How I Overcame My Perfectionism To Host a Life-Changing Event

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by the pressure to get it perfect- that you struggle to even get started?

You have an idea you want to put out into the world. But you keep overthinking it and overcomplicating it. You’re so afraid to put something out into the world unless it’s flawless- you often don’t do anything at all.

Recently I had- what felt like the fight of my life with perfectionism.

In this episode, I take you behind the scenes of my journey hosting the pivot potentials summit- and how my mind kept trying to convince me to cancel it.

You’ll learn:

The 3 main ways my perfectionism tried to sabotage the summit

the mindset shift that helped me overcome perfectionism

the hidden cost of letting perfecionism win

press play now to hear how letting go of perfect allowed me to finally do the work I was meant to do.

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Life After Medicine explores doctors' journey of finding purpose beyond their medical careers, addressing physician burnout, career changes, opportunities in non-clinical jobs for physicians and remote jobs within the healthcare system without being burned out, using medical training.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:00

Welcome to Life After Medicine, the podcast helping millennial health professionals leave the system and build a fulfilling career. I'm your host, Chelsea Turin, residency Dropout turned six, figure entrepreneur and World Traveler. I'll help you discover your unique path to making an impact without the burnout, because you were meant for more than 15 minute patient visits under fluorescent lights.

Speaker: 0:22

This past weekend I held a summit called Pivot Potentials. Maybe you've heard of it. Um, and it was truly one of the things I am most proud of in my whole business so far, partly because of how it impacted people. There was a really special energy all throughout the weekend, people. People within the chats, like forming accountability groups with each other and people just sharing breakthroughs and so much participation and engagement having some of the speakers there sharing their story and it's like maybe they hadn't ever shared it before and some of the speakers even like teared up at the end and were like, this was super meaningful for me. There was just this really special energy for how it impacted people. So that's something I'm proud of and I'm very proud of the fact that this type of project tends to be very difficult for me as someone with A DHD, so the way my A DHD shows up is. Having a project that is, there's a longer timeline, like you have to be working on it in the background for months I had to be working on it, contacting people, reaching out, like kind of meeting certain deadlines that I was making up, right? I was doing this. For, I would say like two and a half months in the background while still trying to do other things. Normally those types of projects are really overwhelming for me, the way my A DHD works. And the reason I wanna share this episode today is because now it's like three days after we've concluded Pivot Potentials and I've been receiving emails. And messages on social media about how impactful this has been for people and there's at least 10 different times. Where I almost didn't do it or where I almost like pulled the plug and canceled the whole thing. The reasons I kept wanting to quit were a hundred percent based imper perfectionism. And now that I've done it and put it out into the world, I just feel so grateful. That I was able to work through my perfectionism to put this summit out there. And I am creating this episode to give you a nice, deep look in an intimate look inside my head as someone who is trying to do big things in the world and struggles deeply with perfectionism, and I think by having this. Insight into the way my mind works and how I was able to overcome it. I hope that it will help you work through your own perfectionism and get your stuff out into the world too, because the, the big takeaway I want you to have is good enough, is good enough. B minus work changes lives. That's a quote that Brooke Castillo used to say back in the early days when I was listening to her. It's like you can make something good enough that makes a difference. What I wanna talk about here is how my perfectionism showed up in different ways in this process of creating the summit and how I worked through it and. What I want to do in this episode is to show you these perfectionism gremlins the voices in your head that try to talk you out of doing things, they mean absolutely nothing, and they should not be listened to at all. They do not serve a purpose. Like, let's be very clear on that. They did serve a purpose. At one point, they were created because they served the purpose to protect you. But if you are interested in creating big things in the world, if you are interested in making a real impact, these voices of perfectionism are nonsense and they will not help you get there. That doesn't mean we need to hate them, but we need to very clearly. Demote them and not attach any sort of value to them. Okay, so if you are ready for this intimate journey inside of my head, let's go for. About two years. I've wanted to host some kind of virtual summit, but the whole process of it felt really daunting. It felt like, you know, this big project that I just didn't have time for something. That I would get around to once I like had everything else figured out, but because I am doing my million dollar year and every week I'm doing LEAP actions, I've been taking action on some of these bigger things that I've been putting off. And so one of the weeks, back