Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome back to working towards our purpose. This is episode

57, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about

overcoming perfectionism. Before we get into

that, we are going to do our daily check in or

our episode check in, however you want to say it. Check

in with yourself, see how you're feeling today, See where you're at.

For me, I was feeling pretty good this morning,

feeling inspired. I just read, just

finished a really good book. But

if you're watching on YouTube, you can see I got a different camera set up

today. So I think I'm also a little anxious about that.

Hopefully it works out and it. My phone, which

I'm using to record this now, the battery lasts. I'm hoping

the battery makes it through the episode. So little. Little, I guess

preoccupied by that. But having said that, hopefully I

can put it out of my mind and we can get into today's

episode. So. So, yeah, perfectionism.

Perfectionism is something I've struggled with.

And so last week I was recording two episodes,

as I do every week, and I felt that they were good

topics, but I also felt like

I, I guess performed them better.

I felt like maybe I didn't get everything out that I wanted to say, or

maybe I didn't say it in the most clearest way. So

it kind of just brought up this idea of perfectionism, and

that's kind of what I told myself. I was like, okay, you're. You're kind of

just being a perfectionist here. The goal isn't to be perfect, but

to continue to create episodes. And

you did that. So, you know, kind of rely on the fact that you.

You met the goal. But it just kind of brought me into

the idea of perfectionism and how it is something

that I've struggled with and how there are some things I've learned to try to

overcome it. But yeah, let's. Let's just talk about

what perfectionism is first. So, yeah.

Do you struggle from perfectionism? Do you ever notice that you

have a hard time finishing things? Or you maybe you spend, like, way too

much time on something, more time than you want, and you

never feel like it's good enough to finish or

to show somebody or to put out there? Maybe you feel

like you want to accomplish more things, but you take

so much time doing, like, one thing. I know, like when

I guess most of the stages of my life, I've always, like, wanted

to create more. And I always spent, like, so much time kind of doing

one thing that I never got to the other things that I wanted to do.

And I always just, like, wanted to do more. But I

felt that I was, like, kind of stuck on one thing because I

was trying to make it perfect. And, Yeah,

I think for me, it kind of brings up a couple

memories. I remember back in.

This must have been, like, early high school,

Me and my brother were really into the Discovery

Channel shows about custom motorcycles,

choppers, and we. This might

even been middle school, actually. I can't quite remember. Um, but we were just really

into, like, choppers. And there was Orange county choppers and, like, Jesse

James and. Yeah, if you were around during that

era and were watching Discovery Channel, you know what I mean? But

we were also kind of into, like,

I guess, like, designing stuff. I don't know. Somehow we got into drawing,

like, getting a sketchbook and drawing out our own custom choppers,

which was a creative outlet and, like, you know, just.

Just a cool thing to, like, kind of do, I guess.

And I specifically remember we both had these books, and

I started probably, like, 10

or 11 different choppers, but I'd

finished none of them. I really vividly remember never

finishing any of them. And I remember having, like, so many ideas

for different, like, themed motorcycles. I was like, oh, I'll have a Christmas

chopper, or, you know, Thanksgiving.

I can't remember any of the other ones, but I just had, like, a lot

of ideas. But I was, like, frustrated with myself because I

couldn't finish them. And then I would end up. I remember

one specifically, the one that I got closest to finishing. I

erased the paper so many times, the paper started to disintegrate,

and I just got frustrated with that. And then I, like, moved on to the

next one, and I just never. I never finished one.

And then I remember. I don't know if I knew it at the

time, but I remember finding these, like, a couple years ago, and I

remember finding my sketchbook and my brother's sketchbook, and he had

probably 10 to 15 finished. Like, they were done. And

I looked at mine. Every single one of them was not done.

And I was like, wow, what? Like, why? Why

did you not finish any of these? And

I think the answer is perfectionism. I was trying to be too perfect. I was

trying to make them the, like, perfect drawings,

the perfect representations of these choppers I had in my head.

And then I just never finished them. So I don't know, I guess

looking back, it kind of made me feel like, wow, I really missed out. Like,

it would have been cool if they were all finished and I could have looked

back at, like, what I accomplished, but instead, it was kind of just a pile

of unfinished things. And that kind of bummed me out, I

guess, especially in comparison to, like, my brother's. And he had

this, like, notebook full of finished things that he did when he

was younger, so. So that's, like, a really vivid

memory I have of perfectionism. And,

yeah, I've always just also been super perfectionist at

when it comes to making music, too, and

having so many unfinished songs that I never put out there.

