The Recovering Perfectionists' Toolkit

TRUTH #1 

Perfection is a lie, and we can stop trying to achieve it right now. We’ve tried SO hard for SO long. If it was legit possible, we would have already achieved it. You don’t need to keep trying. And you know this is true in your gut. We all do. So, let’s get off this dang merry-go-round of crazy. Right now. No matter how long you’ve been riding it, stop and tell yourself, ‘No more, we’re done.’

TRUTH #2:

It’s really freaking exhausting! For just a moment think about all the time, energy, money and headspace you’ve given in the attempt to get something that isn’t real. It’s like trying to grab smoke. You can’t. Now, be compassionate and graceful with yourself. This is not an invitation to beat yourself up! We’ve all done that a lot, and it doesn’t help. I ask you to think about everything you’ve given in the pursuit of perfection, to see what it costs you, and decide if you want to continue doing it. That’s all. A simple looksie at its price, and a decision if you want to continue. Skip the drama and beatdown! We aren’t doing that anymore.

TRUTH #3:

You’ve got to find out WHY you were killing yourself to try to be perfect. Without knowing your ‘why’ and the thoughts you were thinking that drove your actions, you’ll keep striving for the impossible. You’ve got to write it down. It’s SO much more powerful and effective to write it down. It’s science. Ask your brain ‘why’ you’re trying to be perfect. And KEEP asking ‘why’ until you get to the real reason. The reason/thought that’s way down in your gut that maybe no one else knows. Without knowing that key thought, you’ll stay in the insanity. Keep asking and writing until you know your truth. With that truth, you can make changes from a place of power and authority, instead of giving your power to the person or goal you were trying to be perfect for. 

YOUR TOOLS

• Brain dumps/thought downloads - Grab a fun journal or notebook and just word vomit everything that’s in your brain around why you feel the need to be perfect. And don’t accept ‘I don’t know’ as an answer. Keep asking yourself ‘why’ until you get to your root cause. This will be SO important for you to know. That information, your real ‘why’, will allow you to begin asking yourself if it’s true and if you want to keep that behaviour.

• Don’t avoid your feelings - When we strive for perfection, we’re trying to avoid a feeling. If you obsessed about your grades, maybe you were hungry for your parents’ attention. You didn’t want to feel unloved or unimportant. If you try to be the perfect mom and do everything, maybe deep down you feel like a terrible mom because you don’t enjoy playing games with the kids 24/7. There’s some feeling we are trying to suppress or run away from and we think, ‘If I was perfect at this, then I wouldn’t feel “X”.’ You’ve got to be willing to sit with the uncomfortable feeling or you’ll keep driving yourself crazy trying to achieve the impossible.

• B- work - This idea and practice hit me like a ton of bricks. Perfectionists want everything to be an A+, and anything less than that basically means we suck. But striving for perfection keeps us stuck in quicksand. We keep tweaking the email before we hit ‘send’. We have a ‘pre-conversation’ in our minds 50 times before we have the real one with our spouse, boss or BFF. We don’t take an art class because we’re not Picasso right off the bat.

But I’ve noticed something over the past few years. I’m really drawn to, and resonate with, people who are real, honest and show their humanity. I used to judge that and think, ‘Sheesh, they could have done that a lot better.’ But now, it’s my goal. To get something out there and stop redoing it 10 times first. This saves me SO much energy and time! I realised it was more important to send the email, take the art class, have the conversation no matter what, because perfection is an illusion, and I was wasting my precious life trying to catch smoke. 

• Take action before you think you’re ‘ready’- We wait, and reschedule, and put off, do retake after retake or never act at all. We’re often waiting for a certified letter from the universe telling us what action to take and when. It’s never gonna come. We just have to try stuff and see what happens. And start eliminating the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Our brains never want to be wrong. Ever. So, we don’t take the first or next step, and our goals and dreams just rot and die.

• It’s time to take the leap and see what happens - 99.9% of the time, the decision you’re contemplating is not life or death. No one will be harmed no matter which choice you make. Take the information you have and make the decision. Not the perfect decision or the right decision. THE decision. And move on. You can reassess down the road and make a change if necessary, with new information. As my dad used to say, ‘Shit, or get off the pot.’

• Compare and despair - We’ve all done this. We see someone’s post on social media and think, ‘they’ve got it all together’ or, ‘their house is so clean and tidy’ or, ‘she’s so much skinnier than me.’ When we think these kinds of things, we’re screwed. It’s a lose-lose situation. Instead of comparing yourself to someone (or someone’s perceived situation or social media ‘highlight reel’), look at it as what is possible. For example, she has 3 kids, and her house is tidier than ours, so it’s possible. She has created a successful online business, so that means I can too. She lost her baby weight, so it’s possible for me too. Celebrate that person and then let those circumstances inspire you. You can have it too! No one has a monopoly on anything you want in your life. Be inspired and go for it!

Start practising these tools. Use them when you catch yourself wanting to do something perfectly. If you liked this tool kit and want to learn more about life coaching with me, you can get all the details at JennBaronCoaching.com

Jenn Baron is a Certified Life Coach. She helps women see what's going on in their brains, decide if it's working for them, and share easy-to-implement tools that get them the results they want. 

Why coaching? Jenn used to be really anxious, a perfectionist and a people-pleaser. If it was in the description, she could check the box. One day, she was listening to a podcast, and the host was interviewing a life coach. The simplicity of what coaching is and how it helped her blew Jenn's mind! From that day forward, Jenn was on a mission to learn all she could about coaching, work with as many women as possible to help them feel less anxious and stressed and enjoy their lives! Thrive, not just survive!

Jenn does causal coaching, which gets to the root of why you're where you're at. Because she knows that if she simply tells you what to do, nothing will change. It's like putting a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle band-aid on a gunshot wound. 

To learn more about how Jenn can help you, check out her site or IG.