When you stop perfecting, constantly doubting & changing your mind,
you’ll lower your anxiety.
But how do you do that when you keep finding yourself in doing it?
It’s a decision you make in your mind.
Perfectionism is not a trait that really serves you.
It holds you back, from finishing or accomplishing at least in a timely manner and sometimes ever.
It keeps you spinning.
It confuses you.
It will play tricks in your head to try to make it better.
It just keeps you stuck — unnecessarily.
You can decide there is no such thing as perfect and 80% or even 70% is good enough.
To your brain, it feels like it’s going to die
— literally it would rather keep you in indecision, doubt and confusion than making some decisions and see what happens.
so it keeps you doubting, perfecting
which ironically actually feels more comfortable in your body (even though you might not think anxiety feels great ha, ha)
But it’s actually saving you from feeling: embarrassment and shame!
There is a fine line between the resistance you feel and perfectionism.
They both feel pressure and heavy but they keep you away from what you desire.
You won’t recognize the resistance if you are new to this work,
you’ll keep believing your brain when it tells you it’s not good enough, that you’re not good enough — and it’s likely subconsciously hiding under your radar, even if consciously you are telling yourself you are good enough.
The resistance you feel will pull you away and have you doing something else so be careful.
You might even think you have a focus & procrastination problem.
When you recognize it, you can change it.
And, you don’t even need to go down a complete rabbit hole of your past — I’m going to save you time right now.
When you tend to be a perfectionist…
- you might be afraid of what others think, even if you tell yourself that’s not the case.
- you think you have to have it perfect, it’s the only way.
- you will convince yourself, it’s not ready, it could be better.
- you love the outside recognition it gives you when you are finally ready to put it out there, you’ll use it to feel good about yourself.
- you can’t wait to finish so you can finally feel proud of yourself after it’s completed — one for the books, for the accomplishment even if it took you years (or 10 more hours than it actually should of) — no shame either way ;).
Your brain actually can finish things when you give it a specific time to do it in.
The result you want.
So next time you find yourself in a pickle of trying to do something perfectly,
and you are procastinating, doubting or just getting anxious when it doesn’t feel perfect
try this:
before you even start, give yourself a specific amount of time to do it in.
Your brain will figure it out.
If you are good at it (no pun intended) you’ll know exactly how much time you’ll need ahead of time.
You might fail the first few times at the allotted time but I promise you, you’ll get better at estimating without allowing the crazy pressure you put on yourself to perfect it. You brain will now know what to expect from you to.
It decreases decision fatigue because you decided ahead of time instead of giving yourself 2 weeks for a project when it really required 2-4 hours.
Stop believing your brain when it tells you it’s not good enough or your not good enough, don’t let it derail you, constrain your focus, decide the time and go all in on creating the result you want in that time frame. It works.