I have unfinished albums that I never did anything with

and just. Yeah, just feeling like it's not good enough

and. Yeah. So what do you do? What do you do when you're

plagued with perfectionism? So

in this episode, I want to talk about five things, five steps that. That I've

kind of used or found or learned or read about to

help overcome perfectionism. And.

Yeah, so. So let's. Let's get into those steps. So, number

one, the first step is to recognize that you're using

imperfectionism as an excuse, because really, that's what it

is. It's an excuse for not finishing something.

It's an excuse for being feared,

of being judged for the thing you finished. It's so much

easier to start something and then

never show it to anybody and never get judged and, you know,

never have anybody listen to it. That's not that hard.

But when you finish something and you put it out there, you show

somebody the fear of judgment could keep you from

finishing it. So I think a lot of times we use perfectionism. At least I

use perfectionism as an excuse to not have to finish something.

And, yeah, I think that just like recognizing and being

aware that perfectionism is an excuse is

kind of the first step. And. And then the second

step would be to loosen. Loosen the judgments that you have on

yourself. And, yeah, just try to not

be so hard on yourself and try

to go into it with more of an open mind, whether it's a

creative endeavor or whatever it is. Try to go

into it with a little bit, you know, lower your expectations a little bit.

Like, you don't have to have these high expectations. You could just go into it

with a expectation of doing the thing, no matter how it

comes out. And one thing that I've found that really

helps me loosen the judgments in myself

is. Is to stop judging others. I think

we so easily judge other people. We so easily judge other

people's work, and when we do that, we really end up

judging ourselves in the same way.

Music, for example, for me, was. I was doing it with

that. Like, I would listen to other bands. I would be

critical of, like, other people's music and be like, oh, this part sucks. They should

have done this better. Or, I don't like this part. Or they're not that

good here. And in reality, I'm

making all of those judgments come back to myself, because then when I'm

making something, I'm looking at it in the same way of like, oh, this isn't

good enough. This. I don't like this here. And, you know, you

can always pick something apart from something. You

know, especially if it's a creation, a creative endeavor, you can

always pick something apart from it, but you can choose not

to. And I think when you choose to not judge others,

it helps you to not judge yourself as much.

So. So, yeah, the second step is to just loosen your judgments

on yourself. And you can do that by first practicing not judging

other people's work or just other people in general, because

that's probably a good way to live.

But the third step would be, uh, and

this is the one that's been, like, the most helpful for me is to set

a deadline. Like, whenever you're working on something,

if you don't have a deadline on it, you'll just keep working on it and

keep working on it and keep working on it. And when you have a deadline

for something, you. You have to finish it by then. And

of course, you need to also hold yourself accountable and actually finish it when

you make a deadline. But making a

deadline can be like. At least for me, it was like, the most

helpful thing of just having to finish something by a certain

date, because then you start making decisions

about, you know, I'm either going

to work on this thing and change this whole thing, start over again, but

I'm not going to make my deadline. So you start thinking creatively of, like,

okay, well, I guess I can't redo the whole thing, but maybe I could do

something else to make it a little bit better before the end of the deadline.

And it. Yeah, it makes you. It makes you make decisions. And

I think a lot of times perfectionism is. You're

indecisive. You don't want to make decisions here. If I'm making a song,

I don't want to, like, make a decision on the lyrics or I don't want

to make a decision about the structure of the song. So I'll just keep procrastinating

and, like, keep. Keep working on it forever and

never finish it. But if I have a deadline for a song,

then I'm like, all right, well, you know, I got to get it out. So

I have to make a decision by today on the structure of the song because

then I need to start working on finalizing the lyrics or I need to start

working on recording it. So I have to finish the song

by this time. So I think deadlines are really helpful. An

example of that for me would be

this year for me, musically, I gave myself

a goal and a. A deadline

for every month to have a song written,

recorded, completed and published every month for this

year. And that's been a hard deadline for me because normally

I procrastinate and normally I want to over obsess about

stuff. So it's been really helpful for me to practice overcoming

imperfection or it's been helpful for me to

practice overcoming perfectionism. That's a mouthful.

