Speaker 1: Pushkin. As a happiness expert, I'm used to speaking pretty
Speaker 1: openly about my own wellbeing. I often feel questions about
Speaker 1: my mental health from journalists, fellow podcast hosts, and fans
Speaker 1: just like you. I'm happy to share the things that
Speaker 1: I use to improve my well being. But there is
Speaker 1: one comment I sometimes get in conversations like these that
Speaker 1: does bother me a bit. Laurie. Some interviewer will say,
Speaker 1: I bet you never struggle when it comes to improving
Speaker 1: your own wellbeing. I guess, is my usual answer. But
Speaker 1: that's not strictly true. So it's time to come clean
Speaker 1: on this one. You see. I am an expert in
Speaker 1: positive psychology, and over the last few years, I have
Speaker 1: made a lot of behavioral and mindset changes to improve
Speaker 1: my own happiness. But there are still many many things
Speaker 1: that I struggle with. Just ask the people who know
Speaker 1: me best.
Speaker 2: I think it's a really bad idea to talk about
Speaker 2: this stuff.
Speaker 1: Why because you think I'm really bad at happiness?
Speaker 2: No, I think it's I think you put yourself under
Speaker 2: under so much more pressure and feel so much worse
Speaker 2: about it than other people.
Speaker 1: This is Happiness Lab co writer and producer Ryan Dilly.
Speaker 1: You don't get to hear Ryan's voice a lot on
Speaker 1: the show, but he's the brains behind a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff you hear on this podcast.
Speaker 2: I've learned so much about happiness from doing this show,
Speaker 2: and I've tried to put it into practice, But like,
Speaker 2: I'm much nicer to myself about it than you are.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you think that you have to
Speaker 2: be better than anybody else of this because you're the teacher,
Speaker 2: and it's just a high bar for yourself.
Speaker 1: But Ryan's not just my partner in all things happiness lab.
Speaker 1: He's also one of my oldest and dearest friends.
Speaker 2: Isn't how we met quite a boring story. We met
Speaker 2: through a friend of a friend.
Speaker 1: I know that we've known each other for like twenty
Speaker 1: six years.
Speaker 2: More than half my life, and that's telling it how
Speaker 2: old I am now.
Speaker 1: And that means he understands my happiness struggles very very well,
Speaker 1: because as my good friend and podcast works back, he
Speaker 1: often has to put up with them.
Speaker 2: You could have put on mind too.
Speaker 1: When I beat myself up about some small mistake on
Speaker 1: the show or get sad about a negative review, Ryan
Speaker 1: gets stuck managing my emotional slump when I ignore pretty
Speaker 1: much everything I know about the importance of time, affluence,
Speaker 1: and totally overschedule myself. Ryan puts up with my growing
Speaker 1: sense of overwhelm and when my stress levels hit the
Speaker 1: red zone because I haven't put into practice nearly any
Speaker 1: of the research I talk to you about on the show.
Speaker 1: Ryan deals with the consequences.
Speaker 2: You've got such a busy life and you've got so
Speaker 2: much stuff going on, and so many people like look
Speaker 2: to you as a kind of example, and that must
Speaker 2: be really, really hard.
Speaker 1: I really want to get better about practicing what I preach.
Speaker 1: So in this new season of The Happiness Lab, things
Speaker 1: are going to get personal. Over the next few episodes,
Speaker 1: I'll be exploring the happiness challenges that I struggle with
Speaker 1: the most, things like navigating stress and overwork, dealing with boredom,
Speaker 1: and even facing my own mortality. This is for a
Speaker 1: whole episode about is it a natophobia.
Speaker 3: Oh, fanatophobiaobia?
Speaker 1: Because I have really terrible an antiphobia. I'm like really
Speaker 1: spooked about death. And in this first episode, I'll be
Speaker 1: exploring something that bothers Ryan a lot, my habit of
Speaker 1: continuously beating myself up about well pretty much everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have to do everything perfectly. Everythden's going
Speaker 2: to be ten out of ten with you. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: not possible, but it's so hard to watch. You're horrible
Speaker 2: to yourself sometimes.
