Newsletter Apr '22 - THE PERFECTIONIST TENDENCY
Hi, beautiful human!
I hope you are feeling energized, clear minded, and clear hearted. That is how I’m feeling right now - I’m fully rested from the self-exile that only Covid can provide - alas I’m fine, it felt like a mild flu; and yes, I’m vaccinated ;-)
I’m not in the same room with you, I don’t know your exact situation, but if you’re feeling tired, I urge you to rest in the middle of the day even if for just 5 minutes. Your body, your mind, your soul, AND your family, will thank you.
Resting allows our nervous system to slow down and it allows our mind to be at ease. Letting your mind wander is an extremely productive way of spending time, writes Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in"Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less."
And when they do, we want to welcome new ideas, and protect them from our own deep inner critic.
Say you have an idea for a new initiative at work. Or, you noticed a new area at work that you’d really like to get into but you know nothing about. That’s how it all starts. With a little seed that is firmly planted in the fertile ground of your soul.
That little seed of inspiration needs protection from our ever present environmental roadblocks we all have, which I call the 3 IPPs (Imposter Syndrome, Perfectionism, and People Pleasing).
Let’s take Perfectionism, which we all are familiar with. As a society, we celebrate and reward a high bar, so we all contribute to spreading perfectionism to some degree.
What’s wrong with aiming for perfection?
If a project isn’t perfectly done to your high standards you might not share it, so you might potentially miss out on timing or on allowing others to contribute to it.
If it’s not perfect, it might be a failure. It’s personal.
Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart
The issue is, a perfectionist approach is loaded with unrealistic expectations from ourselves and from others.
It’s also loaded with assumptions. If your work isn’t perfect, you’re going to disappoint people. They are going to exclude you or reject you.
In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown showed that perfectionism assumes that “if I’m perfect, I’m going to be spared failure and suffering.”
I used to think that suffering is bad. Until I realized it’s the single most powerful way to go in, recognize what my needs are, and change course.
“Happiness is not the absence of suffering; it's the ability to rebound from it.”
Perfectionism, I found, is also not about the outcome. It’s often directed at others. In that way, it is related to People Pleasing.
Perfectionism can be the single most powerful barrier to building what we want to build.
I experience this often, and the moment I hear myself ‘what will people think?’ I know I need to stop, check in, and remind myself why I am building what I do - how it benefits others, how it solves problems.
This way I’m able to take the emotions out of the process - meaning, I remove my own self judgement and comparison tendency - and I get back to work. I remind myself that it’s not about me. And it’s not about others, either. It’s about what I’m here to create.
It can be that simple, but you have to…
It can be hard to disrupt your own patterns so you can have the impact you really want to have.
Deep work is not meant to be done alone
If you’ve been thinking about making a change at work so you can feel even more empowered and inspired, it’s more fun and more effective to do it alongside others.
I created the Inside Out Leadership Accelerator to help you align your Zone of Genius with your current work and increase your impact. You’ll be part of a small group of kick-ass women leaders who are brilliant and compassionate who will have your back along the way.
Registration is open for one last week!
Wanna join us?
Tune in for next week’s FREE Expand your Circle of Control training.
Head over to the Leaders Community - RH Coaching next Monday 4/11 at 11AM PT.
Join the Facebook group today so you don’t miss it!
Big hugs,
Ramona
Hi, I’m Ramona, a high-impact professional executive coach with a track record of empowering leaders become more impactful and more satisfied. I coach leaders at Google, Facebook, UC Berkeley, Capital One, Salesforce, Skim, Warner Brothers, and several non-profit organizations.
I’m a certified Emotional Intelligence trainer and Master Practitioner of Energy Leadership(TM).
Prior to becoming a coach I was a marketing research leader in tech (Twitter, eBay, Levi's). I started freelancing in 2015 to explore a career change, launched a self-funded research project on happiness, which led to later creating my signature Inside Out Leadership model.
I’m passionate about deep inner growth and personal agency, which I believe are key in making the world a better place. I was born and raised in Transylvania, Romania.
