Perfectionism can be a great hiding place when you are afraid to put yourself out there. So how do you at least go into “recovery” on your perfectionism? 

Any “recovering perfectionists” out there? In addition to me, that is! 

My striving for perfection goes way back to childhood.

My Dad was a very strong force in my life. Still is today.

Have you heard that old saying “If it’s worth doing. It’s worth doing well.”?

My Dad lives by that belief.

And, in general, it is still my “truth”.

The problem is, anything taken to an extreme becomes a weakness, or adds so much stress that it just isn’t worth it!

What my childhood brain made up was that “doing it well” meant that it had to be perfect.

I had to get straight “A’s”, high score on the tests, win the awards, etc.

Then when I started working in the corporate world, it turned into the need to get promoted faster, work harder than anyone else, demand “perfection” from my team, give up a personal life, and burn out!

The turning point for me was when one of my best team members turned in a project with tons of typos and missing information.

When I sat down with her to find out what was going on and why she hadn’t done her usual high-quality work, she said to me…

“Well, what difference does it make, you’re going to change it anyway.”

Ouch!

I had inadvertently been making one of my best team members feel that her work would never be good enough.

No matter what she did, I would always change it to make it my version of “perfect”.

That was the day I began to realize what I was giving up with this need to take everything to the max…

…demoralizing my best people, who I loved 😢

…totally increasing my workload, often by just “rearranging the deck chairs”.  (If you haven’t heard that phrase, it basically means I was creating a bunch of work that at the end of the day, really didn’t make a difference.  I’d just moved around the pieces.)

…giving up a personal life to work 80-hour weeks

…feeling tired, stressed and overwhelmed all the time

…and more.

I committed to myself and my team that it was a new day.

I still maintained high quality standards. 😊

I just chose what I focused on.

I didn’t make changes for the sake of changes.

I asked myself “Is this good enough?” continually.

I asked for support from my team when I was overdoing it.

And I practiced.

I say I’m still a “recovering perfectionist” because I’m not sure I’ll ever totally break free! 

When I left the corporate world to start my own business, I couldn’t just start one business.

I had to start three!

It wasn’t long before I was right back in 80-hour weeks keeping all the plates perfectly spinning.

I share my personal story because I hear a similar one from so many of the female entrepreneurs I talk to!

And you might have been nodding your head!

For entrepreneurs, perfectionism often shows up in getting bogged down in the details, many times ones that don’t matter, before taking any action.

Having to finish the content of every module in your first online course before you ever test it with the market.

• Writing and re-writing your website copy or opt-in page copy a million times before you go live.
• Agonizing over your offer or your pricing, without ever actually asking someone to buy.
• Now, oftentimes, fear will get mixed in with perfectionism. And we’ll talk about fear in this series too.

It shows up something like this…

If it’s not perfect, you can’t launch it. And it you don’t launch it, you can’t fail (or succeed by the way).

Perfectionism can be a great hiding place when you are afraid to put yourself out there.

So how do you at least go into “recovery” on your perfectionism?

Here are my best three tips…

1. Give yourself a limited amount of time to complete projects. And stick to it.

Need to write copy for an opt-in page?  Give yourself 30 minutes (yes, it’s possible!). 

Looking for pictures for your website?  Give yourself an hour. 

Researching software for your membership site?  Definitely give yourself a set amount of time (and ask for my support…I’ve already done the research and can save you oodles of time!)

2. Remind yourself that in our online world of business, nothing is ever final!

You can tweak your website every day for years, and it will never be perfect! (don’t do that of course!).

But at least for me, knowing that I always have the option to come back later and add, delete and update gives my perfectionist brain some relief!

3. When you are working on a project, check in often and ask yourself, “Is this really good enough?”

And be hard on yourself at first!

Use tips #1 and #2 to support you on this!

My business coach calls this “taking massive imperfect action”.  And it works.

And if all this doesn’t work, remember this. When you aren’t taking action and getting yourself out there in front of ideal clients, you aren’t changing lives.

And you aren’t putting any money in your bank account either

You don’t get paid for writing content that is grammatically correct and typo-free.

You get paid when you sell your content and make a difference with your clients.

And you are perfect at that! 😊

There you have it.  One of the top obstacles to entrepreneurial success…and how to start today to put it  in the rear view mirror.

Be sure to comment below on how you’ll kick perfectionism to the curb!