Break Away from Perfect: Just Get that Sh*t Done
Hi there. Welcome to One Day You Finally Knew: A Podcast for Folx Breaking Away. I'm your host, Jessica Chasnoff. And I am thrilled to be here, a partner walking alongside you, as we explore and uncover what no longer serves us and how we might be able to let those things go and set them down. Let's see where our walk takes us today.
Well, hello there. Oh, so good to be with you again. Today, I want to talk about breaking away from perfectionism. And I particularly want to use a quote, which is attributed to Sheryl Sandberg, that was circulating on the socials this week.
Although honestly, I don't think that the person who posted it attributed it to Sheryl Sandberg. But, that's that. The quote is "done is better than perfect". And, uh, I really, wow. I really needed that this week. I've talked before about how certain feeling states can immobilize us, but there is a particular kind of immobilization that perfectionism can cause. Perfectionism isn't necessarily what people think. I mean, there is a quality of "this needs to be perfect or I can't do it".
For sure. But there's also this quality of "If I'm not good at things. If I'm not really excelling at this thing, I'm not going to do it at all because it is too painful to feel like I'm not good at things". Okay. So that is actually an element of perfectionism that I often work on with people. And that's something I've had to work on with myself.
This other piece about things needing to be perfect. That's what I'm going to focus on today. So, knowing that there's different facets to perfectionism, I might come back to that at another point, but for now, I really want to look at "done is better than perfect". I'll give an example from my own life, what happened this week, and we'll also talk about how I've worked on this with some clients. Or really, truly, witnessed the work that my clients are doing. Right. I'm just walking alongside. If I had an attorney, they'd probably tell me that every time I talk about clients, I need to give the disclaimer that they are composites.
Names are changed if names are even used. Um, and I realized I didn't do that last week. But that is always, always, always the way that it is. Even when something sounds really specific, there is no way that the person, if they were to listen to this podcast, that the client would know that it was them because of my mad amalgamating skills. So, today, like always when I present these clients just remember that it's not one person. It's a fusion experience.
What I'll do here is just say a little bit about how perfect gets in the way of getting things done. And truly, I don't know, you know, I imagine this might've come from Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In", that quote. I've heard the book is great. I have not read it. So I'm just going to speak to that quote and my perspective on it. And how this need, I would even say it's, I'm using myself here, you know, just saying. This kind of compulsive need for the thing to be perfect can actually keep us from doing the thing.
So the issue that I was working on this week was, I'm going to be giving a presentation. Well, I think I am, I don't know. I just turned in my application and they may decide they don't want me. Which actually, I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. But, I am going to be giving a continuing education presentation on gentleness and self-compassion for therapists. I'm actually calling it "Help for the Helper: Cultivating Gentleness and Self-Compassion for Our Self-Care Toolkit". And I'm going to be giving that to a local psychological organization. And this is my first presentation with them.
And it's interesting because I, from the very beginning of my career, I've always been super focused on doing the work with the clients and not so much doing the research. Perhaps it would have been different if my experience of learning how to do research method and design actually was, how shall I say, friendlier to women?
I'll just leave that there. Um, but it was not. And, you know, I was just so eager to kind of get through. Doing the research stuff that I had to do. My dissertation, in graduate school was a phenomenological study. So, you know, I wasn't doing research method and design. I wasn't going in and busting out any stats.
I interviewed women about their experience of romantic love heartbreak, and that was basically putting the interviews together and creating some meaning units and very little need to understand math, which is something that again was never, I wasn't really offered math instruction in a way that met my learning needs. So, research is not really something that I've had much to do with. I have always been clinically based. And so, when it comes to doing some kind of presentation, I've, I've been a speaker before. Not for a while. But it hasn't been for a psychological organization.
It's just been, me doing my thing and yes, I am a psychologist. But it hasn't been a presentation for other psychologists. So, uh, I said that I would do this thing and then proceeded to kind of freak the fuck out because I, I had to get this application together. By the way, pardon the congestion. I'm just realizing, you know, if I'm hearing it, you're hearing it. So...
Might be TMI, but I probably should have done a neti pot before I recorded. I had a run today. And so, all the air floaty things are up in my nose. So, anyway. Note to self . Neti pot next time before recording episode.
So, yeah, I sat with this application and also had so many other things going on. There's another story behind not realizing what the application entailed until after I had said yes to the thing, and I can talk more about that perhaps in another episode. But, the long of the short is that you know, I decided to do this thing.