in early April, late March, my leap action was to, I think it was just to brainstorm about the summit or like to just give it some kind of a thought, because I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I just had this idea of a summit percolating, but I needed to give it. Some space for the idea to develop. And so it was like one Saturday night where I just kind of opened up my laptop and was like, okay, what, what is this summit? What's, what do I wanna make? And it pretty quickly came to me, the transformation is like, I just don't want people to be stuck anymore. I don't wanna have the conversation of, because I, you know, have a medical degree, I don't have other options, or what are my options, or what could I even do? I don't wanna have that conversation anymore I really want people to get unstuck. I want people to realize is, that's a ridiculous question because their options are unlimited. Right. So this is sort of where I was coming from. And within this brainstorming session, by the end of that, the whole outline of the summit came to me, like I had the entire outline, but it needed to be this transformational arc. It was careers uncaged, careers reimagined, careers unfolding, and the whole outline just came to me in that moment and I was like, wow. That was just, it felt like it was sitting there locked and loaded kind of on the other side of the veil, I was like, wow. It was there already kind of packaged for me, and I had a few people that I wanted to, A few people came to mind initially of like, oh, these people would be great. I sent out some initial, like preliminary just feelers, and I think this was on Saturday night. Saying, Hey, I'm thinking of holding a virtual summit about career reimagining. Could I send you more information? So I sent those messages and my initial responses were like, yes, I'm in. Oh my gosh, this sounds like such a good topic. Like I got some responses like that night and I was like, oh, interesting. Okay, so I think there's something here. So that's what got the ball rolling initially. Because before that, I wasn't fully committed, right? My, my leap action for my million dollar year wasn't to, to host a summit it was just spend a moment thinking about it and see what's there. And the idea was there. The idea was ready. And then I just like that week, I had some of the networking calls, I picked the dates and I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna commit to doing it. And so that's how the idea kind of came to be. And that was really fun. And during that period of time, I had all these grand ideas put out there. one of the ways that perfectionism showed up for me. Is overcomplicating, which then would lead to overwhelm, right? So I had all these grand plans of like, if I create a summit, it needs to have. Like all of these fancy speakers, I need like a famous author. This TEDx person. All, these big grand ideas for these speakers that need to be super next level. I was like, maybe I should pay the speakers. I need to create a website that has, the registration page and then every speaker has a page that's what my perfectionism tends to do. Is it, it just tells you like, in order for this thing to be a success, there's all of these things required. And the overcomplicating, it does a couple things like one it, it makes me spend a lot more time planning than doing, because there was several, maybe two days where I spent just making this wiki, which. Parts of it were useful, but parts of it we never really use. And I remember feeling like this is so necessary, I need to type out every single thing. So if the speaker has any questions, they can come here. I need to make a unified dashboard. And most of them didn't even look at it. And they would just email me and ask me questions anyways. And then I was like, okay, now I need to make a really specific like database of all my speakers. And again, like. It's helpful to have lists and things, but like, I think I was trying to over plan and over organize and that's part of my perfectionism where then things just take a lot longer than they need to because you're doing a lot of planning but not as much doing. So that's something I'm always looking out for when it comes to perfectionism is like, are things just taking too long? Does this need to be done? Like what actually needs to be done? Because what happens with overcomplicating it leads to overwhelm, which makes you. Just not wanna do it at all there would be several weeks where I was like, oh, I need to update the speaker database, but I haven't done it and I need to respond to the speaker. But in order to respond to them, I need to go to the database and update this whole thing. And I don't have time to do that. So then you like overcomplicate everything. And you go into overwhelm and then you don't do it at all. Because you're like, well, in order to do this one action, I need to do 500 actions, and I don't have time for that, so I don't do any of it. And then I'll start to fixate on details there was one time, and I think this was also like a Saturday, like a weekend night maybe three weeks before the summit where I was starting to think about promotional materials, and I just started looking up graphics and was like, I need the graphics to be perfect and professional. And then I spent like three hours on Etsy, like looking at the same graphics over and over again, being like, should I buy this one or should I buy that one? And like, they're like$3 each. I could have bought them both or neither. It didn't matter. But I was just like. Okay, these are not actually gonna be professional enough. I need to find another marketplace. I need to find someone who sells summit specific graphics. I'm gonna need to