Perfectionism, Old Patterns, and the Stories We Outgrow

In this episode of the In Full Power Podcast, Jasmine Conway explores perfectionism, old patterns, limiting beliefs, and the stories we outgrow on the path to personal growth. Through a powerful dream about returning to an old apartment filled with forgotten belongings, she reflects on what it feels like to confront the beliefs, identities, and behaviors we’ve carried for years without realizing they’re still shaping our choices.

This episode invites you to look honestly at the patterns you may be calling responsibility, excellence, patience, peace, or loyalty — and ask whether they are truly aligned with who you are becoming. Jasmine shares her own experience with perfectionism, fear, self-doubt, and delaying impact, while offering a grounded perspective on how to let go without losing yourself.

If you are learning how to release old stories, stop living from fear, overcome perfectionism, or reconnect with your voice, courage, clarity, and power, this episode will help you begin sorting through what still belongs and what no longer gets to run your life.

Transcript

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Hello, my powerful people. This is the In Full Power Podcast, and I am your host, Jasmine Conway. So I've been thinking a lot about growth lately. It's actually kind of taken over my mind as I have been on my own growth journey and have really started to study what it looks like. And one of the things I've been thinking about is how we talk about growth, how we glorify it, and how we usually share the most about it when we're on the other side. When we can talk about how far we've come and how our efforts have started to pay off, but we don't always talk about what it feels like to be at the beginning, to just be getting started when it's not exciting, when it's not rewarding. Because I mean, let's just be honest. Growth, it does not always feel good. Sometimes it's messy and it's hard and humbling and requires you to be real and confront your own stuff. Sometimes what growth actually feels like is opening a door and being completely overwhelmed by what's on the other side. And today's episode is about just that. So I had this dream that I was organizing, and I randomly found a key to my old college apartment. And I remember holding it for a second and thinking, there is no way that this key still works. And even if it does, somebody new probably lives there now. But you know how sometimes when we do things in our dreams, it doesn't really make sense. Well, that's exactly what happened. I decided to go pick up my mom and take the three-hour road trip from Nashville to Knoxville to test out if this key still worked. So we drive to the apartment complex, we walk up to the unit, I slide the key into the keyhole, I turn it, and what do you know? The key works. So my mom and I, we look at each other and we slowly push the door open. And when I walked inside, I immediately felt this rush of memories wash over me. Everything was exactly the same as it was 12 years ago. Not just the layout, not just the wall color, not just the appliances. I mean, everything was the exact same. The same furniture, the same rugs, the same decor, the same clothes in the closet. It was all my stuff. It was like time had just stopped. It just paused and waited for me to come back. And I remember standing there thinking, I cannot believe that I forgot about all this stuff and it's just been here the whole time. And my next thought was, oh my God, I gotta go through all this stuff. I gotta clean out this apartment so that somebody else can live here. I gotta decide what's worth keeping, what needs to go. And almost immediately I felt overwhelmed. I mean, I felt so overwhelmed, the kind of overwhelm that just made me want to close the door and pretend like I never opened it in the first place. Now I remember thinking, you know what? I'm just gonna throw everything away. But even that felt like a lot of work because I still had to bag everything up, carry it out, figure out what should be donated versus what should be thrown away. And I just knew that there wasn't gonna be an easy way to get out of this. And then I looked over at my mom and she had already started going through things. And she picked up this white rug, and it was clean and it was pretty, and it was something that I would probably buy today if I saw it in a store. And she said, You should keep this, just give it a good wash, and you can still use it. And then I woke up. And almost immediately it made me think about life. And I started thinking about how much we're carrying, how much we're still carrying that we have outgrown, things that we haven't touched in years, things that we don't consciously choose anymore, but we still own, we still operate from, we still organize our lives around, not because we need them or even want them, not because they're aligned, not because they're helping us, but because they've been there so long and we haven't even questioned them. And that's what I want to explore today. The old patterns, beliefs, and identities that we keep living inside, not because they're true, but because we've never stopped to ask if they still belong. Because maybe this work is not about walking into the apartment and just throwing everything away. Maybe the real work is learning how to sort through our stuff. And I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong. They think something is wrong with them or that they need to become a completely different person. But a lot of the times it's not that. It's not that at all. A lot of the times, not a darn thing is wrong with you. Not a darn thing. You are just operating inside of things that you've never actually stopped to examine. Old stories, old patterns, old identities, old rules that you didn't even realize you were still following. And when you finally open that door and see all of it sitting there, it can feel like too much. Because now you have to decide, you have to make a decision. What needs to go, what needs to be washed and maybe repurposed, what still belongs. Let me take an opportunity to make this personal for a second. So for me, one of those things was perfectionism. And for a long time, I didn't even see it as something to question. I thought that it was a strength. Now I told myself, I have high standards. I'm intentional, I don't want to put anything out there before it's ready. And some of that was true. That's the part that that really makes this work complicated