And just having those constant deadlines of, you

know, like I said, like, if I'm writing

a song, I got to have it written by this time because I got

to start recording it. I know it's going to take me this long to record

it. Then I know I got to have it done so I can mix it.

And then I know that I have to have it done, you know, about a

week before I want to release it because I have to publish it. And

all these sorts of like deadlines, they give you like mini

sort of challenges. You don't have to like think of it

as like one whole thing either. So breaking it down can

be helpful too. And that's not a step that I had here, but in my

notes. But I guess what I've been able to do is when you

have a timeline, you can then kind of reverse engineer

and break things down into steps. So, you know,

writing for a song specifically, you have your writing phase,

you have the recording phase, the post production, mixing

and mastering and then actually publishing. So now you

have all these different steps that you can use to sort of help

you get the task done and to make decisions

and to get each little step decided and move

to the next step. So yeah, setting deadlines has been

really helpful for me. Another thing you can do too is set a

timer. Like if you're, you know, writing, for example,

maybe you want to start writing more. You have a book or something that you

want to work towards. Setting a timer

for, for writing for me has been super helpful. Just set like

an hour timer or 30 minute timer. Put all your distractions

aside and force yourself to

work for those 30 minutes and

you again, you have to work. It's a deadline. So it's like, you have to

keep yourself to it. And for me, it's been really

helpful to just get to work and then to

basically block out the voices of like, well, this sentence isn't perfect

enough, so maybe I should redo it. You just go

and you just make something, and then you can look at it again later

and review it later, edit it later. So setting a timer has also been kind

of helpful. And that brings us to the fourth

step of overcoming perfectionism, which is

relying on a trusted friend. I think a lot of

times, especially when it comes with creative things, we can

create something in our head and, you know, bring it

to life and create it. But sometimes

it feels like I have no idea. Like,

like, I think it's good, maybe, but there's. There's nothing to, like,

reference it with. Like. Like, I don't know what anybody else is thinking. And,

you know, sometimes it's not important what other people are thinking. But I think if

you're in a position where you are afraid that it's not good enough

or you're afraid that, like, you're not going to put it out, I

would say in that case, then talk to a trusted friend and be like,

hey, here's this thing I made. What do you think of it? Like, you know,

give me some honest feedback. Let me know, is it worth, like,

trashing it or is it worth putting it out there?

Because I think in that case, if. If you're already kind of convinced yourself it's

not good enough by showing a friend, they could be like, no, that's actually really

good. I think you're being a little too critical of yourself. Uh, it could kind

of give you the extra motivation that you need to, like, follow through with

it and. And to put it out there. Um, this one's a little bit

tricky. I think you. You do have to make sure that the friend is a

trusted friend and, you know, somebody who's not gonna

maybe steer you wrong. And obviously, depending on, like, what it is, if

it's a music thing, I would. I would want to show

my music friend versus, like, somebody who

maybe doesn't like music or isn't into music as I am. So you want to

make sure that you're also matching, like, I guess,

interests when you're. When you're doing that. But.

Yeah. So then that brings me to the fifth step, which is

the simplest step by far. It's to just do it. The

antidote of perfectionism is to just do the thing. And

of course, that's Easier said than done. But I think sometimes that's

helpful for me to just say, like, you know what? Just. Just do it.

You have to. You have to just do the thing in order to

move forward, in order to make any progress. I think

a lot of times when I'm like, coming up with a song or I'm writing

a song, I will. I'll start to judge it. I'll be

like, ah, this is cheesy. I don't really like this. Maybe. Maybe this

isn't good. But I'll have a voice in my head to

be like, just. Just make it. Because you don't have to publish it. It doesn't

have to be a finished song. It could also just

be an idea. But if you don't follow through with the idea,

you're not going to know if it's good enough. And sorry that I

misspoke there. You're not gonna know if it's something that you like.

Because I think a lot of times, like, that's happened to me where I've started

with an idea and I'm like, I don't think I like this. I don't know.

But then I'll follow it and I'll continue the idea and then

it will turn into something that I actually like, and then it'll turn into a

single that I release. So.

So part of it is just doing it and just like kind of sort of

telling yourself to just do it regardless. Because it doesn't matter. Like,

even if. Even if somebody sees you, even if somebody judges you,

you know, none of that really matters. If you're getting to do the

thing that you want to do and you're getting to work on the thing that

you're pumped about or excited about,

it doesn't really matter what other people say.

