Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

This week’s show is all about perfectionism. We thought it was a perfect time of year to discuss this topic as it is likely that you’re reviewing how the year went for you and possibly, just possibly judging yourself for all of the things you didn’t get done versus the things that you did accomplish. We can all have a tendency towards wanting to get things right however, in our quest, we can also lose sight of the details and overwhelm ourselves with our own versions of perfectionism. So, why do we do this in the first place?

Well, first of all, we tend to ignore what is going well. This is just part of our natural negativity bias. Secondly, we also tend to ignore all of the factors that influence the outcome of any endeavor that we are embarking upon. For example, even for us to create our weekly show, a lot of details have to come together fairly well for the show to get off the ground and into it’s final form. And the truth is, neither Katie and I can control for all of them. Perfectionism really drives us to personalize every part of the result of an outcome, as if we can control every aspect. Setting these excessively high standards for performance and outcome is a disaster if you want to experience joy and peace with your daily tasks. Of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t want to do a great job with our work and our lives however, perfectionism can be become maladaptive when we attempt to attain an ideal that just can’t be achieved. The best antidote then for perfectionism is a type of wise realism. In other words, asking whether we are going after some ideal versus a realistic outcome can start us off on the right track towards overcoming perfectionistic tendencies. And most importantly, it can bring back the joy that we want to experience in our life and in our leadership.