hire a graphic designer. No, they won't be able to turn around in time. So I'm just spending hours here being like the graphics need to be perfect. And I don't think I had even made the website yet, the registration page. What helped me through all of it was I just started doing the good enough method, and that's just what I kept calling it. I would just type it out to myself. I'd be like, what is the good enough version of this? So sometimes I'd type out what is the good enough summit actually need? Or like, what do the good enough graphics need to look like? And when I would type that out or like say it to myself what that would do is remind me like, Hey, don't overcomplicate this. What's the good enough thing? What that means is. What is actually required for the summit to function? What am I trying to accomplish here and what's actually required to accomplish that? Okay, the good enough speaker communication. Okay, we can just send them emails. You don't have to make a fancy telegram group that you launch and you have a graphic for it, and you have a pin post and an audio and intros and networking like. Just email them throughout. Okay. It's fine. What is the good enough registration page? Well, we just need a way for people to sign up. Okay. But I need to have the entire schedule already figured out and confirmed. We don't have that yet. Oh, no. Okay. Just get them to sign up for now. We can add in the speaker bios later, every moment, anytime I notice I'm going into this like overcomplicating, it's just bringing myself back to. What is the good enough version of this? What is actually required here? What's essential and so it's constantly coming back to what is the simplest way to accomplish that? To still have the results, right? The easiest path that can still be effective, that can accomplish the end. And so the good enough method, I, I think that was so powerful, and it sounds simple, but it's, that's all you need. You, you need something simple. Because you're trying to overcomplicate. So that's actually the perfect antidote is something simple, which is, hey, what's the good enough version of this? And so honestly, if you are doing any kind of project, you're struggling with perfectionism, like just write on your computer, have a post-it note, like what is the good enough? Whatever it is. Like good enough offer the good enough website, whatever it is. Just find and distill what is actually required for this thing to be effective. Now, another way that my perfectionism tried to suck me in and sabotage this whole thing, it was so ruthless, there was these voices that just kept telling me to quit, and it was probably about once a week that perfectionism wanted me to quit for different reasons. It was so reactive. Literally, when I think of perfectionism, it's like the part of my brain that has the man flu, like it is just this fragile little baby that cannot withstand. Any sort of friction, the more I'm so aware of it, the more I'm frustrated by it, to be quite honest. But I think by sharing about it, I think it's helpful for you guys to realize like, you're not the only ones with a voice in your head. Like, I have it too. It's so annoying and it doesn't have to stop you, but it, it does get quite obnoxious. I had several themes. Like one, the, the themes was fear of failure. And the failure it was worried about was this, this thing's gonna be a flop. Like, nobody's gonna show up, you're not gonna do a good job marketing it, promoting it you're not gonna do a good job. My perfectionism was most worried about what the speakers would think of me like. It kept saying you're gonna like embarrass yourself in front of the speakers and they're gonna think this is like a really tacky summit that this is, which is something that someone called me in high school a lot. She would say, I'm really tacky. And so I guess that's something I have internalized in my perfectionism. Right? Um, so I was like, they're gonna think it's really tacky. They're gonna think it's unprofessional. Which I was, they told me in med school. So it's like, right is my perfectionism is taking these. These ways I've been attacked in the past and it's just attacking me for myself. So to prevent it from happening again or something, I don't know, but it's like this is gonna be unprofessional. They're gonna be so embarrassed that they were a part of it. They're never gonna wanna collaborate with you on anything again. And that was the biggest thing I was worried about was the relationships with some of these speakers I was almost like picturing them in their own little circles being like, oh yeah, we participated in that summit. And it was so weird. Like I was just having all these weird thoughts about it. That was one. And then another one was that like a fear of wasting time, kind of a theme where. You know, it's gonna be so much effort. You're gonna put so much into it. And it's not guaranteed to lead to anything. Like who knows if it's ever gonna lead to sales or who knows if people are gonna come into your world because of it. Like there's no guarantee that this is gonna work out. And so you're just gonna waste time. And it's so interesting that perfectionism is so obsessed with like, it doesn't wanna waste time, and then it wastes so much of your time by just. Being this annoying voice in your head. It's afraid of really like wasting effort. It's like you're gonna put effort into something and it doesn't work. And like, that's the scariest thing to perfectionism is like you tried something and you truly did your best and you put yourself out there and it still wasn't enough. So yeah, there was just so much fear of wasted time, wasted effort, fear of failure, fear of judgment. Just all of these classic