I'm sitting with this application and I'm freaking out. Because despite the fact that I have nearly two decades of experience doing this and that I have a thriving practice. And. Knock wood, have literally never had to hustle. I could look at that and say okay, that means I gotta be doing something right.
When it comes to giving a presentation for my peers, I just kind of, um, risk meltdown. Honestly. I mean, I did not have a meltdown, but I felt near meltdown, uh, quite a bit before getting this in. And, I reached a point where I started to get immobilized because I, I just felt like this application had to be perfect. I mean, not even the presentation yet, you know, just the application.
And this quote reminded me, I just need to get this motherfucker done. I mean, I just have to turn it in and, you know, come what may. Come, what may.
Because, I will say this about any partnership, whether it is friendship or lovership, or some kind of partnership with any kind of organization. If I'm not right for you, then you're not right for me and vice versa. So. There was this way that I kind of lost sight of that because I was so concerned about getting it right.
And so I was so happy to see that quote this week, because it really was just like, okay, you know what? Just get it done and let go of it being perfect. I hit submit. I sent an email saying it's submitted and it is what it is. Right. One of the little online tabs that I had to fill in was," what is your expertise in this area?" I'm going to tell you the honest, 100% truth here. I said, "I don't claim to be an expert on anything but myself. I'm offering my near two decades of experience offering this to myself and my clients.
And I understand if saying that I am not an expert on this means that I'm not right as a speaker. Period. Which was incredibly freeing. There's none of this like, oh God am I, I want to be right for them. Uh, just having said that and submitted it and, it's done. I can feel so much more energy in my body. So that was healing and feels really nice. So, again, it's always like, this is an ever-growing edge for me. I think perhaps that's why that question of being an expert, you know, I'm always working on my stuff simultaneously while I'm assisting my precious clients in working on theirs.
There is just about nothing that a client can say to me where I could be like, "oh, I 100% know how to deal with that". Right. Because I don't. Because I'm in it with you, you know, I struggle too. And it's just part of this dance of life that we're in.
That's the way it is. So. I have worked with so many clients who've experienced this, "it has to be perfect" and so it doesn't get done. I'm thinking of this client. It was her dissertation. She was brilliant. Oh, man. Like so many of us, just did not see the gifts that she had. She was an art historian and knew so much about art and, and it was really beautiful. I mean, talk about an expert.
I mean, I looked at this person and I was like, wow. But she had, I don't know if you're familiar with the term ABD, all but dissertation. She was " All but dissertation." She was done with everything but was basically being threatened, for lack of a better word. I mean, it kind of was that, by her dissertation chair, that, if you don't, you've been working on this, I think it was, she was there already like two years or three years, maybe beyond, you know, and they were like, if you don't finish your dissertation, we're done. I'm closing out the tab here. And that means you're going to have to start over. And she was just utterly immobilized.
What she had was so incredible, but it didn't feel perfect. And so. It just stopped her in her tracks. What we were able to do over time was, and I I talk about this a lot when it comes to setting any goal and I bring this into my coaching work for sure. Which is this idea that we have to break goals up into digestible bits. I talk about it like Everest. If you're looking at it like getting to the top of Mount Everest, you are just, you're never going to get there. You, anybody who climbs Mount Everest needs to stop at base camps to adjust to the altitude.
If they don't, they can get sick, they can die. Right. And even though this isn't going to kill ya, most likely, although, I will tell you at some point, there was some suicidal ideation in the picture. So, I mean, it was pretty serious. She was just looking at this end game and so we needed to break it up into these digestible bits, which we did.
And that was great. And then it was also about., I didn't say it as eloquently as, Sheryl Sandberg, but, this idea of done is better than perfect. Get this thing in. And here's another thing that we do. I'm guilty of it too. We have a hard time seeing how gifted we are. We don't see ourselves as amazing. We don't see ourselves as awesome. We don't see ourselves as worthy. Right. There's just an entirely different lens that we're looking at ourselves through. It's like, I think of all the lenses for Snapchat or Instagram and it's like, we're looking at ourselves through the sack of shit lens, while other people are seeing us through a beautiful, clear lens.
And they also might not be seeing us clearly. I mean, they could see us through a lens with a halo on it. And then, of course, we fall off the pedestal. We've talked a little bit about that. So, the lens that we see ourselves through makes all the difference. And that's what we're looking through when we're like, this thing needs to be perfect.
