Chasing Gold Stars

TW: This episode includes discussion of burnout, serious medical events, and brief references to suicidal thoughts. Listener discretion is advised.

We’re taught that perfectionism is a sign of ambition. That it means we care. That it’s what separates high performers from everyone else.

But what if perfectionism isn’t really about excellence at all?

In this episode, we unpack the hidden fear beneath perfectionism and explore how many women learn to tie their worth to achievement, productivity, and getting everything "right." We discuss the childhood gold stars, workplace praise, and societal expectations that reinforce the belief that mistakes are dangerous and rest must be earned.

We're taking a look at the difference between excellence and perfectionism, why perfectionism often starts as protection, and how the very behaviors that once helped us succeed can eventually leave us exhausted, anxious, and disconnected from ourselves.

Because the opposite of perfectionism isn't mediocrity. It's self-trust.

If you've ever felt like your value depends on your performance, this conversation is for you.

Thank you for listening to NDA!

If this episode made you think, challenged a perspective, or helped you recognize a pattern in yourself, consider sharing it with someone else who might need the conversation.

You can connect with us on Instagram at @nda_pod, where we continue the discussion between episodes.

Until next time, notice the pattern. Then decide what happens next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello to our Rise community. It is a gorgeous sunny day, if I do say so myself. So if you're listening to this on a gloomy day, just know that on the day we recorded, it was beautiful. Yep. Dare I say perfect or at least close to perfect. And I think that's very apropos for the theme of our podcast today, wouldn't you say? Yes, I would say. We're talking about perfectionism. And before you tune out, because you're thinking that we're gonna tell you all about how to color code your closet or I don't know, alphabetize your spice rack. Which out of curiosity, Amanda, do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Listen, I am feeling personally attacked right now. My closet happens to be color coded and my spices are organized in alphabetical order. I'm just makes it easier to find things.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Sure. It does. It does. And there's nothing wrong with that because perfectionism is not about wanting to do things well, it's about believing that as a human being, your value is connected to how well you perform. Yes. So said differently, our lovely Amanda, she loves to alphabetize her spice rack, as she just expressed. I do. Now, if Amanda were doing that because she was thinking, okay, um, maybe I'll finally be good enough, or maybe I'll finally feel like I belong if I do those things, that's the perfectionism we're talking about, right? Because she would be tying it to how well she performs and thinking that that's how her value is defined, but that's not a healthy mindset. Correct. If any of our listeners are like me, even though I don't alphabetize my spices, I definitely have struggled with perfectionism and do struggle with it in other areas of my life. And for those of us who've struggled, I think we trick ourselves into thinking, oh, I just have high standards. But until we start to realize perfectionism has nothing really to do about getting it right, I'm gonna drop the truth bomb. What it is is it's trying to avoid the feeling that comes with getting it wrong. Yes. So that's what we're talking about today.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

The way that I like to articulate this is perfectionism is not the pursuit of doing something really well versus perfectionism, which is saying my worth depends on this.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Your beingness equates to your doingness. Yes, which we've said before and is a quote that I absolutely love. It is a question to ask yourself how much of my beingness is tied to my doingness? Yes, exactly. Most NDAs keep people quiet. Ours does the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed. Not men, the behaviors that keep women small. This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Where does this perfectionism desire and drive? Where does it come from?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Well, let's see. I I guess when I think of myself, because I shared in the beginning of today's episode that perfectionism is something that I have struggled with and continue to struggle with. When I think of its roots, I don't think I was ever born believing that mistakes are dangerous. I think that is a learned behavior because just thinking of my own upbringing, I learned that making mistakes would really equate to how people perceived in my family my competence. So just constantly worrying about being good and trying to be useful enough and responsible enough or helpful enough or prepared enough. And like I've said before, it was a very chaotic upbringing. When I think about the question you just asked me, Amanda, perfectionism never was about high standards for me. It was truly about protection and being highly, highly competent was really one of those little things that I actually could control to try to avoid becoming a target. But it was making me exhausted.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

