Is Perfectionism Holding You Back?

Hey, how you doing today, folks? Nick Hanson here from Cadre. How are you? I hope you're having a good day. I hope you're practicing gratitude. I hope you're bringing joy into what you're doing. And I hope that you realize you are awesome. You are amazing. You are worth it. You can do this. You've got it. You've got it. You've got it. I say this as much to remind myself as to remind you. I think it's important with the constant flow of positivity to also acknowledge when things are not going well, to acknowledge the shadow self, to talk through it, to break up these emotional knots that are within us.

Life has the ups and the downs, and I wanted to expound on that by talking a bit about perfectionism. And I think perfectionism shows up in our lives in many different ways. And I don't think I always, you know, fully understand even what it is or how it's showing up in my life. But let's look at a dictionary definition of perfectionism. So, perfectionism in the dictionary says, refusal to accept any standard short of perfection philosophy, a doctrine holding that religious, moral, social, or political perfectionist attainable, especially the theory that human moral, or spiritual perfection should be or has been attained a personal standard, attitude or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less.

So it's such an interesting dichotomy between being a high performer, you know, trying to be a high performing individual in a success driven culture, and trying to be sane, trying to be human, trying to have relationships. It's. It's a lot to balance. And so I'm talking through this as much as anything, and would love to know more about how perfectionism shows up in your life. But let me give you a couple of ways that I practice combating perfectionism or letting go of it in some way. Prayer meditation in the morning always is going to naturally help me enter into the flow of life better and let go of some of that perfectionism.

Knowing when something is just good enough and letting it go. Praying to my higher power, help me let go of this perfectionism. I've heard the term fEC perfunctionism, which I thought was funny, and I think one of the most effective things that I practiced recently is permission to do things imperfectly. And you don't have to do anything perfectly, and it's better to do it than not to do it at all. Some people say it's better not even if you don't do it well. Don't even bother. I think there's some truth to that.

But let's go down this route for a second, doing things imperfectly. Like this morning, I had work meetings and I didn't have a lot of time, but I had a 15 minutes window, and I figured it's better to ride the peloton for a ten minute ride than it is to not ride it at all. I have another call coming up here. After this. I'm going to do maybe two or three minutes of yoga, which is better. It'd be better maybe to do 30 minutes of yoga, but it's better to do two or three then, you know, none at all.

If I only have three minutes to talk to a friend on the phone, better to do that than not at all. And it's better to, I think, try to do what you can today. If it can be done today, then do it today. Right. And, you know, some of the times I just hit, I work really hard, but then maybe I hit a wall some night and I just can't do anything but just lie on the couch and watch Netflix for an hour or two. And instead of chastising myself, be like, you should be working. It's just sometimes okay to take care of the self.

And there's so many shoulds that go on in my mind, okay, you should be doing this. You should react to this situation this way, these crushing expectations upon self. And usually it's just, and it's just the self doing that. It's this voice in the head who's saying, okay, do this, you shouldn't be this way. You should be that way. And I think that's something that meditation can help with, is kind of to quell that mind chatter. And the teachers of meditation will say that it's the awareness above or behind that mind chatter that you can find by getting quiet and getting still.

And if you get in that place, the mind can do all of its thinking, its analyzing, its worrying, but you can be kind of separated from it in some way. So this is just kind of talking through this perfectionism. I should maybe do some writing about it because in some ways, im not a perfectionist. I leave messes around, will sometimes do shoddy work. So I seem to tango between this perfectionism and total non perfectionism in the same way that I can tango between expansiveness and despair. And like most humans, I have varied traits, and we are, a lot of us, walking, talking contradictions.

And so maybe that's another thing to just kind of let go of. So maybe that's the word for the night, let go. But anyways, guys. It's been nice getting this to you. I hope you have a good night. Talk to you later. Bye.