9. Rethinking Perfectionism in Life and Caregiving

I'm diving into the whole perfectionism thing, especially when it sneaks its way into caregiving and our personal growth journey. I've been there. It's like this never-ending cycle of trying to meet impossible standards, only to end up feeling super critical of myself and stuck in the same spot.

I'm opening up about my own experiences and sharing the wisdom I've gained along the way. I talk about the various ways perfectionism can hold us back and then share the strategies that helped me kick perfectionism to the curb. Including one of the awesome teachings of my coach, Brooke Castillo. We're talking about this game-changing idea of aiming for a 'B minus effort' – celebrating good work without freaking out about being flawless. Plus, I'll show you how treating life like a bunch of experiments and embracing the 80-20 rule can totally shake things up in a good way.

So, if you're ready to ditch perfectionism and find that sweet spot between striving for greatness and taking care of yourself, come join me on this journey.

Top things you will learn in this podcast:

1. Recognizing perfectionist thinking in your life and caregiving roles.
2. Understanding the drawbacks of perfectionism, including decreased enjoyment, reluctance to try new things, and self-judgment.
3. Practical strategies for shifting perfectionist thinking, such as embracing "B minus effort," being willing to experiment, applying the 80-20 rule, and letting things be messy.
4. Cultivating kindness, compassion, and understanding towards oneself and others, acknowledging that perfection is unattainable and mistakes are part of being human.

Resources:
Brooke Castillo & The Life Coach School

As a Resiliency Coach for people who are caregiving for their partner, I'm here to support YOU, the caregiver. Learn more about my work at www.coachmarika.com.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:05

Welcome to In this Together, a podcast for partners turned caregivers, where you'll discover invaluable insights and actionable advice to navigate the ups and downs of caregiving with resilience and strength. Here's your guide, Marika Humphreys.

Marika Humphreys: 0:38

Hey caregivers and care partners out there, how are you? I have been on a bit of emotional rollercoaster. I feel like I might've said that last week as well. I am no longer a caregiver, but I am a parent of a teenager, and so that has its own ups and downs and, believe me, I have been using and practicing all the tools that I talk about here in this podcast. So today we are going gonna talk about letting go of perfectionism in life and in caregiving. This is an area that I used to really struggle with, and as I was preparing for this episode, I realized it's probably one of the areas that I have majorly transformed in my life as a result of coaching and what I've learned through coaching. So I'm going to share with you today some of the ways to recognize perfectionist thinking in your life and in caregiving, and then talk about how it actually holds us back and can prevent growth, and then I'm going to give you some of my tools for shifting perfectionist thinking.

Marika Humphreys: 1:51

Let's start by clarifying what perfectionism is. So I looked this up, and of course, there's a bunch of different definitions, but one that I found that I thought was pretty standard was striving for flawlessness and setting exceedingly high standards, and people with perfectionist tendencies often are extremely self-critical. You may or may not consider yourself a perfectionist with that definition in mind, but if you even have any tendencies in this direction really high standards, being extremely self-critical then that's really who I want to speak to in this episode is just all of us out there who tend towards that in some areas of our life. So it might show up for you in your work or in your parenting, or maybe how you keep your home, or perhaps how you dress, or your views on your body or in your caregiving role. This could show up in all of those areas, or maybe some of them more than others.

Marika Humphreys: 3:06

I think another way to think about this is the ideal version that we have of ourselves. That's often in our subconscious. It's kind of the person we believe we should be or we'd like to be, this perfect person in, you know, in the back of our minds, and often that will come out when we fail at something or we fall short of something, and then how it shows up usually is in the form of oh, I should have or I shouldn't have, like I shouldn't have been so rude, or I should be more compassionate, I shouldn't lose my temper. I shouldn't feel sorry for myself. That's a big one that a lot of caregivers have. I should be grateful and appreciate what I have. I shouldn't overeat. I should exercise daily. I should weigh this amount right.

Marika Humphreys: 4:05

We all have these kind of shoulds and shouldn'ts that we sort of hold ourselves to. So I just want you to reflect for a few minutes as I talk here about where those are for you in your life. Where do you have the shoulds or the shouldn'ts? And I will just say a quick note here If you find that you are a person who tends to do this about other people like, oh, they shouldn't do that or they should do this, or you feel like you think that often about other people, it's usually because you are judgmental about yourself as well.

