Why perfectionism is secretly ruining your life (feat. my biggest fail 😂)

This episode started as a story I was almost too embarrassed to share…

 What felt like my most epic failure at the time actually turned into one of the funniest (and most important) lessons I’ve had.

In this episode, I dive into how perfectionism holds us back, why we’re so afraid of being judged, and how learning to embrace the messy moments is what actually helps us grow.

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Hosted by Sarah Rose Foster

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

By some miracle, we found the fish. Like, I don't even know how it happened. I cropped it out because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed, like, oh my god, how dare I not be a professional at this skill that I've just learnt? I don't think humans were supposed to have as many people looking into our lives as we do today with social media. How often do you go onto someone else's profile and be like, wow, their video's only got like 2,000 views? No one does that. And if they do, like, check yourself, like that's weird. Hey guys, welcome back to the Solo Experience podcast. I am your host, Sarah, and honestly, I feel like maybe a better opening to that would have been, hi, my name is Sarah, and I am a perfectionist because that is exactly what we are speaking about today. I really wanted to open up the conversation that I think a lot of us are dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and that is perfectionism. Perfectionism is definitely one of those things it can make you feel productive, but I think it's anything but it holds us back, it literally stops us from showing up authentically because we're so worried about getting all these like fine-tuned nitty-gritty details down pat. But look, I guess that's part of life, and it's part of having such a big lens around us that we think is just so honed in on us that we have to show up perfectly. I don't think humans were supposed to have as many people looking into our lives as we do today with social media, but we've got to deal with it at the end of the day. That is our reality, and it's just finding ways to I guess cope and putting that perfectionism aside. Honestly, I don't know if I would say I'm a hundred percent a perfectionist because my stubbornness outweighs my perfectionism, so I will typically push something out until the last minute trying to get it so perfect, but then because that deadline is there, that stubbornness to say, Well, I've said I'm gonna do it, so I have to show up and do it, overrides the perfectionism. So sometimes I just throw out what I've done. So it's kind of like a double-edged sword. But to give you guys a bit of an example of this, like the podcast prime example, I planned this podcast to the T. When I say that I went out and bought a rug, and I went out and bought the good microphones, and I went out and bought the chairs, and I had this beautiful setting. I even bought like a little coffee table to go, like I say coffee table, I'm traveling, obviously, we're talking like a very small one, but I had this whole aesthetic laid out ready to go, and as you can see right now, if you're watching on YouTube, that is, that has not come to fruition on a consistent basis. Because for those who may not be aware of this, I feel like most of you will by now because obviously the podcast is primarily situated around travel and just my experience doing life solo, but I am traveling across Australia solo in my Mazda BT50. Now, from a landscape of podcasting, that is actually really bloody hard because I am open to the elements all the time. In theory, recording a podcast once a week, you're like, oh, it's fine, like it won't take long at all. But I'm over in Western Australia at the moment, and Western Australia has this nickname of WA always windy. That is so true. Trying to record a podcast when you're open to the elements, there's people around, like trying to find a location that visually is appealing, but then also from an audio point of view, most of the listeners of this podcast are listening on podcasts or Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm gonna say like maybe under 10% are watching this on YouTube. So the visuals don't matter as much as the audio. And I don't know if you guys can hear birds chirping in the background now, but my point is that no matter how perfect I tried to make this podcast, that has not happened because I just have to deal with what is to come. Today is pretty much me pushing it very finely to get this podcast up, but I've just had a bad run of weather where it's just been windy, it's been raining. Even right now, you can't see much of my backdrop, but this is the first non-windy day, but there is just this blanket of fog all around me. But you know what? I was like, we've got to get this done because it's not about being perfect, it's about showing up and getting it done over perfectionism. Because let's be honest, most people don't care anyway. But I do think that perfectionism can show up in every single area of our life. It doesn't matter if you are filming a podcast or filming a YouTube video or you're in business or just your day-to-day life or showing up on social media, family and friends, like it can show up in everything. And honestly, for some people, it can be so debilitating. You know, when it comes to YouTube, for example, although I don't try to make YouTube perfect, that's not the point of it. That's just me sharing my travels, and if things go to shit, so be it. But I think the perfectionism shows in sometimes I'll film a YouTube video and I just will film it and I'll feel really flat. I'll be like, oh, I didn't feel like it flowed, or you know, I feel like it was a bit boring, and then I'll edit it and I'm like, oh wow, it's actually great, it's come together so well. You'll find the same with business, like you'll always try to find the perfect product, the perfect launch, the perfect this, and it's just sometimes you just have to throw it out there and almost test the market. You don't know what the market needs until you're in it. I have recently dabbled into the merchandise space, and that was something that a lot of people do merchandise, and a lot of people told me that it doesn't do well, but it was just a matter of, you know, I put out a whole heap of products, and that's sort of given me a bit of understanding as to like what do people actually want? Is the logo something that I want? But I had to put it out there in order for me to get that data for me to make an educated decision. And then let's not forget about social media. Honestly, like writing a caption and picking music feels like a damn full-time job. I cannot be alone in this. I feel like every single person is with me on this. We overthink and over-analyze the perfect prompt, the perfect hook, the perfect caption, the perfect song, the perfect flow. And it's just like most people don't even watch it for three seconds. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't put effort into things. That is not the case at all. But if you are spending hours on something that is effectively going to get three seconds of view time, maybe just scale it back a little bit, like put your priorities in the right place and just enjoy the process of it because feeling that burnout that a lot of people feel in social media, I think it comes from just constantly trying to show up and be perfect and do better and do more. And it's just we forget to just step back and just be like, you know what, this is my life, this is what it is. And I understand that for a lot of people, social media, YouTube, podcasting, all these things, it's your job. And as I said before, you can still have perfectionist perfectionism show up in your job, and that can just have a whole roll-in effects to how you feel from a mental point of view. So just take that into consideration. Sometimes you just have to step back from something, take a nice big breath, and then also reflect on how you view other people. And I say that because we have this lens pointed at ourselves that we think the world sees us in. But the thing is, is that we are our own world. We see ourselves in so many different lenses that the world don't ever look through. Because, in a in a bad way of saying, like we're all a little bit self-absorbed, let's be honest. We are our own whole world. But other people, they don't see all of that because they're too busy focusing on themselves. So I think that's a really good reminder and something that I always come back to as well. I'm like, it's not that deep. Honestly, it is not that deep, and showing up is better than not showing up at all. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not qualified by any stretch of the imagination to give out advice, but I feel like my entire life I've always given out unsolicited advice, so here we are. But my take on perfectionism is that it is really just fear. It is fear of failure, it is fear of judgment, it is fear of not being enough, it's just fear of what we perceive, I guess, as failure, and that's gonna look so different to every single person, but I think we just have to remind ourselves that that's gonna hold us back more than anything else in the world. So we just need to reframe and really understand what it is that we fear, because as I said, that's gonna be so different for every single person. So get a piece of paper, write it down, and then flip it over the other side. Like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Like, truly, what is the worst that's gonna happen if you put up something that is less than perfect? Like, I don't know, it flops. Someone makes a bad comment. I promise you, even if you do something so perfectly, someone's still not gonna like it. You can't appeal to everybody, and that's the biggest bit of advice I can get. So if fear of judgment is what you're worried about, I promise you, people are gonna judge you. I've said this many times. I've had a lot of guests on the podcast that we've spoken about this. No matter what you do, no matter how good you're at it, no matter how well and perfect you show up, someone's still gonna not like it. So just accept that and just move on, honestly. But really to recap, perfectionism doesn't create the consistency that you want. If anything, it's probably creating a lot of inconsistencies and it does hold you back. We live in such a world that is curated to be perfect, especially with like the rise of AI as well. I think people are just craving that human element again, and that's something to remind ourselves when it comes to perfectionism. A good friend of mine, she does really well on social media because she actually just posts the fails, and people love it because it is human, it is relatable, it's real, and it's something that I am personally still working on. Like, I'm not sitting here being like, Oh, I get all this right. No, I'm still terrified to post the fails. Like, there was actually the one story, when I was brand new to spear fishing, I did a course. We didn't get to spear anything on that day, so it was more just like learning how to load the gun in the water and all these different things. And then we I went out with a friend and I speared a fish, but he did everything after. Like, I obviously shot the fish, but then he took it off the spear, he did all the things. And when it came to me going out by myself, I had a friend with me who had no idea. She didn't spear fish, she didn't freed up, nothing like that. So it was just her tagging along. Anyway, I speared this huge fish, and I forgot the number one rule of when the spear goes through the fish, there's like this little tag on the end of the spear. You want to make sure that's all the way through so that it like tags the fish, and that way the fish doesn't slide off. I forgot that part, and I hear I am like doing a thumbs up, like, yeah, got my first fish, and the fish slid off the spear. It was the funniest moment because in my brain I was like, crap, that's my content gone. I all that work for nothing. And by some miracle, we found the fish. Like, I don't even know how it happened, but that whole part of the YouTube video, I cropped it out because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed, like, oh