journal out, maybe a notes tab in your phone, and write down, I was afraid of this. And the reason why I think this is important is because it's not to dwell on your fears. It's more than anything else to decode your fears and start to notice your own personal patterns. This makes your fears, when they pop up, seem smaller. They're more manageable. They're often irrational more than anything else. And you start to look at them and you're like, that's crazy. That's not going to happen. Like yesterday, I was running a live call for Mindset University, which is weekly group coaching sessions that I do. And we were talking about playing your fears out, like just going the next step and the next step and the next step and the next step. And every single person was like, once I actually named my fear and I tried to play my fear out and I asked myself, what's the worst that could happen? It wasn't that bad. But when it was in my head, it seemed like it was so bad. And so that's the second thing. All right. Number three is to practice self-compassion. Perfectionism is often driven by self-criticism. Perfectionists can be really, really hard on themselves, believing that if it's anything short of flawless, then it's a personal failure. And when you think like that, number one, it's super toxic. And number two, you're going to be holding yourself back your entire life. And so your inner critic might sound like it's helping you, like it's actually helping you make some better stuff, but it's really hijacking your self-worth and it's destroying your life. And so try this. What I would recommend is giving your inner critic a ridiculous name, something silly that's like Perfectionist Pam. And then when Perfectionist Pam shows up, every time she shows up, just say, hey, hey, Perfectionist Pam. Hey, thanks for trying to protect me. I don't need you. And I'm just going to get back to being brave and taking imperfect action. So therefore, your inner critic doesn't seem like this evil devil that lives inside of your head. It's like, oh, it's just Perfectionist Pam. Nobody's afraid of her. And so instead of making it scary, this inner critic, make it silly so that you can distance yourself from that inner critic. And so try practicing self-compassion, treating yourself with more kindness and understanding, especially when you make mistakes. And when you feel this urge to be perfect, just ask yourself, like, if somebody else that I love came over to me and said that this is what they were dealing with, would I hold this person to impossibly high standards as well, or would I just give them love in the moment? And then you'll realize, oh, I should just give myself love in the moment. So that's number three. Number four is to take action despite fear. Ultimately, the best way to beat perfectionism is to take action, especially when you're afraid to take action. And it might feel like, you know, it might be hitting send on an email that's not perfect yet. Oh, my God. Sharing a draft of your work. Oh, my God. Or applying for a job that you're not 100% qualified for. Oh, my God. Like just taking action in general and taking action just builds confidence and helps you realize that imperfections, they're not the end of the world. They're not going to kill you. And every time that you take action in the face of fear, you weaken this grip that perfectionism has on you. Because here's the truth. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's choosing to move forward in spite of that fear being there. It's not going, oh, I'm going to wait until the fear is gone. It's going, no, I feel the fear and I'm going to do it anyways. Every act of doing it scares chips away at this lie that you have to be perfect first. So really what it comes down to is you trying to remove yourself from this perfectionism. Because perfectionism can feel like this pursuit of excellence. But it's often just some fear that's wearing a really clever disguise. And so when you recognize these fears that drive us, whether it's the fear of judgment or the fear of failure, the fear of vulnerability, or some other fear around that, we can notice it and we can begin to loosen this hold that perfectionism has on our lives. And when you overcome perfectionism, you realize that you're embracing your imperfection. You learn from your mistakes and you focus on progress rather than being flawless. Well, that's where freedom comes from. That freedom comes from letting go of your perfectionism. And then you can start taking real actual action and steps forward in your life to build a life that you want. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. Based off of what you've been watching recently, YouTube thinks you should watch this video next. It's perfectly crafted for you. And if you don't want to miss any more videos and you want to subscribe, make sure you hit that button right there.