34: Are You Trading Your Joy for Perfectionism?

You’re not overwhelmed because you’re doing too little…you’re overwhelmed because you think everything has to be perfect. In this episode, Daffney explains how perfectionism is quietly stealing your joy and keeping you stuck in pressure, control, and never feeling like you’ve done enough. She walks through three powerful shifts to help you get out of that cycle, from rethinking delegation and the “middle management” trap to rebuilding trust and letting go of unrealistic, always-maxed-out standards. She also calls out the habit of living in constant anticipation and how it disconnects you from your life in real time. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, or like you’re always chasing what’s next, this episode will help you reset your perspective, reconnect with the present, and start creating more ease and fulfillment in your everyday life.

In This Episode:

• (01:25) The delegation problem no one talks about
• (06:35) The lie of “maxing out” your life
• (11:00) A simpler standard: safety over perfection
• (14:10) Living in constant anticipation

Connect with Daffney:

The Game-Changer Consult → This 60 min deep dive offers you clarity and insight into what’s possible for your next 60 days. Leave this consult feeling full of possibility and with the energy of purpose!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, friend, we are continuing our conversations about mental health and mental fitness. And I want to know: are you trading your joy for perfectionism? So often, as professionals and moms and women, we are showing up with this sense of perfectionism, as if that's what's keeping other people from judging us and judging our lives. It's a safety mechanism, it's a defense mechanism. And it's not giving you the joy and quality of life you deserve. So today we're going to deep dive and talk more about three steps, three questions that we can really dive into to move you from perfectionism to joy in your life. Welcome to Don't F and Shrink, the podcast, where we stop playing small and start showing up big. I'm your host, Daphne Allwine, and I'm here to cut through the noise, ditch the self-doubt, and get honest about what it takes to live and lead with unapologetic confidence. Each week you'll hear unfiltered conversations, powerful stories, and in real life strategies to help you take up space in your life, your work, and your world. So buckle up because shrinking is not an option here. Let's dive in. The first question that we dive into is when I'm talking with a client and they are constantly in a state of feeling like they're never doing enough and they don't have enough support, one of the first questions that I ask is about delegation. Now, we hear it enough where we say, well, if you have too many tasks, you're not actually running your company. You are in your company. And what that means is if you have not chosen roles, support structures that continue to keep your business, your world, your family going forward, then you are always in a constant state of middle management and not CEO. Because if you are managing your home and you are delegating tasks to the people in your house, whether it's your family or your support system, you are stepping away from the person leading and not moving forward because you're constantly in a state of delegating responsibilities. Now we all know in the professional realm, if you are constantly delegating your middle management, you're not actually the leader. You're not actually moving anything forward. You're just passing out the to-do list every single day. That's a tough place to be stuck. I hear all the time from women who are in a question about in their partnership, whether it's work or at home, that if they are constantly the person telling other people what needs to get done, then they're no longer in a place where they can move the house forward because they, as middle managers, they are just managing the people under them and not making the decisions that actually project and move the needle forward. One of the traps we get into when we are in that stage and not acting like a CEO, not acting like a leader is we get stuck in middle management, which means that we maybe don't trust the people around us to do things to a standard or to what we think is good enough. I laugh because that is something that every mom, every woman can understand that we have this state of perfectionism where we need things done to a certain level. But when we reflect and look back, that's an impossible standard. So the number one thing we're going to talk about is that delegation, is that middle management, is where is that peace coming from? And it all boils down to trust, whether it's trusting the people around you, whether that is trusting that you are communicating effectively, trust is number one. And that is something we can tackle and think about because trust is something that is built. So if we take the example of being in a workspace and having the support people around you and trusting them with really important key responsibilities, giving them those objectives, being very clear, being very direct about what needs to be accomplished in this role, and then taking our hands off and allowing that person the creative space to move forward. And when we constantly introject ourselves into how they are moving the needle forward or accomplishing that task, we take our efficacy away. That person is no longer learning, that person is no longer being given that space to actually grow and create something for themselves. So, number one, when you are delegating, whether it's at work, whether it's at home, when you decide that you are willing to trust, you are willing to give responsibility, you are willing to take that judgment off of yourself and allow someone an opportunity to be trusted, to grow, to have the latitude to learn something different. And you creating that space where they can feel trusted to use their best judgment, to use their own discernment. I promise you, you will grow exponentially in that relationship and in your leadership role when you are willing to just let go and trust and allow the process and remove your own perfectionism. Number two, we're going to talk about that standard. Often the idea is that we can always do better. We can always be look maxing. We can always be maxing, it is such a popular term right now, and you can slap it on literally the back of everything. It is this idea, this standard, this made-up, imaginary thing that we need to be at max capacity at all times, most efficient, most polished, most prestigious moment of our life at every single time. And I will tell you, even sitting here recording this message to you, this conversation with you, my friend, I have not even bothered to put on a stitch of makeup or to change anything about my physical space because what is most important in this moment is showing up honestly, directly, and in the frame that only one thing needs to be accomplished and there is no perfect standard for how that gets done. We always have these internal conversations with ourselves as women. And whether this is a societal norm or this is something that you have projected onto yourself, we are feeling like we are in this judgment bubble that maybe could be imaginary in some ways. We look at the internet, we look at things around us and how people are doing things better. And this constant fear of comparison is what's really holding us back. The reason we don't jump forward and move on certain projects or go out and integrate with other people or meet new people is this fear that we're not good enough. We haven't gotten there yet. We haven't prepared enough. What will people think? What will people say? And the people who are really the most successful in this