And so, breaking it up. We worked with that. And it was also about the question "what would perfect look like?" " What would it mean if it was perfect?" Perfect isn't actually, what is needed to get this woman, her dissertation so she can move on into her career pursuits. That's a really, really important piece. When we asked that question, so what would it mean if it was perfect? There was a way that it all kind of started to break down and we were able to get into all this stuff around her self-worth and how that saboteur comes in, right.
I don't think I'm worthy. So I'm gonna not do this dissertation. And then I'm not going to get my Ph.D. And then they're going to tell me that I gotta start over again. And see, I was never able to get my Ph.D. Right. So, we were able to really start unpacking all of that bullshit about her self-worth. Which is so much of what is behind what we think is perfection. What is going to make us feel like we're worthwhile? If we had been taught from the beginning by our caregivers that we had value and worth, and our caregivers were compassionate with us. And not just compassionate with us, but if our caregiver had a partner.
Let's say we had two parents, or if you were raised by grandparents, seeing them be compassionate to each other. If they were critical to others, critical to their spouse. Right. We picked all that up. In the case of this particular client, there was always the messaging of "you're not enough" from the parents and in the family system.
So she had internalized that. She'd internalized the "not-enough-ness.'. And then was her own pain maker with regards to her Ph.D., the delay on finishing the dissertation. Once we were able to unpack that, once we were able to work on a little bit of mindfulness and, and have her really
you know, again, the mindfulness is the art of being in the present moment, but it's also about like, what is happening in this moment? What am I actually doing to myself here? When she was able to get more acquainted with her self-talk, and how negative it was, and how she'd start to spiral.
I did a little episode about self-talk before. We're never completely free of that. But the more we work with it, the more it becomes automatic. And the more quickly we notice it.And then we can go ohhhh, "hello darkness, my old friend". Right? Yeah. So, the great news is that it took some time, and of course, there was the pressure of time that she had because her dissertation chair said you have six months, which, you know, after taking that extra two or three years, six months felt like nothing for her. But we really, really worked at it. And we also worked on how to work with the anxiety when it came up. So the noticing of the negative self-talk, then noticing if the anxiety was there. The ability to just step away to go and sit. The hand-on-heart stuff is wonderful. I talked a little bit about that last week. I am enough. Okay. There are so many lovely little phrases or sentences that you can say to yourself around your worth and your deservingness and your enoughness.
After I submitted this application, I did a little bit of hand on my heart. What did I say to myself? I mean, I think it was like, "oh, you got it done. Now, let it go." I'm going to have to do that, most likely again, when I need to really like dig in and start getting my note cards for my presentation and then starting to time myself and all of that. So, yes. Done is better than perfect.
You can use that as a little mantra, I mean, you can even put your hand on your heart. And by the way, it doesn't have to be your heart. It could be your belly. It could be a self-hug. There's a special little self-hug that I really love. I like the way this feels better than putting my hands on my shoulders. So I'll leave you with this one and you can work with this and see how it feels. It's so soothing. And what we need when we're working with these perfectionistic tendencies that are tied into worth and deservingness is to be able to soothe ourselves when that stuff comes up.
So, this is the kind of self hug I like to do. Take your left hand and you put it just under your right shoulder, like the outer part of your arm, just touching the outside of your arm. It's interesting describing this without a visual. So thanks for your patience. The right hand is going to be on your left side, on your flank just under your armpit, which is near the heart.
And that's how you're going to hug yourself. Okay. Just sit and take a few breath cycles like that and notice the soothing that you get from it. It's a really lovely one.
Yeah. Okay. So, breaking away from this aspect of perfection. Wanting it to be flawless and [00:23:00] so not getting it done. Think about how this works in your world or doesn't work in your world and get curious about that question, "what would it be if it was perfect." And then asking, "does it need to be that?" I think that's another great question to ask too, okay.
So, there, you have it, my lovelies. I hope that where you are you are getting some lovely weather. We're starting to get that here in the Sonoran desert. It has been glorious. Until we meet again, be gentle and good to yourself.
Thank you so much for listening today. If you are enjoying this podcast, please consider writing a review and giving it a five-star rating. This is something that can make the podcast more visible to others who might benefit. And if you are wanting to connect with me, I would love it. My contact info and socials are in the show notes.