Show Notes
Perfectionism isn’t a personality quirk. It’s a pattern of reinforced behaviors that can seep into every aspect of your life.
You may set certain standards for yourself, certain rules about how things are supposed to be or how you are supposed to behave; while you may meet those standards for a while, they eventually - and inevitably - fall short. Then, you feel crushed. Then, you criticize yourself. And then, to drown out the negativity, you set new goals, standards, and expectations for yourself. The cycle of ineffective perfectionistic actions repeats and maintains itself.
There is nothing wrong with striving to do things right and perfectly - that’s natural when you deeply care about things and what matters to you. And, as you have heard me say before, it’s extremely important that you learn to harness the power of perfectionistic actions without losing yourself.
In this podcast episode, I chat with Monica Basco, Ph.D. We discuss specific topics related to perfectionism in detail:
(a) A large part of the conversation clarifies how having high standards and being perfectionistic can be both, beneficial and detrimental, and finding the balance between the two is crucial.
(b) We also discussed the interplay between perfectionistic behaviors and procrastination as two sides of the same coin.
(c) Monica and I highlighted the fact that setting high-goals is productive when one can tolerate failure. However, learning to pursue what matters and learning to let things go - as the right thing to do - is also important.
(d) Finally, we discuss ideas for you to conduct a functional analysis, or in other words, we discuss key questions for you to understand your drive to engage in perfectionistic actions (e.g., what is my mind trying to protect me from right now?)
Key Takeaways
Discussing perfectionism and high-achieving behaviors Understanding the impact of high goals The role of confidence in goal setting The intersection of perfectionism and procrastination
Show notes with time-stamps 01:00 Understanding Fear and Perfectionism 01:31 Dealing with Perfectionism and High-Achieving Behaviors 02:35 Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Perfectionism 04:14 Setting Goals and Dealing with Failure 05:12 Understanding Overachievement and Expectations 08:37 Dealing with Rejection and Pursuing Goals 20:43 Understanding the Intersection of Perfectionism and Procrastination
(*) Show notes and resources of this episode
(*) Receive free weekly science-based, compassionate, and actionable skills to stop ineffective playing-it-safe
(*) Figure out your playing-it-safe profile in 5 minutes and identify the key thinking strategies that keep you living in your head
(*) Learn ACT skills for anxious achievers by taking Dr. Z. ACT courses Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from PLAYING-IT-SAFE
Two hours at dinner. You were there for about twenty minutes of it.
There is a difference between having a description and being one.
There's an email that's been sitting in your drafts for eleven days, and the only thing stopping it is one sentence in your head that you've never checked. This episode is about defusion, one of the six core processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and about what happens when a thought and the world get glued together so tightly you can't tell them apart.
Your mind runs a control agenda all day long. Some of its strategies are obvious: distraction, keeping busy, opting out. And some look nothing like control at all: the silver lining, the blessing count, the lesson. Same job, better manners. This episode is about acceptance, the first of the six processes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and about the half of the definition almost nobody teaches.
You're not avoiding the conversation. You're avoiding how it will feel to have it.