I struggled with perfectionism for a long time too. I still have bouts here and there, but by and large, I've learned that sometimes good enough is good enough and to be okay with that. But I think for me, I grew up in an environment where I had perfectionism modeled for me. I've I've talked on the podcast before about my mom and the comment that my grandparents used to make, my grandpa specifically, about her was that she never gave him five minutes of trouble. That was something that always stuck with me. And then I saw my mom. She was really always striving for perfection in her appearance, always perfectly done makeup, not a hair out of place, was always dressed very well, was really into creating organizational systems so things didn't fall through the cracks. And I think over time I just learned through that modeling behavior that sloppiness or mistakes or laziness was not tolerated.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Okay. So let me throw this out at you. You just mentioned that you saw it modeled and you observed and realized if you're not on point, then it's not going to be accepted. So you know that I love bringing everything back around to core fears. I'm curious if you're similar to me in that before you started really working on addressing your perfectionism, did you try to trick yourself into thinking that it's really just excellence and you just want to do good work? Yes. Okay. No question. Me too. So when I think about it, and I'd love to invite our listeners as they're reflecting on their own lives and how they perceive this topic today, I would say that excellence does say that, oh, I just want to do good work. Here's the difference. Perfectionism is rooted in fear. Because much like your example, Amanda, from when you were thinking back to how you learned it, and much like my example, we're thinking to ourselves, okay, if this isn't on point, if this isn't flawless, then something bad's going to happen. So perfectionism is rooted in fear, whereas an excellence mindset is rooted in growth. Right. That's the difference. Another way I'm just thinking, if you're trying to decipher if you have an excellence mindset or a perfectionistic mindset, excellence, when you're striving for it, it creates energy, but perfectionism creates anxiety. So an example would be I'm just thinking of one of my lovely clients who I adore. And this client of mine has come a really long way, but before a meeting that might only require, in reality, 30 minutes of preparation, spending 12 hours. And not because I just care really deeply about this meeting, but out of fear and terror of looking unprepared. So do you see how it creates anxiety?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah. And I think there's another component to this too, especially that applies in a workplace setting, which is perfectionism gets rewarded. You're in situations where if you see people make a mistake or you make a mistake yourself, there's always some kind of consequence or repercussion. And over time, and especially depending on the severity of that consequence and how it's received by other people, that kind of creates a trigger to an alarm bell in your brain whenever you make a mistake. So you start then doing whatever it takes to avoid making another mistake. Then you become the person that is spending so much time avoiding mistakes. And on the outside, because nobody else sees what's going on inside your head, sure, the perfectionism gets rewarded. Oh, Amanda's, she never makes mistakes, she always meets deadlines. The work is really high quality. But then you're holding yourself internally to this impossible standard over time because guess what? We're all human, things happen, life happens, you're gonna make mistakes more than once. The way that we relate to mistakes societally, I think we do it really wrong. You see a lot of stuff out there about oh, make mistakes, you learn from them. But then when you're actually in the moment and a mistake is made, how often are you met with, hey, you know what? You made a mistake, it's okay, you learned from it. Virtually never. Never. In fact, such a disconnect.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

There is not only in the workplace, but thinking lots of places. I'm just thinking back to when I was in school. I'm thinking way the heck back when I was in my very early elementary school years before I went to junior high and I said, I'm done with trying to be perfectionistic. I swung the complete other way. But I was that kid who was always getting the quote unquote gold stars. I was that kid where school came really easily. I didn't have to try that hard. When I did try, it would always lead to results that were rewarded, kind of like what you're saying. So that felt really good to me because I was getting that validation. I was feeling accepted. I was being praised. I wasn't living in fear during the school day of disappointing somebody or not feeling like I belonged. But I think getting those gold stars can accidentally turn into a personality if we're not careful.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah, there are so many systems set up in our work environments in our lives that reward perfectionism without even realizing it.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

A lot of these aren't intentional, but when you only reward perfection when you break it down and look at it over time, that's actually what it is. Oh, awesome job. You cleaned your room completely every day this week, and great, I'm all for consistency. But when we're setting a standard of perfection every single time, you start to internalize that. Then, especially as women, because we already know we are held to higher standards than men in work environments, but also in life. Mistakes from us are tolerated even less, and we have the added layer of berating ourselves when we make a mistake. So we have it from outside and inside our own heads over time, it just really does a number on your confidence because your successes, the successes that you achieve, never actually count in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

And I'm wondering for those of you listening to today's episode, if you're someone who has always bragged and maybe even maybe not outwardly bragged, but even in your mind, you're thinking, oh, I have such high standards. What if that thing that you've always called high standards is actually fear?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I definitely can relate to this. It's one of the reasons why I was so hesitant to manage people. When Elizabeth and I worked together at our previous employer, one of the things that I was pretty adamant about was that I didn't want to manage people. And Elizabeth very kindly, lovingly pushed me out of my comfort zone and was like, Yeah, guess what? You're gonna manage somebody. So I hired an intern. And this intern was going to be running all of the marketing and promotion for the firm that we were working for. There was so much concern around letting go for me and delegating. And this is actually a common symptom of perfectionism is a struggle to delegate, just taking on more and more. But guess what? Over time, as you do that, you become the bottleneck because you're human and you only have capacity realistically for so much, despite what your brain is telling you. Eventually it's gonna come to a breaking point. There was so much fear from me in handing off posting on social media and creating content and working on our email newsletter and doing all of these things. Because in my head, it was like if the intern doesn't do as good a job as I would do, then it's gonna reflect negatively on me as the supervisor. And so it took a lot of practice. Eventually, I got there to the point where I was comfortable delegating. It definitely took some time and support from you. It helped me realize how much I was actually holding things up by trying to be the little kid with a brand new puppy that just wants to like squeeze it and keep it for yourself. That's what I was doing, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

