[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Welcome to Imperfection in Progress, a podcast for ambitious women who are people-pleasers, perfectionists, or procrastinators. Want to feel less stress and more joy in your life? Then this is for you. I’m your host Dawn Calvinisti.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Today I am speaking with Cara Harvey, host of the Purpose Driven Mom Podcast and creator of the Purpose Driven Mom Club. Cara is a wife, mom to a 15-year-old stepson, 6-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son, and a woman of God. She works as a mom empowerment coach and her mission is to provide women with the tools, resources, and community to reach their goals, empower themselves, find their happiness, and live a life by design. She does this via her blog, podcast, virtual community groups, and e-courses that help women learn to balance their lives, finances, schedules, health, and themselves!
Have you ever felt like you just can’t do it. Whatever that goal or task is, it’s just too big to get started? I know you’re going to love our conversation around building confidence in yourself by consistent small wins. We discuss how trying and failing repeatedly creates a cycle of doubt and procrastination. It’s through repeated micro-wins that we can rebuild our belief in ourselves and really reach those goals. If you are someone who is a perfectionist you may be surprised by how this plays into the fear of failing and the mindset that continues to stop us from moving forward. This is a fantastic discussion with Cara, who is a master at helping us become women who show up and get things done.
Here’s my conversation with Cara.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Welcome to the podcast, Cara. I'm so excited that you are here. First of all, because you were in my very first summit I ever created, and I absolutely loved not just what you were presenting to everybody but your personality the feel that I get from you. And every time I listen to your podcast, I'm like, "oh, she just has so many good nuggets." So I'm so, so happy that you're able to make the time and be on the podcast today.
[CARA HARVEY]
Yeah, I'm super excited. I love when stuff is full circle, like. You know, when all of a sudden it just like kind of comes back around. I don't know. I think it's super cool. So thank you for having me.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Yeah. I know we kind of introduced you with a bio, but tell us a little more about who you are and what you do.
[CARA HARVEY]
Sure. Yeah. So I'm Cara Harvey. I am the host of the Purpose Driven Mom podcast and the Purpose Driven Mom Club. And I am definitely an accidental entrepreneur. I was a school teacher for about eight years and gosh, now it's speaking of full circle. It's been about eight years since I've been in the classroom which is just like wild to think about. But I burnt out. I burnt out so hard, Dawn and I, I couldn't do it anymore. And so when I left teaching, I got into entrepreneurship via network marketing, and it was looking good for a while. You know, on the outside it looked fabulous. I had the six figure business and the 250 people on my team. But on the inside I was drowning because I was doing all the same things that had burnt me out when I was teaching in network marketing, right? Like carrying my laptop around the house and inbox zero all the time. And I was so afraid that if I didn't get to a message, I would lose a sale. And it was really pulling this wedge between me and my family. And so about three years of doing this full-time, I said to my husband, I'm like, I just think I need to do something different. And so I, you know, at 3:00 AM nursing, my little guy who was three, he's five now, but at three weeks old over a body pillow I just bought a domain and I, I built a blog and I said, I'm gonna try to do something different.
And that first year, you know, I threw the proverbial spaghetti at a wall trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to do, how I wanted to serve and help people. And I'm a teacher at heart. And so, uh, I really niched into helping work at home moms, find time to start a business and grow a business and actually work on a business by making an action plan that fits their lives without the shame, the guilt, and the hustle that I think society makes us feel like we need to live in. And I've been doing this now, yeah, five year anniversary just passed of a Purpose Driven Mom, of my book, the 15 Minute Formula came out in January, and I get to help moms every single day figure out how to go after their dreams and take things from the vision board to reality.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
That's the part that I think is so amazing is women have dreams, they have these ideas, and often they get stuck in actually implementing because it just seems overwhelming or complicated or you know, not even just knowing what that first step is and you break things down so well in order to get rid of all those feelings that we carry.
[CARA HARVEY]
Yeah, I think we have been conditioned and taught from a young age, our worth is tied into our performance, and if we can't do it perfectly, it does not count. And I have a lot of moms that come to me and they say that their big issue is I don't have the time to work my business. Where I know their actual issue is they're struggling with perfectionism and they're using it as a procrastination tool.