Marika Humphreys: 4:45

So what we often see in other people is a reflection of how we view ourselves. So if you are judgmental or tend to be judgmental of others, it's because you're very judgmental of yourself. So you may or may not have that realization. So, as you're thinking about how this shows up for you, if it does, the first point I want to make here is there are literally no perfect people on this planet. Literally no one is perfect, no matter how they appear on the outside.

Marika Humphreys: 5:21

Since I have become a coach, one of the insights I've really gained is that, no matter how put together someone appears on the outside, everyone is a human and that means that everybody has a struggle, a challenge, a story in their life, no matter what you see on the outside. No one is perfect, and expecting ourselves to be perfect in any area is kind of crazy. But we do that. We do set exceedingly high standards right, that's what the definition said and then hold ourselves to it. But perfectionism is not possible for humans. So maybe you can have moments of perfectness, if that's a word, but being perfect is not possible. It's obvious. We know that's true, but just a reminder that there are no perfect people. It's kind of nice to just say out loud and to remember.

Marika Humphreys: 6:29

So let's talk about what's wrong with wanting to be perfect or wanting to do something flawless or, like those of us who I think would think about it more, is having very high standards. What's wrong with that? It sounds really noble, right, I have high standards for myself, but there is some problems with that and I'm going to go into why that can be problematic. There's really nothing wrong with having high standards.

Marika Humphreys: 7:00

Wanting to do well, striving to be our best and show up as our best self is great. And as a caregiver, maybe that means you want to be loving and strong, you want to stay calm, you want to not lose your temper, maybe you want to be encouraging, supportive things like that. Striving for that is absolutely no problem in and of itself and in fact, I would say it's actually really helpful to define what is the role you want to play and get really clear about that. I talk about that in episode seven, which is defining your role as a caregiver. So I think it's really helpful to be clear, set clear expectations for yourself and strive for that. But the difference between having high standards and being a perfectionist is in how you treat yourself on the back end. What I mean by that is when you fall short or fail, how do you treat yourself?

Marika Humphreys: 8:06

That is really the critical area where being a perfectionist is problematic. I want to dive into what some of those drawbacks are. So one of the first drawbacks to being a perfectionist is that it is simply isn't fun. Perfectionists tend to take life very seriously because it's all about performing and succeeding, because that's how we measure our value. I would say this was me Emphasis on the past tense. I'm still not a super easygoing person, but I definitely take myself less seriously than I used to. When we are focused on performing and succeeding and doing well, it makes it really hard to just lighten up and enjoy ourselves. I will tell you, I used to play pickleball with my late husband and I remember one beautiful day in Northern California where we were living at the time.

Marika Humphreys: 9:09

We were playing. It was a weekend, we were playing with friends and I was just not playing well and I was so frustrated with myself to the point that I wasn't even enjoying it. I was just so incredibly frustrated, mad, that I couldn't play better, and I do remember we were in coaching at the time. So this is what gave me the perspective that I later reflected on that here I was playing a game right With friends on a beautiful day and I do remember it was just a gorgeous day Like the weather was perfect, I think it was spring, things were starting to bloom and I was not enjoying any of it because I was so critical of myself Like nobody else was being that critical, I was doing it to myself. I am thankfully not that person anymore. I have learned to not take things so seriously and even though that was a game right, I also don't do this now, even with things that are more serious around my career, my business are more serious around my career, my business relationships. I just don't set these ridiculous standards for myself and I'm just much more forgiving and compassionate, and I'll get to how I do that. Now I'm going to share some of the ways, the strategies that I use to maintain that thinking, but I do have to continue to practice that. But for the most part, my thinking has just shifted in how I even view the standards I set for myself.

Marika Humphreys: 10:49

I dance, I do ballroom dance. Now I don't play pickleball as much. I still like it, but I haven't played for quite a while. But I love to dance and while I still like to learn and improve, I have to remind myself sometimes, when I get frustrated with my own progress, that ultimately I love to dance and I'm dancing because of that reason first and foremost, and it's supposed to be fun. So it's just a reminder for me to again not take it so seriously. I can still work hard and, believe me, I do. I work hard in ballroom dance and I practice, but I just don't blame myself or worry about how well I'm doing, like I used to.