This is something that I did years ago. Gosh, I bet you it was a good 10-15 years ago that I did this with my team. And this is a way to try to break down in the workplace for those of you listening who might work in a workplace where you have a team or maybe even at home, to be honest, with your kids. But it's a way to break down that toxic perfectionistic mindset and to encourage innovation. So, one thing that we used to do is I actually presented an award for the best mistake. And I can't remember what I yeah, I can't remember exactly what I called it, but you could call it whatever you want, maybe like the oopsie daisy award. I have no idea. But here's how it happens. So, what we did is at work, we would actually invite at our monthly meeting, we would invite everybody to anonymously submit an example of a mistake. So something that was a fail. It didn't turn out as intended, but it led to some sort of an innovative idea. And what we did is we would during that monthly meeting, I would ask people to share the nominated mistakes, but in a funny way, as like a short story. And we would laugh. We definitely built a lot of camaraderie. And what was cool is we're able to highlight everything that was learned from each mistake. After we shared those stories, the team voted on which mistake had the most significant impact. And then we gave them an award. And we actually had a wall of fame that we called the wall of innovation, but really it was the wall of mistakes. So that's just an idea that I thought I'd share because it was one that I absolutely love. It's a good idea for those of you who are listening who want to break down perfectionism, whether it be at home or at work, maybe you volunteer for an organization, whatever it is. It's a great thing to not reward perfectionistic behavior, but to break it down.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yes, exactly. There's a movie, an animated movie that I love called Meet the Robinsons. It was not nearly as popular when it came out as I think it should have been, but the mantra in the movie is keep moving forward. And it's it's about uh a little boy who grows up to become an inventor and there's some time travel involved, and it's really funny and cute, and I love it. But there is a scene in the movie where the little boy fails at something, and he's met with this like massive celebration, and he's like, Why are you all celebrating? I failed. And they're like, Yeah, exactly. You failed because you tried something and it didn't work, and now you learned, and you can go back and try again, and you've got all this new information that you can leverage. So it is, it's so important to remember that the opposite of perfectionism is not mediocrity, right? The opposite of perfectionism is self-trust. Yes, completely agree. The goal here isn't lowering your standards, the goal here is creating a healthier relationship with mistakes.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

When you think about it, self-trust, it's like, okay, sure, I'm human, but I can still be worthy when I don't do something perfectly and I'll recover from it, right? Exactly. When we were kind of planning on today's episode, something just kept coming into my mind. And that something is my stroke. So for those of you listening, I am 49. And back when I was 31, I had a stroke. And not a little stroke, but it was a significant stroke. It was the morning. My husband had left for work. My daughter at the time was about one. I was holding her on my hip while my boys, who were three, were watching their little cartoon. I was getting them breakfast to get everyone ready to start our day. And all of a sudden, my vision went. I lost my hearing, and I woke up in the hospital many hours later. So scary. So it was scary. And at the time, I would have told you that it came out of nowhere. And the more I think about it, I was trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom, the perfect employee, the perfect friend, the perfect sister, the perfect daughter. This was before I voluntarily stepped away from my family of origin. So at the time, I was still trying to be that perfect daughter. And I was trying to be everything for everyone. And I was doing what a lot of perfectionists do, which is I ignored literally every single warning sign that my body was sending. So if I was exhausted, I would push through. If I was overwhelmed, dig deeper. If I was stressed, suck it up. If I was sad, paste a smile on my face. If I was exhausted, you can sleep when you're dead. And I know exactly where it comes from. I definitely convinced myself that needing rest was weakness and that being needed was proof of my worth. And then basically that day, it was in October, I remember, my body essentially said, Cool story, we're done now. So I had this stroke, and it was truly one of the most humbling things to realize that even though I was in the hospital for a lot of days and I couldn't take care of my kids, and obviously I was trying to recover. I couldn't take care of my house, my pets, my husband, friends, nothing. The world kept turning. The sun came up, everyone figured things out, all these responsibilities got handled. And in that one stroke, I learned something that took me years to fully understand. Number one, the fact that I was being faced with my mortality in a very real way, and that all these things that I was carrying were not all mine to carry. And guess what? A lot of them never were. Right. So, for those of you listening, because there are so many women that I talk to, that I work with, even just outside of our business, just even friends, my closest friends. And at first, burnout, our nervous system sends us it's almost I'm trying to think of an analogy, it's almost like increasingly aggressive emails. So at first, your nervous system will be like, Hey, friend, just check it in.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