When my kid goes to school, I'll do this. When the day looks perfect. And as soon as things get thrown off a little we throw our hands in the air and we say, I'll try again tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes the next week, which becomes the next week, which becomes years of us sitting on our dreams because we feel like we can't do them until we show up perfectly.
So I like to flip that on its head and talk about how it's really not about the perfection, it's about going at it with intention and grace and being proactive about your plan. Because I think we believe that we're the problem, right? Like I don't have enough willpower, I'm not motivated enough, I don't want it bad enough cuz, right?
Those are the memes, right? Your why isn't bigger than your excuses. You're a failure. And if you don't get up at 5:00 AM you don't care. Listen. I work with moms whose babies are not sleeping through the night. 5:00 AM does not make sense for them right now. So instead of blaming our willpower and our motivation, which is fickle and something we have to grow, I encourage moms instead to make a plan for their season, a plan that makes sense.
And a plan that actually is counterintuitive looking because it's putting less on their plate in order to achieve more. Because what happens is we put everything on our plates. Yes, we get overwhelmed and quit. But if you take these baby steps, if you start to go, um, we call them micro wins, right? Micro win after micro win, it builds up and you all of a sudden realize you didn't quit. And two months in you're still working on something and you've made more progress than you have in years because you ditched what you thought it should look like in your head. And let it look like how it fits into your life.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Exactly. I think that's why when I first discovered you I was in the process of planning this first summit and I am that recovering, you know, perfectionist who will push into to procrastination. And I was really learning to lean into just doing the step, just do the next step. It doesn't have to be done perfect. Just do it. And so what I kind of found you and, okay, this girl needs to be on my summit because I am practicing what she's preaching and I'm learning at the same time what you're teaching. And so it was just so neat the, the way that kind of came along in timing. But I think that's one of the things too, is when we start to do the steps and we start to see some wins, we build this trust with ourselves that maybe we've lost and kept pulling out all the time for years that like, I can't do it. I'm not capable, I'm not committed. I never follow through. I'm a good starter. I hear that a lot. I'm a good starter, right? But the reality is you're a good finisher too. You're just afraid to actually do it not in that perfect manner that you think you should.
[CARA HARVEY]
And finishing it looks different. In our brains. We think finishing is completing something from zero to a hundred. Yes. When in reality, based on your baseline and where you're starting, your finishing could be doing something one day a week. Your finishing could be a growth. We, and again, like pot, kettle black, like hand raised here, right? We wanna go to Pinterest and print out of chart and have it fix our lives. We wanna buy the perfect planner and it will fix, it will solve everything. When in reality, you need to trust yourself to create a plan that makes sense for you, and you need to look at things. I feel like I'm very bossy right now.
You need to, I encourage you to look at things a little differently, right? Because. What you said about, um, that trust is important. I think I teach this concept of habit stacking and in it it's a slow and steady approach to help you lose what we call the Monday mentality that I, I've kind of alluded to today, that we've talked, right?
I'm gonna start a diet and I'm gonna go to the gym for four hours a day and never like sniff a piece of chocolate or eat a carb. And then by Tuesday you're like, screw this, I'm done, I'll try again on Monday. Right? We have lost the confidence that we are capable of achieving things because over the past X amount of years and tries, we've failed.
So our brain now believes that we are a person who does not complete things. And one of the reasons I like breaking things down into 15 minute chunks and smaller, people are like, oh my gosh, Cara that is gonna take forever. But how's it going so far? Right? Like, mm-hmm. Maybe it will take forever in your head, but in actuality what it's doing is it's helping you gain momentum, right?
I dunno if you've ever read the book, the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. Yes, yes. Yeah. It was like the first personal growth book I ever read, and it was a game changer because it's become the foundations of lots of the stuff I teach, but it, it clicked in my head like those small steps happen. But what the small steps do, yes, they help you get closer to your goal, but what they also do is help you grow your confidence and rewire your brain to believing that you're a person who shows up and does things.
And I always tell the moms I work with, You know, like I care about your goals, but I don't care that much if you achieve them. I care about the person you become along the way, right? I care about that person who will look back at you from six months and be like, heck yeah. Look at me like I'm doing that thing.