Marika Humphreys: 11:37

Being a perfectionist is really hard to make life enjoyable because we're so focused on succeeding and performing, because that's how we judge our value. So really learning to shift out of that mindset can be just so helpful and it makes life more fun. Another drawback to perfectionist thinking is that it makes us less likely to try new things, makes us less likely to take risks or be a beginner at something, because we tend to be hard on ourselves. So when you fall short or fail or don't measure up in your own view fall short or fail or don't measure up in your own view and your automatic response is to beat yourself up like I'm so dumb or oh, I should know better by now, or I should be able to do this better, then you start to degrade trust with yourself, and I think that comes from thinking that we need to be hard on ourselves in order to do better the next time. It's kind of this tough love idea, but really negative emotion always begets more negative emotions. So when we feel bad, we're going to be less likely to be motivated. We're going to be less inspired. If we can only feel good when we've actually achieved something, then naturally we're going to be really selective about what we even try. So if you've been really hard on yourself over time, you've consistently beat yourself up for failures or falling short, you're just going to wear down and it's going to be really hard to even want to try new things or be open to trying new things. So that is another drawback of being a perfectionist.

Marika Humphreys: 13:32

And then the last area I want to talk about as a drawback to perfectionist thinking is judging yourself harshly keeps us past focused. When we are stuck in self-blame and criticism, it makes it really hard to move forward because we're so mad or frustrated or disappointed with ourselves. We can't get past that point. I've talked about this a lot in the last episode about regret when we are looking backwards and thinking I should have done this or gosh darn it. Why don't I know this by now? What we're doing is we're looking backwards, and it keeps us in the past instead of looking forward and thinking what can I learn for this or how can I do it differently next time. So we tend to get stuck in self-blame and we're just so busy judging ourselves and feeling bad about ourselves that we don't actually learn anything from it that we can take forward. Those are just a few of the drawbacks of perfectionist thinking. There are probably a lot more that I didn't even cover, but mostly my point that I want to get across here is it does hold ourselves back and it can prevent growth because, again, we're past focused and we erode the trust with ourselves when we consistently beat ourselves up for not achieving to a certain standard, which is usually unrealistic in the first place.

Marika Humphreys: 15:04

Now I want to share with you some of my strategies for how I've learned to overcome a lot of these tendencies and, like I said, it's still a work in progress. I do still find myself frustrated, maybe, with how I behaved or something that I didn't think through fully, but I'm much quicker to just move forward, allow that feeling of frustration and then move forward or move on, some of the ways that I know of how to shift out of perfectionist thinking. The first one I want to share with you is one I learned from my coach, brooke Castillo, when I first started her coaching program. It's many, many years ago now, and it was this idea of B minus effort, not A, okay, right, just B minus. When I first heard that I was like what? I wasn't a straight A student, but I was a good student and I strove for Bs and as, and B minus was like kind of bad. Really, if you were an A student, you didn't want to B minus, you wanted at least a B plus and then you were kind of frustrated. So B minus efforts seem really crazy for me to set as a goal. But her point was with B minus effort, you're still putting out good work, but you don't have to make it perfect before putting it out into the world. And when she was really talking about this a lot, she was talking about it in forms of being a life coach and just putting your work into the world. Or you could think about it in any sense right, whether you're an artist or any form of putting yourself out into the world, thinking of it in terms of B minus effort instead of needing it to be an A.

Marika Humphreys: 16:55

And the very first time I remember really really struggling with this and utilizing this idea was the very first blog article I wrote and posted on my website. This was like five or six years ago. I was so nervous about it because here I was, writing this article and putting it out into the world to be seen and read and judged, and I really had to remind myself okay, b minus effort, marika, b minus effort, it doesn't need to be perfect, just get it out there. And in reality, no one was even reading my blog, except for maybe my parents, because nobody knew it even existed. But I really had to remind myself of this concept just be minus doesn't have to be perfect in order to even get it out there.

Marika Humphreys: 17:46

Now I write and I obviously record this podcast and I do all sorts of things. I do Facebook Lives and I no longer have this need for things to be perfect. I'm so much more comfortable with just putting stuff out there, and it doesn't mean that I don't work hard and put out a good product. I just don't need it to be perfect, and that's the big distinction. Ask yourself where can you shift to thinking in terms of B minus instead of A?