And then, like, friendly reminder, and then we accelerate to as per my previous email.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Yes, exactly. In all caps, bold exclamation points, and then eventually your body shows up in person. And in my instance, it was a stroke. I know someone I'm working with now, she's having seizures.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Your body, when your body says enough is enough, it will send you some warning shots. And if you continue to not pay attention, it goes full alarm, like five alarm fire. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

And sometimes people don't get a second chance. Correct. The only long-lasting effect I have from my stroke is that I don't remember names. Genuinely, cognitively, I struggle. I can't. Like it's next level. I'm like Dory from finding Nemo, but I could have died. It literally could have killed me. And there are plenty of listeners who know someone who has had a serious medical event or maybe had thoughts of harming themselves, or God forbid, maybe has. You can't keep it up like that. You can't.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

So I think to move into some recommendations for how to start to become more in tune with your perfectionism and understanding how you can start to change that pattern. Personally, for me, I think something that's been helpful is asking myself, and I can always tell because I feel there's this like sense of urgency and tightness and anxiety that comes with this for me, right? When I'm doing something, is ask the question Am I doing this to this extent to make it good? Or am I doing this to make sure I'm safe? And just pausing and asking myself that one quick question is a great opportunity for me to say, Oh, what's the motivation behind working this way? Because healthy ambition feels motivating, feels innovative, feels exciting. Perfectionism, like I said, for me at least, feels very urgent and tight and unforgiving. It's like everything's a five-alarm fire. Another great question to ask yourself is related to self-trust. What would this look like if I trusted myself to recover from my mistakes? Oh, I like that. But if you really trusted yourself to do that, how would this situation look different? Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Another thing that I think is important to really promote for those listening to today's podcast, we're always talking about getting in touch with and thinking about and noticing what's happening in your body. Yeah. So another thing I would encourage listeners to do is really start to take note of what physically happens in your body when you make a mistake. And I'm not talking about the thoughts going through your head, I'm literally talking about your body. So just notice do you tighten up? And if so, where? Do you clench your jaw? Do you furrow your brow? Does your back feel tight, your shoulders, your stomach? If you make a mistake, do you start to breathe more shallowly? Do you panic? Do you start to overexplain? That was me. Or over apologize. Yes, or over apologize or get really defensive. That's important data. That's really important information. When your body has a physical Reaction to making a mistake. That is another clue that tells you that you're not dealing with standards. You're dealing with your body actually kicking into nervous system protection. Said differently, perfectionism.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Yeah, exactly. I think this would be a great time to transition to our regular segment, shrink this. I have one that I'd like to share. Okay. This is actually a shrink in relationship to the podcast, believe it or not. Oh, okay. As our listeners know, we like to periodically feature guests on our episodes. And we have an episode with a guest that's going to be coming up here in a few weeks. We recorded the episode, and Elizabeth was on vacation. So it was the first episode that I had ever done by myself. The person who's a guest is a friend of mine. We've known each other for years. So I was very comfortable with her and with what we wanted to talk about and the topic that she selected, I think is really great. So I was really looking forward to the episode. And so we recorded, and when we finished, I couldn't shake this gnawing feeling that that didn't go quite as well as I was wanting it to. It was a little more interview style than we prefer our episodes to be. It wasn't as conversational. When I listened back to the recording, I felt that even more strongly. I started to panic because I was like, oh my gosh. She just took an hour out of her time. She's very, very busy and didn't have to do this. She's doing this because she's a kind person and wants to support the podcast and has a great story to tell. Sure. And I don't think we can air this as is. I think we need to re-record it. There were a few reasons for that, but the biggest was I just didn't feel like the content was at the standard that we like to have our content.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Okay. And it was nothing against her. Let's make that clear.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Not at all. Okay. Nope. So I toiled over this for literal weeks. And I was like, I don't know what to do. I feel really bad to have to go back to her and be like, hey, I'm really sorry. Can we re-record this? And was in hardcore avoidance mode. And then finally, last week, I was like, okay, she's gonna wonder why this episode hasn't come out yet. And this is a problem. So I just have to suck it up and send her an email and say, Hey, this is the reality. So I did. I was dreading it every step of the way. I hated writing it. I hated sending it. I was like, this is awful. She's gonna like thinking of all the things that she was gonna say back to me, and she was gonna tell me to go pound salt. Spoiler alert, she did not. Do you know what happened? What happened? She emailed me back and she was like, I've been thinking the same thing. She said, There were so many points going into the preparation that I told myself that I wanted to touch on and I didn't. And she said, I feel like we need to tweak the topic a little bit, especially because of some things that have happened recently. And so she was like absolutely more than happy to re-record. In fact, would prefer to re-record. So it was like this huge weight lifted from my shoulders. And then I really started thinking, it was like, why were you so afraid to just be honest? Right. And be like, you know what? We've worked really hard to set a standard for the content on our podcast. And this did not meet the standard. So I really think if you're willing, we should give it another shot.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Aw, how is that so?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Why was that so hard for me to do it?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Because it was you were your amygdala was like hijacking you to imagine all these terrible things, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