things. And I'll tell you when my, oh my gosh, when my perfectionism probably hit its highest note, was the two Fridays before the summit started and. Honestly I was behind schedule at that point and it all of a sudden I kind of realized, oh my gosh, I have so much to do for the summit, but I'm about to board a flight to Europe and I'm gonna have to get over there. And then I have a group program I have to work on and'cause I have like a module due for them that I'm gonna be training once I get there and it's like all of a sudden it kind of hit me that I was. Way behind. And then Friday came around and I got an email from one of the speakers being like, Hey, like. Do you need help promoting the summit? And I was about to get in the Uber to go to the airport. And I remember feeling like, oh my God, I think I'm gonna just actually die of shame. Because this was my biggest fear is like she's catching me unprepared and she was just trying to be helpful. Like she has no idea that this inside of this shame spiral in me. And I was like. Oh my gosh, how have I not done this yet? I don't have the, the materials ready. I don't even have the registration page ready. Like it's not ready. And this person's emailing me, asking me for it, and I should have it ready and I'm so behind. Okay, so I'm gonna do it on the plane. Okay. And I get in the Uber and I'm headed to the airport and I just start to get like so nauseous. And I was like, okay, well maybe once I get there I'll feel better and I can start working on it. And I just. I felt ill for like days after that, so the entire plane ride, you know, like 17 hours of the journey to Portugal. I'm feeling so nauseous, I get nothing done. Sometimes I can get some nice work done in the plane and I was like, I got nothing done. I land in Portugal. I'm still nauseous, still like exhausted. I, I get some sleep, but I wake up and I have to immediately spend energy. Creating for the group program that I had that day. So I was like, okay, well I can't do it. Summit up. I have to do this, but I'll do it after. But I can barely sit up that day. I'm like laying horizontal most of the day. And so basically just all of these things happen where I am behind and the days pat and the nausea stays. And I think one day I finally sent out this like one email being like. Here's something you guys can send out. And I was like just, I was like, just write one email and send it to them.'cause I was like, okay, I have to make an entire swipe file and I don't have the energy to do that anyways. So just this entire thing, there's these moments of perfectionism is just saying, just cancel it. Just quit. There's times when like speakers would kind of drop out last minute, or they'd like initially commit. And then say like, oh, but I didn't realize I had to promote it, and I don't think I wanna do that. So there's just a bunch of things I had to deal with with people but the thing it like perfectionism will use every chance it gets to try to just, I don't know, like pull you back and. Keep you safe, keep you comfortable. It also wanted to keep delaying it to make it perfect. This is another thing, right? It wanted to just keep extending the timeline. It's like, no, just reschedule. Do it in the fall. If you have more time, then you can make it better and, it's just quite an annoying voice inside of your head. And so the things that helped were, you know, the good enough method of like just doing the good enough thing. When I was kind of bringing myself back to the good enough, it's less pressure, I'm here and committed to doing my best. But because this is my first time doing it, my best is actually just getting it out there and, and doing it. And so there is a bit of like lowering the bar and, and then I'm like, oh, but, but I wanna strive for excellence. I wanna be remarkable. I wanna create a masterpiece. And it's like, yes, I want that, but I can't do that from pressure. And so by really coming back to like, remove the pressure, just cut the crap. Bring it back to what's actually required. There's sort of a paradoxical thing that happens is like when you remove all the pressure to like get it just so, and it almost feels in some ways like you're quote unquote dropping the ball. Like that's what your perfectionism will tell you. It's like you're dropping the ball, you're not doing it good enough, but that's when you actually allow it. To come through in an even better way, like when you're not clinging to and controlling the details and making it so rigid and being so hard on yourself, when you can come back to that good enough, that's when the real magic of the summit would come through because people are not attending a summit because the graphics are perfect the speakers are not participating in the summit because I have the most organized timeline. Like that's not what this is about. Yes, organization's important. You know, details can be important of course, but like if I am fixating on things like that, I am also squashing the actual life force that wanted to come through the summit. And so that's what I started to realize. One of the reasons I kept going, even when, you know, the perfectionism voice was so strong, it's anytime I was doing something. With the content of the summit. So anytime I had a call with the speaker, anytime we did like a pre-recording, anytime I was writing out the vision. Every time I talked about it with someone, there was something that happened inside of me where I was like, there's something here. I feel like there's something coming through me around it. When I'm prerecording the things, it feels like there's a magic coming through the guests around it, and so there was just something alive within the whole thing, and it's like those