Because your confidence is often so low that you feel like you can't do it. So when you start showing up for yourself one day a week, two days a week, three days a week, in these small, tiny increments, the trust grows, the confidence grows, and then the belief system grows. And I always tell people as a coach, I'm just a placeholder. And what my job as this placeholder is to believe in you until you're ready to believe in yourself. And in a few months you're gonna be there. And not that you're not gonna need me, cuz you'll, you'll want that boost, but you're gonna start to believe in yourself so much that what seemed impossible months ago now feels doable because you've shown up and ditched the perfectionism of seven days a week and 21 days to make a habit, and if I missed one day, I'm failing.
Instead you've said, Hey, did I show up for myself at all this week? Did I show up a little bit more this week? What does that look like for me? I'm now a person who can do these things that maybe I didn't believe I could before.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
It's interesting to me, everything in our lives seems to be programmed for us to see black and white, right and wrong. This is the way you do it, this is the way you don't. I was even laughing just the other day, I've been using Duolingo to learn more Spanish, so I live in Guatemala and I am not Spanish at all. And so it makes me laugh because every week they send me a report if I did better than I did the week before, which is great. I mean, that's nice. I wanna do better. But with my personality, I wanna do like double what I did the week before and I've gotta get everything starred and everything right and everything is set up for us to achieve. Like you need all the stars, you need everything lined up. You need your day to be this, this, and this or you failed.
And I think that's the part where it's not necessarily your fault if that's how you're feeling. All of our society is set up for that. There's this ultimate goal, that's what you're aiming for, not like if you do something towards it, you actually are succeeding.
[CARA HARVEY]
Yeah. And I think when we look at our goals, it's important to look at them in a few lights. I always talk about we have our outcome goals, like where we wanna get, right? I wanna start a podcast. Okay? So that's like your outcome. The podcast gets started, but you also need to think about the process goals. And these are all the steps along the way, right? So they're one tangible. Well, they're a mix.
Sometimes they're the tangible goals. I outlined the podcast, I recorded it, I edited, right? Those are the process goals. And you celebrate, which we never do. You celebrate every single one of those. Oh man. Like I, so today's a podcasting day for me. I batched things and so I recorded, uh, I had an interview before this. I had this one, and I recorded three episodes this morning. So I got those done after every single one that was recorded. I was like, great job, Cara, like out loud, I'm really proud of you for doing that today. Great job. and then I would message, I'd Voxer my podcast editor and I said, just let you know. Got it done. She doesn't not care that I got it done, like she cares, but like she does not need to know it, but I wanted to celebrate that. Right? So those are the tangible process goals.
And then there's the intangible process goals, and that's that mindset work. That's the person you become. I'm now retraining my brain to go from a person who's like, oh my gosh, I'm so behind on my podcast I'll never get ahead to being like, oh look, you are somebody who, when you need to, cause I'm gonna on vacation a couple weeks, I'm trying to batch ahead. You can get it. Great job. Right? And that belief system, we start to grow every day by showing up. And again, showing up isn't always finishing, showing up is intentionality.
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Now, back to our episode.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Yeah. I love that you said that because I think that's key. So question for you personally on this journey of yours, what did you fall into most often? Were you more often a people pleaser? Were you more often a perfectionist? Were you more often a procrastinator?
[CARA HARVEY]
Okay, so I am at the root and heart of things, a semi recovered perfectionist. But I found that I teetered back and forth with the people pleasing. The perfectionist in me though really showed, and I still work at it, but when I think about how I show up in life and in relationships and at work, I got stuck in that mindset of, my worth is tied to my works. If I don't do it perfectly, I'm not as good, I'm not as valuable, I'm not as worthy, and I don't matter.
And that perfectionism of I can do it better, so I should do it all held me back for a long time. And I'm not even gonna lie to you. I was just talking to somebody about the other day, so I coach cheer for my daughter. I've never cheered before, but my daughter wanted it and they needed to coach. And so I said Sure. I'm my daughter's girl scout leader, very involved. And I said, part of it is I did it because, one, my daughter wanted it and there wasn't a team. And in my head I'm like, well, I'll just do it. I'll figure, because in my brain now I have this growth mindset that like, I can just learn anything.
So I, I literally just this past month, bought a course and I became a certified cheer coach. I was like, sure, why not? ? Like I just have this mindset of if I wanna learn how to do something, I'll just go and learn how to do it. Didn't used to be that way. But the other part of the perfectionism that still shows up for me is that part of, I just volunteer for stuff sometimes because I would rather do it my way and I know that I can do it in a way that is organized and I get annoyed when it's not.