So that episode will be coming a little later than originally planned. But guess what? It's gonna be all the better because of it.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

That's right. So I have one and I did get permission from one of my clients as long as I share it anonymously, because as we are talking through this scenario, I said, gosh, so many women are gonna be able to relate to this. Would you feel comfortable with me sharing it anonymously on one of our future episodes? And she said yes. Let's call her what is a good name? You know how I always like to think of fun names. We're gonna call her Tara. Tara. Okay. Just for some context to set the stage for this shrink, she works in middle management. And in her role, she initiated a major project. And when I say she initiated it, what I mean is not only did she help build it from the ground up, but she championed it, she led it, she played a huge part in bringing it to fruition. And the outcome of this project was very successful. In fact, it was so successful that the president of the particular organization where she works was invited to publicly present about it. Oh, wow. And yeah, it was a big deal. Instead of inviting her to present alongside him, he invited a male colleague who had virtually nothing to do with the project. Ew. Yeah. So she received no invitation, no recognition, no proverbial seat at the table. So you might think, as I was thinking about this, because there are so many different ways to tackle this shrink example. You might think, well, how did she shrink? She shrunk by staying quiet. But the more I think about it, I am actually thinking that in her case, that I think a lot of our listeners can relate to, the shrinking happened a lot sooner than that when she started questioning whether she even should speak up or not. And it happened when she was thinking, like, ooh, I wonder, could I possibly be overreacting? Or maybe if I say something, it could backfire. So maybe I should just stay quiet and let it go. Now she didn't think this, but I'm thinking back to other times in my career where I haven't spoken up. And I might think things like, Well, maybe he didn't really mean it that way, or whatever it is. But the point is that in this example, like so many, we shrink a lot sooner than when we choose to become silent. We shrink when we start questioning whether we deserve to take up space. In this particular situation, she felt safer just swallowing her disappointment instead of speaking the truth. We're in the early stages of working together. So we can use data from this example and to help inform us for some of the things that she and I are working on, but that's a clue. If you notice that you feel safer just sucking it up and swallowing your disappointment instead of using your voice, that's a clue that it's a shrinking behavior.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

The presentation wasn't the biggest issue. It is that belief underneath it. It's that feeling of my contribution is valuable right up until I ask for recognition. Right. And that is a belief that keeps so many incredibly talented women in the background. So just like we always do, we want to challenge our podcast listeners, not only the women listening, but the supporters. The more we stay silent, the more it perpetuates shrinking behavior.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Very well said. So as always, we encourage you to if you have shrinking behavior that you want to share, please submit it because we want to share with the listeners of our podcast. And as Elizabeth's just demonstrated, we are happy to anonymize it if you'd like us to, because in the behavior, there's still lots to learn. That's what this is all about sharing behavior so we can all learn together and grow together. I think in closing our podcast episode for today, circling back to the theme of perfectionism, I think we've summarized the fact that perfectionism oftentimes starts as protection. That drive to protect ourselves stems from fear. And throughout our lives, that may have helped you be successful. It may have helped you belong, it may have helped you survive on the surface. But eventually that approach, the longer you do it, the more you're building a cage around yourself.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Right. Yeah. There are so many women, especially that I've noticed this year, who are just coming forward and they're daring to dream and they're daring to step out of that box or that cage. And just ask yourself, who would you be if nobody was grading you? Right. Not your boss, not your family, not your partner, social media, the other moms in the play group, nobody. Who would you be? And give yourself an opportunity to really contemplate that. And if nobody has ever told you this lately, we want you to know and we want you to hear us. You don't have to earn your worth. I don't care what others have told you leading up to the moment you're hearing us speak these words, but you don't. And you don't have to prove your value and you don't have to perform your way into belonging because you already have it and we see you. Yes. Your worth is already within you. Love it.