my god, how dare I not be a professional at this skill that I've just learned? And in hindsight, I was like, I wish I shared that because that was just me and my friend laugh about it to this day. And I just wish that I backed myself in not knowing, and that's okay because I was learning. And I think even now, like I don't even think I've got the content anymore because I watched my hard drive, I'm pretty sure it was on that hard drive. If I can find it, I feel like I need to put that together in a video because yeah, hilarious content. But that's my reminder to you that just show up fully because one day it's going to be memories that you are going to cherish, you're gonna laugh about it. And look, if you post something, I I know I speak a lot more about social media, but if you were to post something and it does get an overwhelming amount of negativity or whatever it might be or judgment, you can always archive it, you can always delete it. Although I don't always believe in that, just show up fully as yourself. The people who are there to support you will support you. The people that aren't, trust me, it doesn't matter what you post, they're not gonna support you anyway. Now I did write down some practical tips that we can go through. Hopefully, some of these are helpful for you. But the first one is lower the bar. Really think about what you are doing, whether it is content, whether it is your relationship or your job or your friendship or whatever it is, is it real or is it helpful? I find that by just reflecting on those two things really aligns quite well for me because is it real? Is it really you? Is it authentically you? Does it align with you? That is important. And then is it helpful? Sometimes we put out content that's less than perfect, but I assure you it is helpful to somebody out there. If you were to help one person, you are already winning at life. And the same can be said outside of content. If you were to show up and just authentically own who you are in that moment, whether you are the awkward one, whether you're the confident one, whatever it is, you are going to show up to a situation, be it friendship, social circle, work event, relationship, and somebody watching you is going to take that and either be inspired by it, maybe be motivated by it. So although I always say that no one cares as much as you think, people are still watching, but they aren't always watching in a negative space. Someone can be watching in admiration. So just remember that. Think about what you're showing up, what you're doing, whether it be perfect or not. Is it helpful and is it real? Two things to consider. The next one is when it comes to social media, I honestly follow this process with everything because with social media especially, we can get into this like dopamine addicted feedback loop of lacks and comments and that social validation. So create something, post it and walk away. Truly, put your phone down, go find something to do. I wouldn't sit there bored because you're just gonna want to reach for your phone. I think doing something, whether it be go for a walk, go for a hike, read a book, I don't know, like do sudoku, do something, but just post it and get the hell away from it. Because I think we can spiral. Once something's out there, we spiral and we wait for the likes and we wait for the comments, and we're like, oh my god, it's not being viewed enough or quick enough, it's not being liked. And it's just it's a very slippery slope to be in. So if I could really give you any advice, please do that. Give yourself some space between what you put out there and your reaction based off of whatever traction it gets. I've heard a lot of friends they get really deflated when their social media posts don't hit well. And it comes back to how often do you go onto someone else's profile and be like, wow, their videos only got like 2,000 views. No one does that, and if they do, like check yourself, like that's weird. So please just reframe it in that space as well. So, other ones is stop over-editing, and that's pretty much self-explanatory. I think the more you edit something, the more you curate it. Yes, things have to be edited and curated, but if you are just always like following trends and just trying to edit things into that perfect nature that the algorithm is pushing, you're never gonna align with that well at all. And then I've said it a million times, focus on consistency over perfection. And yes, this is social media, this is your relationship, this is your friendships, this is your work. Show up consistently because that pays off more than perfectionism. But I think I've harped on that for long enough. So today's episode is very short and sweet. This is really just a little brain dump that I realized I was going through this, and I was like, I want to put this out there in case that it is helpful for someone just to have that little bit of a reminder, a little bit of grounding. So if I've helped one person with this episode going out, my job is done. But if there is one closing message, is that you just need to show up, you just need to do it. No one is perfect at anything when they first start. Truly. You wouldn't want to be perfect off the get-go because you'd never grow. You would never strive to be better, you'd never strive to learn anything new. There just there isn't anything fun with being perfect, and there is somebody out there that needs the content that you're putting out in that exact moment. And once again, I say content, but I'm talking about every interaction in life. Somebody needs that version of you in that moment, be it perfect, imperfect, whatever it might be. So please show up, be you, send me a message over at the Solo Experience Podcast as to how you personally show up and whether or not you're struggling with perfectionism. But as always, guys, whatever platform you are listening or watching on, please make sure you give me a thumbs up, rate the show, maybe leave a comment, but make sure you are subscribed because every little bit of support goes such a long way, and I will see you guys all in the next episode.