So that's my reality of where I'm at now, but it's gotten so much better because for a lot of my life it was debilitating, like the perfectionism of having to be this person that I thought wasn't allowed to make a mistake is so harmful because, I would show up and just beat myself up over and over again when I made, oh my gosh you had a typo in an email, right? Like, if I was a teacher and like I, I messed something up along the way in my lesson plan or any little mistake I had, I was immediately like, you're such a loser, right?
I am over at APDM. We, we call her the inner critic mine's name is Julia. I can't stand that chick. But Julia, man, she would just be like, you suck. Like, who are you to do this? Who are you to think you can run a business? Or who are you to think you could write a book or whatever? And she would jump in my head a lot because I really thought that I was not permitted to make any mistakes or people would think I was unprofessional, not qualified, et cetera. So I held myself to this incredibly high standard that wound up holding me back and burning me out for a while. There is a, you know, I've been in business five years. There was a point two years ago where I almost closed my membership because I was like, I can't do this at this level.
I, I can't show up perfectly. And I had to, you know, coach myself through that of realizing that I'm a human being who makes mistakes. And among there are people who will. send me a not so nice DM or an email if I spell something wrong and I get in my feels about it, but now I've found it so much more important to just be authentically, uh, we call it intentional imperfectionism over here where I know that life's not gonna go perfectly and I just try to make plans around that happening. And it has allowed me to have the freedom to be my imperfect self and love myself along the way. And not beat myself up for not hitting whatever arbitrary line that I've decided is perfect, or society has decided is perfect and not, run my own race.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Exactly. I think one of the words you said there, freedom is a big part of starting to move away from perfectionism. And I think it, you know, for people that are listening, if you're struggling with that and you're beating yourself up, and like I can think of in the past times where I would go to bed at night as a mom and just totally berate myself on all the ways I failed as a mom that day and how horrible I was and I didn't do this right, and I didn't do that right. And I didn't get this ready in time for their school. They could have got a better grade if only I'd basically done their homework, right. We can harm our own self-worth, our value and everything in any area of our life when we have that perfectionist bar set so high and the freedom that comes is huge when we start letting go of that.
Just to kind of wrap things up, when you are now in your membership and you're coaching women and talking to moms about where they're at, what is one of the places that you start when you see that they're reaching for something and just that whole idea of putting it off, putting it off procrastinating because they aren't gonna do it just right, or how they think they should. Where do you start in telling them let's bring the bar down a little bit?
[CARA HARVEY]
Yeah. I think, I think it starts with a rewiring of expectations. Because again, like I've mentioned, we're just so conditioned on like, if you don't do something seven days a week, you're an absolute failure. And I'm not perfect. And I like Netflix and not loading my dishwasher every night, and it doesn't make me any less of a person, right? And so what I would actually encourage you to do, if you're struggling with that, maybe the bar is very high for you and you're trying to bring it down. Do a time inventory of a goal that you're trying to work on.
So let's use an example of this evening routine. Cause I just mentioned the dishes. Go through your week and write down like, how long does it take you to do stuff, and how often are you actually doing it? So you're saying that you wanna load your dishes like as a very, this is just such a common example of the kitchen reset at the end of the night, right?
You wanna load your dishes. But how often are you doing it now? Well, I'm doing it like once a week. Okay, cool. What people automatically do though, is they say, great, I'm gonna do it seven days a week. I wanna encourage you instead to look at your baseline where you're starting from. Maybe it's one, two days a week.
Make your goal of five to six days a week. I never recommend seven. I know people say 21 days makes a habit, but I don't care. I think that setting yourself up for perfection in your goals is setting yourself up for failure. So saying you're going to do something seven days a week is harmful to you, your confidence and the life you're trying to build, five days is fine.
So give yourself a goal of maybe five days with a two day buffer, because if you come home Wednesday and don't wanna load the dishes, cool, you don't have to throw it away till Monday. You can just say, I'll just do it on Thursday. And so one lower that bar down for you. Then make a goal. So if you know your goal is five days a week and you're at one, now, you just have to bridge the gap.