arena are the people who are willing to show up every single time or as often as they can and show up with the mindset that they're going to learn something. They may not be the most polished, they may not feel the most confident in those moments, but they also realize by showing up, there's an opportunity to be better every single time. Because being better is not an instantaneous situation. It is not a coat of paint. It is not a filter that you put on that perfect. It is literally a choice, one repetition after the next. One of the biggest concerns I had from COVID is I was now in a space where I wasn't in large groups of people professionally. I'm sure everyone is finally shaking off the dust of COVID where we were all isolated. But I had the compounding factor of going from office situation day after day, having many interactions and many social engagements to then being in COVID, isolated. So really spending all of my time on the computer one-on-one, or maybe one on two at most. So it was a different skill set. And it was once you stop flexing that muscle and being in larger groups and talking with other groups, I had the compounding factor of having two children after that period of time where I was spending a lot of time talking with children and, you know, not as much in large groups of adults. So even now, six years after COVID began, I can find myself from time to time realizing that I still am not as accustomed to large groups as I once was, or as proficient as I felt like I once was. So it's really interesting that it is all about flexing those muscles. If this is something you want, if you want to build towards something, it means that your standard of excellence is chosen one day at a time. And when it comes to home, because I hear this often with clients, that it's it's really difficult to pass some of those responsibilities to your partner, to your support system when it comes to your children. And I have to agree that your children are one of those things that feels like a no-fail situation. It feels like anything could be the mistake that breaks the situation. But I'm going to build some confidence repetitions with you right now and tell you that when it comes to your support system, when it comes to other people being part of that support system, for some folks, it's dad and just saying, hey, he doesn't have all the same biological wiring that I do. So I have to constantly, as we talked about earlier, manage the situation or delegate or tell him what to do. This is a great opportunity for you to change your standard of excellence. And what I mean by that is in our house, we have a safety standard of excellence because there is no perfect way to raise a child. There is no perfect way to move anything forward at home because it is all play. It is all practice, it is all chapters. So something that could be perfect one day will not be as effective as the next. So allowing yourself and your team and your family at large to think about the objectives in a different framework at home, it's safety. If we always know that we're we're coming from the same values, objectives, and just making safety the standard of excellence from one day to the next, it is something that is tangibly, marketably able to move you forward and also create a cohesion, create a dynamic where you are working together and you're no longer the person who has to be in charge and has to delegate and say, yes, no, this is okay, this is not okay, and live in that loop of perfectionism. You can let go of that by saying, This is our values, this is our objectives. And the standard of excellence is safety. This is something you could also do in your professional work. We know what the values are, we know what the objectives are in your professional setting. And then also just setting the standard of what have we learned today? What are we moving forward today? What did we take away from today? That's a framework that people can work within and grow, and you can grow that trust with them when you put your focus in that dynamic. All right. Here's the third one. The third piece that is probably stealing your joy in the world of perfectionism is the world of anticipation. We are often living in a zone of anticipation. Maybe it sounds like this in the morning. Oh, I can't wait to get to my cup of coffee. I can't wait until I drop the kids off at school. I can't wait until my first meeting is over. When you put your mind constantly, believe me, there are definitely some values to creating, creating some levity in your mindset and in your energy field from one day to the next. There are difficult tasks in front of us every single day. But if your constant default is to be in a zone of anticipation every single moment of the day, you're essentially wishing time away and also losing an opportunity to find joy in the moment you're in. Joy does not exist in the anticipation. Joy does not exist beyond you. Joy is something that you have to engage with in each moment. There was this great movie, I want to say, back in the early 2000s. And if you're of my generation, you probably appreciate Adam Sandler in some way. We we think of him as a philosopher comedian. What I love about it is that this is a movie that even now my husband and I refer back to as we don't want to wish time away. Now, that can be professionally, personally, but the whole point is when we're living in this constant state of anticipation, what's ahead of us, what can we look forward to, we miss the opportunity all day long to engage with other people, to be creative, to feel a little messy, to learn something. Because when you're always in a state of anticipation, you lose your ability to engage, learn, and connect with the people around you. That is a fear. That is a fear of not feeling like you're enough. And in a lot of ways, not feeling safe to be in the space that you are. So we talked about trust. We talked about judgment. And right now we're going to talk about fear of embodiment. We're going to talk about the idea that we don't feel safe in our bodies. We don't feel safe to be in the moment that we're in. So if we constantly live in a state of anticipation about what's the next good thing ahead of us, we lose the ability to grow and feel in the discomfort of this moment. Sometimes this moment isn't even uncomfortable. We have just become so conditioned to the idea that happiness is out in front of us. Success, joy is all out in front of us. But if we're willing to pick up that mirror in that moment and really look at where you are in space and time, who's around you, what opportunity there is to connect with somebody, to show up a little bit differently, to try something new, this is your opportunity. So I want to remind you and leave you with these little pieces to just say to yourself today is my pursuit of perfectionism, doing everything right, showing up big, stealing my opportunity to feel joy and to feel connected and to have that human peace because we only get this one opportunity. And anybody who's already ascended into their retirement, where their moment of looking back and seeing that life feels like it was behind them, in front of them. This is your moment now. It doesn't matter what your age is, where you're at physically in space, or what time of the day it is, when you pick up that mirror in this exact moment, what do you see? Where are the opportunities to put aside the perfectionism, the judgment, the fear, the unsubstantiated fear of safety of being in your own body, to stop and notice where an opportunity for growth and joy is right in front of you. I love talking with you today. If you know somebody else who could also benefit from sitting and having this conversation and seeing their way through this epidemic of perfectionism, feel free to share. Thanks for being here.