Marika Humphreys: 18:19

The next strategy I use often is be willing to experiment. I love thinking about doing something new as an experiment. So whether you are figuring out a new caregiving routine or working on your self-care habits, taking the attitude that this is just an experiment, it can be so freeing, because we tend to think that we need to have it all figured out right from the start and instead, if you think about it as we're going to try this and then see how it goes and then we'll change it up as necessary, it's totally takes off the pressure we tend to put on ourselves right To get it right the first time. So the tech industry has totally adopted this concept and they call it iteration. They'll put out some new technology, maybe a new app, and it's not perfect from out the gate, it has some flaws in it, but it's out there and people use it, and then they just iterate to improve it. We have gotten used to this in the tech industry. There's a new iPhone pretty much every year. Right, there's some improvements. All sorts of our technology is just iterations of earlier versions. When you start thinking this way, you can just move so much faster because you're not trying to get it perfect out of the gate. Think about it as iteration or being willing to experiment. They're kind of the same thing. That gets you to the same place, and I'm constantly telling my clients just be willing to experiment. Right, try this schedule this week and see how it goes. I think this is a great way to think. Anytime you're doing something new or trying a new process or adopting a new schedule, just be willing to experiment and tweak it as you get more information.

Marika Humphreys: 20:16

Another strategy I like to use is the 80-20 rule. This is one I like to remind myself of, especially around habits and projects. The 80-20 rule I'm sure you've heard it, but basically it says that 80% of the outcome is from 20% of the effort. Or you can think about it as if you focus on 20% of the things, it will have 80% of the impact. I think this is really useful when you're feeling overwhelmed, because we often tend to think that everything needs to be done right, we just need to do it all, and that's a lot of times where that feeling of overwhelm comes from, but usually not everything is of equal importance if we really think about it. So if you identify the most important things, that's actually going to have the greatest impact anyway. So it's a great way to remember. Okay, I just need to identify the top 20% and that's going to have 80% of the impact anyway.

Marika Humphreys: 21:21

Another area that I use the 80-20 rule in is around my eating habits. I've just learned that I'm just not going to be perfect in this area and it's something that I've struggled with for years and I have definitely, definitely over time, improved my habits in general. But I've also learned that I'm just going to have days where I overeat, or meals where I overeat, or times where I eat too much or I eat because I've of emotion that I'm trying to avoid. But I remind myself on the other end of that right that if I eat well, 80 or even 90% of the time, that's going to make all the difference over the long run. It's not the 10 or 20% that I screw up. So it helps me kind of get perspective on those times where I fall short and it helps me have a little more grace for myself, kind of put it in perspective.

Marika Humphreys: 22:22

And then the last strategy that I use a lot with my clients is letting it be messy when we are caring for another person, when we're dealing with the medical system or things that are often outside of our knowledge or even our control. It is not always going to go smoothly, and that's okay. So I like to remind my clients that it's going to be messy and just to let it be messy, it's okay. Thinking that way can be a huge relief, especially for those of us that like to have things organized and planned out, which is nice. I am one of those people, but it's not always possible, and we can prevent and save ourselves a lot of stress and anxiety if we just remind ourselves let it be messy, or it's going to be messy, and you might even add to that in the beginning. It's going to be messy and that's okay, because then you'll figure it out, you might be able to smooth out the process.

Marika Humphreys: 23:29

But yeah, letting it be messy, super freeing those are the strategies that I use to really counter my perfectionist tendencies and overall this has been a real gradual transformation for me in my life. It wasn't something that happened overnight and all of a sudden I realized, oh, I'm not going to be a perfectionist, definitely wasn't like that, but once I became aware of how I was holding myself back and also how I was causing myself so much unnecessary misery by being so hard on myself. I started really practicing changing how I thought about things and how I thought about myself when I didn't measure up in some way. So the strategies I've shared with you are the ones that I use and continue to use. So I just want you to consider reevaluating the standards you hold yourself to and experiment with practicing kindness and compassion and understanding towards yourself and others, ideally when you fall short, which you inevitably will in some areas, because you're human. Remember, there's no perfect people, so we are not always going to have that perfect outcome that we want, and that's okay. It's not a measure of our self-worth at all.

Marika Humphreys: 25:02

All right, that is what I've got for you this week. I would love it and appreciate it so much if you left me a review. Wherever you listen to this podcast, it just helps other people find it. If you listen on Apple, which I think the majority of people do, you can go to the three dots on the upper right corner of your phone and click on there and then there's a go to show and then, when you go to the show, the podcast show kind of main page you have to scroll down and then there's a place to leave a review. I would appreciate that. If you do that, it helps a lot, helps people find it, and I'd love to hear your comments, and you can email me them as well. All right, I will see you all next week.

Announcer: 25:55

Thanks for listening to this episode of In this Together. If you would like to learn more about Marika's work, go to www. coachmarika. com.