So. Another thing too, I

think that I want to end with on this is

that perfectionism

inherently is like a Sisyphusian task.

It's a task that you can never accomplish. It's

impossible. Like, being perfect is impossible. That's

kind of the definition of perfection. Like, they're.

There is no such thing as being perfect, especially as humans. We're not perfect.

So if you're striving towards being perfect, you're

never gonna be satisfied because you're never gonna be perfect. So

I think that's also important to keep in mind when thinking about

perfectionism. But then I also wanna talk about the flip side of

that. There are good parts of perfectionism. I

think being a perfectionist isn't all a bad

Thing, There's. There's lots of good qualities that. That come

with perfectionism. It shows that you care about what you're doing.

It shows usually some sort of dedication. You know, when

I was making those drawings and erasing them a thousand times, like, I was

spending a lot of time dedicated towards this drawing that eventually

I wanted to finish and actually never did. But I was really dedicated to,

you know, erasing and doing it a thousand times. I probably spent

tons of time doing it. So that's a good quality, you know?

So I think if we can sort of take the good parts of

perfectionism, take the striving to be perfect, I think

striving to be really good is a good quality.

Striving to have, like, you know, a good outcome,

that's always a good thing. So, yeah, I mean, it's

not all a bad thing. I think it's just a matter of sort of

tweaking yourself to finish things. And I think for

me, that was kind of. If you take any of the steps,

I think the biggest one would be to just the

fifth one to just do it and to just finish the thing. Because when you

finish things, then you can move on

to the next thing and actually

get better. And that maybe sounds simple,

but when you're

making things and you finish them, you're able to then reflect back on

them. Whereas if you never finish the thing, you always

just have this little negative thought in your head like, I never

finished that thing. It was never good enough. But if you

finished it, you can then go look at it, look at the

drawing, listen to the music, listen to the song, and be like, oh, you

know what? I think I'd make this better next time. So

getting the thing done and just doing the thing is what's going to

help you to get better at whatever it is that you're doing.

So, yeah, hopefully that's been helpful.

Hopefully, maybe you can resonate with some of the parts of this

if you're a perfectionist. I think there's a lot of perfectionists out there,

but, yeah, just get it done. Just get it done

as messy as it needs to be, because that's what's gonna help you get

better and what's gonna help you move forward. So,

yeah, I think that's everything I wanted to say on perfectionism.

Before we end the show real quick, I just want to say that

on workingtowardsourpurpose.com I now have a feedback

form. It's basically just like a basic contact

form, but it's on the homepage of working towards our purpose. And you can

put in your name and your email. And then there's just the open

box where you could put in a question or a comment or a concern or

whatever it is that you want. I said. I remember I said a while ago

I wanted to have, like, some way to try to get more feedback, to

create more connection between you, the

listener and me. And I think that's. That's

my next step is this contact form. You can put

whatever your thoughts are in it. It's really simple. Just the three questions, name,

email, and then whatever your thought is about the show and you can

hit send and it will come my way. And yeah, hopefully

you can take advantage of that. I'll leave the link in the show notes so

it'd be easy for you to get. And then the last thing I want to

say is if you're watching on YouTube, you can see my Working towards

our purpose shirt that I'm wearing on the website.

We also have working or we. I say we, and it's just me.

I also have Working towards our purpose merchant. Uh, we have.

I have T shirts, I have mugs and

all kinds of stuff. This is one of the shirts that is available

in this maroon color that I like. And yeah,

if you feel so inclined to support my work, you can go.

Go get a T shirt. And yeah, I think my.

My, like, I guess dream for.

For like a shirt like this is for somebody to like, read it and be

like, what is that? What does working towards our purpose mean? And

then hopefully, like, it'll. It'll create or spawn like, a

nice conversation between, like, you know, something

deep and instead of just like, superficial conversation

with a stranger, maybe, maybe it'll spark, like a conversation about purpose and

something that you really care about. So hopefully you could be

proud if you get one of these to wear it. And as I am.

And yeah, I just wanted to put that out there.

There's a merch button on the Working towards our purpose website,

so you can also get there from the same link that I'm gonna put in

the show notes for the feedback form, so. All

right, thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging in there. This one's a little bit longer

than normal. Hopefully everything worked out with the camera and I will see you

on another episode real soon. Thank you for listening.