little doses of like, wow, this aliveness. It really kept me going because I would just have to come back to, honestly, I think there's something here. It was how other people were reacting, but it was also more how I felt anytime I got to share about it, I was like, something is lighting up inside of me. Something is coming through me. There's some sort of inspiration happening around this event. And so even though I feel so much doubt I wanna see it through. And so on day one of the summit and one of the speakers was, um, from day two was in the backstage with me, and we were like chatting back and forth and she's like, wow, this is, this is incredible. It seems like it's, it's going so well. And I was chatting with her and I was like, you know, the interesting thing is I don't feel like I've done work for it, but I also feel like a lot of it just like came through me like I'm the vessel. For the summit to exist. Like I did the things, but it felt like the summit is happening through me. She really got it. She's like, yes, inspired action is the best. And I was like, it really has been inspired the whole time because it's like the day before. Opening day. I was like, I need to write the intro for the first day. And I was like, I don't know what it's gonna be, but I sat down to write it and it knew what it was gonna be, and it all just came out. And I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Great. Okay. I guess that's what I'll be sharing. And so anyways, I share all of that and say that's what kept me going. But then potentially at the same time, that's what made the perfectionism louder, if that makes sense. Where. This is the most perfectionism I've had about something in a long time, and I think that's because it is. It was a new thing. It was a bigger thing, but it was a very deeply inspired thing, and I think perfectionism completely flips out about that. So the inspiration piece, while it. Kept me going. It also flared up the perfectionism, which is super interesting. I hope that this look inside of my head is helpful to understand that like I have self-doubt and I, I just don't believe it. I'm refusing to let it limit me and I'm honestly just so frustrated with it. When you can be really connected to your intuition. There's a discernment that happens where you're like. You know what the voice of fear is and you know what the voice of truth is. And while the voice of fear is obnoxious to deal with, you're not gonna listen to it. There's somebody I was talking to in Facebook Messenger one time recently, and. I, I had made a post on my feed about perfectionism and how it can be paralyzing, and she, I think she commented or she messaged me and was like, yes, the perfectionism is so real. And we had already talked before, so I knew the things she wanted to put out into the world. And I was like, but you know, those dreams that you have, that vision you have is way too important to let perfectionism win. The things you wanna put out in the world, the impact that you're meant to have, it is far too important to let perfectionism. Get in the way. And so yes, failure is scary. Doing something new and unknown is scary. Wasting time and energy feels scary for some reason. I, yes, these voices of perfectionism can feel so big and daunting and difficult to overcome. But we have to be bigger. We have to decide that the person we wanna become, the people we want to help, the impact we wanna have, our mission in the world, the ideas that are coming through us. We have to decide that those are more important than the tiny shrive man flu voice of perfectionism. It's just. Not it, and it can't win. You have to win your truth, your power, your bigness. That's what has to win because I am just so sick of seeing. My clients and women and myself, it's like we are these people who are so powerful and accomplished and competent and we have so much we can offer the world, but we're doubting ourselves and it's a making us so small and it's making us so exhausted because then we think we need to overperform in order to. Just stand a chance. And it's like none of that is required. You are good enough. Your ideas are good enough, your effort is good enough. Your showing up in the messiness is good enough. It doesn't need to be perfect to help people. That's, it's such a scam. I just feel so. I don't, it's like annoyed at the collective voice of perfectionism and we're better than that. We get to be better than that. We get to be bigger than that. Perfectionism is so small. It is so small, and you, we get to be bigger. So my loves, if this is resonating with you, if you're feeling a lot of perfectionism gremlins, this is something I'm noticing big time with my business clients that I'm working with. So what I decided to do was create a program for my current clients, but then also for other people who want to join called paid Not Perfect, where I'm really breaking down my good enough method. In all these different areas, it's like teaching you the good enough method of getting paid so that you can get your work out into the world. And stop staying paralyzed by fear and paralyzed by perfectionism. So it's called Paid Not Perfect. I'll drop the link in the show notes if you guys want to learn more information. We're gonna be starting July 11th, if you know you wanna start a business and you're struggling with perfectionism, this is like the business 1 0 1 course for people with perfectionism. Basically I'm gonna help you put B minus work out there that changes lives and gets you paid without the burnout. This is what we're all going for, so if this resonates with you, I would love to have you join Paid Not Perfect Link is in the show notes. Send me a message if you have any questions.