because not every old pattern that we have is completely useless. Sometimes there's something valuable that's buried inside of it. And for me, that valuable part was care. I I care deeply. It was also depth, discernment, excellence, ownership. That, those things, those were the white rugs. But the part that no longer belonged, it was the fear, the hesitation, the constant need to perfect something until there was no possible way that anyone was going to be able to come in and question it. It was the belief that something had to be perfect before it could be valuable. And that belief, it had a cost. It looked like rereading the same paragraph 20 times or opening the draft, closing the draft, opening the draft, closing the draft, telling myself that I come back to it later. But time wasn't the issue. Fear was. Or maybe you think that you can't rely on anyone but yourself. So you isolate, you carry everything alone, and you convince yourself that if you need help, it must mean that you're not built for this. I've had my own versions of this too. I've shown up like I needed to earn my place in rooms that I know without a shadow of a doubt that I was qualified to be in. I felt like my confidence was a liability. Like if I showed up in my full confidence and in my full power, it would rub people the wrong way. I've acted like my value was tied to how much I could give or how much I could produce or how useful I could be, which made relationships feel more transactional and more draining than expansive and uplifting. And I got tired. Point blank period. I got tired. And now building something of my own, I still have to fight that perfectionism and fear. And again, some of that has value. Discipline has value, care has value, depth has value, being willing to do the work, that has value. That's the white rug. But the belief that I have to carry everything to prove that I'm capable, nope, that doesn't belong anymore. It's gotta go. The belief or the lie that if I rest, that means that I'm gonna fall behind. Nope. That doesn't belong anymore. It's gotta go. But there's this nuance here that I don't want us to miss. This is not about shaming those versions of you. Some of those versions, they protected you, they carried you, they got you through. Some of them helped you build a life. Some of them are the reason that you're still here. So this is not about walking into the apartment and throwing everything away. It's not. That would be unfair because some of those things, they are still beautiful. Some things are still useful. Some things just need to be washed or used differently. Maybe your desire to be excellent, it becomes a gift once it's no longer being driven by fear. That's that deep work. It's not just asking, what do I need to release? But also asking what parts of me are still worth keeping once I clean them off. Just because you've been operating a certain way for years, it doesn't mean it's actually who you are. Just because a pattern helped you survive one season, it doesn't mean that it gets to come into the next one. And this is where the power comes back. Operating in full power means you start noticing. You start noticing the thoughts that you default to, the patterns that you repeat, the identities that you cling to, the rules that you follow without realizing you're following them. And instead of just blindly obeying them, you pause. You take a moment to question them. You reconsider whether they actually belong to you and whether they fit for the person that you are and for the person that you want to become. Because a lot of what you're calling who you are is actually who you learned to be, who you were rewarded for being, who you had to become to navigate certain environments, who you became so that you wouldn't be rejected, so you could be successful, so you could be loved, so that you could survive. Today, you can stop asking, why am I like this? And instead ask yourself, what story have I been living inside of? And do I still want it to have power? What are you calling your personality that might actually be protection? What are you calling responsibility that might actually be fear? What are you calling peace that might actually be avoidance? What are you calling excellence that might actually be hiding? What are you calling loyalty that might actually be self-abandonment? What are you calling patience that might actually be you waiting for someone else to choose what you already know? These are the types of questions that you need to start asking yourself. But I need you to know that when you start doing this work, it can feel daunting. It likely will feel daunting. Like walking into a space that's yours, but you haven't fully stepped into in years. You may feel overwhelmed. You may want to close the door, slam it shut. You may want to decide it's easier to just leave everything exactly where it is. But on the other side of that door is access. Access to your voice, your desires, your standards, your creativity, your courage, your clarity, your power. And now you get to decide what you pick back up. You get to decide what gets washed and reused. You get to decide what gets thanked and released. You get to decide what no longer gets to run your life from the background. You may not have meant to find the key. But now that you have, you can't pretend like the apartment isn't yours. And more importantly, you cannot keep living in it unconsciously. You don't have to clear everything out today. You don't have to have all the answers today. You don't have to become a brand new person by tomorrow. But you do have to decide that what you inherited does not automatically get to have power over your life. You get to decide that what you inherited does not automatically get to have power over your life. This is the shift. This is where you stop inheriting your patterns and you start choosing them. This is where you stop saying that things are just a part of who you are and start asking if they actually belong. This is where you stop dragging old furniture into new rooms just because you forgot you had the power to leave it behind. This is where you take your power back. This is where you take your power back, not by becoming someone new, but by being honest about what is no longer aligned and having the courage to let it go. That's what it looks like to operate in full power. If this resonated with you, share it with another powerful person who needs to hear it. I'm Jasmine Conway. This is the In Full Power Podcast. I'll talk to you next time.