So instead of jumping right to five, cool, next week, I'm gonna load the dishes two days a week and see how that goes. What you're gonna find is you're probably gonna do it more than that because you realize it doesn't take as long you've done your inventory. You're also gonna start to notice that maybe you do a little extra because you're getting this done and you're getting your momentum.
But the pressure is off to do it all seven days. The pressure's off to do it all five days. The first week, just two, and then you show up and you say, great. I actually did it three days. Awesome. Do you wanna keep three days as your goal or you wanna try to raise it to four? Well, I feel like I would like some time to get it solid at three.
Cool. That's your choice and that's how you start to grow the confidence that you are a person capable of making a plan that fits your life and you start to grow it that way, and then you look back at your baseline.
I was on a coaching call yesterday. The mom was like, you know, I didn't do this thing. Like I said, I was gonna do it five days. And I said, oh, but you did it three. And I said, how many days were you doing it two weeks ago? And she was like, I wasn't doing it at all. I was like, that's what you need to look at.
And so if you're struggling with perfectionism, if you're trying to make new habits or goals, and everything feels so far out of reach, start smaller. Grow your confidence, say great job, and start smaller, and then redefine what consistency looks like. Consistency is not doing something every day. Consistency is doing what makes sense for you in that season. So consistency for you might be two days a week. Maybe next week it's three days a week. Get out of your head that it's all or nothing, and allow something to be enough.
We always say it's just. Just is great. Just is great. It is enough. You do not have to show up a million miles an hour to be worthy, to be valuable or for it to count at all.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
So you just provided my next sticky note that's going above my desk. I always put a new one every two weeks. It's gonna be “Just is good enough.”
Yeah, I love that. That is great. Just before we close, I would love to ask you, what is something that you are working on right now? What is something either in your own life or in your work, what is something that you're working on for you?
[CARA HARVEY]
So I am kind of reclaiming my health. I, uh, just picked my word of the year for 2023.
It's going to be reclaim. This year's been a challenge for me, so I was in a car accident in August and I've been at PT trying to like get my life back together and it's been really challenging and I've been feeling very defeated about my progress. I used to run half marathons and do Tough Mudders and in the beginning of pt, like I could barely bend my back at all.
And so now I'm back to walking four days a week, which is big growth for me. And so one of the things I'm working on now is very slowly getting a habit back to feel strong again. And so what I wanted to do, which I knew was not the appropriate or correct way to jump into it, was be like, great, I'm just gonna pick a really crazy workout program and get started.
But honestly, I'm scared. I'm scared I'm gonna hurt myself again. I've been through so much trying to get it back together and so, I made a plan to slowly add in five extra minutes on my walking and I've kind of made a plan for the next couple weeks of how I'm gonna start getting that strength back to a place that looks good and I'm allowing walking to be enough.
I'm allowing myself to embrace where I'm at in this season. And I'm working on not comparing Cara today to Cara five years ago, or Cara 10 years ago. Um, you know, as I get older and as things change in my body and that perfectionist of me who's like, you know, like, you've done a Tough Mudder now you can't even do this. I'm trying to kick that, that voice that Julia needs to leave. So that is where I'm at and it's just this reclaiming of what health looks like for me.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Thank you so much for being on Imperfection in Progress today. I hope that everybody that's listening, even just taking away some of the words that you used today. Words like allow, words like just, words that we can really change to help change our mindset about what we're doing, what we think we need to accomplish. I so appreciate the way that you speak and the way that you help women, um, be themselves and in a way that works for them. I think that's important too.
[CARA HARVEY]
Yeah. Take one thing friends. , I want you to take one thing I said and run with that one thing because we do that thing where we listen to podcasts and and we're like, I'm gonna do it all. No , big lesson today. Take one thing I said and ask yourself, how can I apply this into my life today? And just work on that one and it's enough.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Perfect. Thank you so much, Cara.
[CARA HARVEY]
Thank you for having me.
[DAWN CALVINISTI]
Thanks for listening to today's show. If you found value in what you heard, please share it with a friend and rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps get us out to other women who could benefit from listening.
Check out our show notes for details from the show and to connect with me or our guests. Want to continue the conversation? My website is www.pursueprogress.com or DM me @pursueprogresswithdawn on Instagram.
Until next week, pursue progress no matter how imperfectly.
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