Speaker 1: Ryan's right here. I hold myself to a very high standard,
Speaker 1: and I constantly worry about whether I'm doing a good
Speaker 1: enough job, whether that's in my podcasting, my teaching, my research,
Speaker 1: my social life, everything. Really, I hate doing anything that
Speaker 1: I'm not immediately good at, and I often wind up
Speaker 1: feeling paralyzed whenever I mess something up. I know full
Speaker 1: well that these harsh standards aren't good for my performance
Speaker 1: or my well being. So in this episode, I'll explore
Speaker 1: how perfectionists like me can fight the fear of not
Speaker 1: being good enough. Is there a way we can drop
Speaker 1: all the impossible standards and quit beating ourselves up so much?
Speaker 1: Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to
Speaker 1: be happy. But what if our minds are wrong? What
Speaker 1: if our minds are lying to us, leading us away
Speaker 1: from what will really make us happy. The good news
Speaker 1: is that understanding the science of the mind can point
Speaker 1: us all back in the right direction. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santis.
Speaker 4: My name's Thomas Current. I'm an associate professor at the
Speaker 4: London School of Economics.
Speaker 1: Scientists often joke that all researches mesearch, and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if this is something that applies in your case to
Speaker 1: your study of perfectionism.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I am a perfectionist and I have been for
Speaker 4: a long time and someone I struggled with.
Speaker 1: In his book The Perfection Trap Embracing the Power of
Speaker 1: good Enough, Thomas explores the many misconceptions we have about
Speaker 1: our society's favorite flaw, as he calls it, starting with
Speaker 1: the idea that only certain people fall prey to it.
Speaker 4: We tend to talk in very sort of black and
Speaker 4: white terms about you know you are you aren't a perfectionist,
Speaker 4: And the truth is that most of us, when we
Speaker 4: look in the mirror, will see elements of perfectionism.
Speaker 1: A second misconception is that perfectionism is a single trait
Speaker 1: that plays out the same way for everybody. It isn't.
Speaker 1: It has at least three different dimensions, ones that differ
Speaker 1: in their severity from person to person. The first is
Speaker 1: self oriented perfectionism. These are the high standards that we
Speaker 1: impose on ourselves. This is often what we're thinking of
Speaker 1: when we say this, somebody is a perfectionist. But there's
Speaker 1: a second part of perfectionism, which is other oriented. Perfectionists
Speaker 1: sometimes hold other people to the same insanely high standards
Speaker 1: that they expect of themselves.
Speaker 4: Like, if I'm going to put myself through the ring
Speaker 4: for this high standard or goal or expectation, then you
Speaker 4: must have to do that too, because that's only fair.
Speaker 1: But Thomas says there's a final dimension of perfectionism that
Speaker 1: psychologically speaking, is the most insidious, That is socially prescribed perfectionism.
Speaker 1: We assume other people expect us to be perfect.
Speaker 4: Yes, perfectionists have exceptionally high standards, we know that, but
Speaker 4: that's only part of the story because what we really
Speaker 4: need to unpack is why they're doing that. And why
Speaker 4: they're doing that is to meet the validation and approval
Speaker 4: of other people whom they think are viewing them harshly
Speaker 4: and watching them for every little slip up and mistake.
Speaker 1: I know just how crappy this dimension of perfectionism feels
Speaker 1: that constant worry that the people around you are judging
Speaker 1: not just your work but also your worth, that sense
Speaker 1: that I need to monitor what people think of my
Speaker 1: podcast or my research or my looks. That uneasiness of
Speaker 1: always being on the defensive, that feeling really sucks. But
Speaker 1: where do perfectionist beliefs like these come from? Thomas says
Speaker 1: the answer can be summed up in just one word, fear.
Speaker 4: The reason why we feel self conscious as perfectionists is
Speaker 4: because we're so worried about what other people think, and
Speaker 4: if we revealed too much of ourselves then we might
Speaker 4: slip up, or we might show a chink in the
Speaker 4: armory is reflection upon us as a person that we're
Speaker 4: not good enough, that we're not perfect enough, and that
Speaker 4: in some way we should have been or could have
Speaker 4: been more.
Speaker 1: This is one reason Thomas thinks of perfectionism as less
Speaker 1: of a personality trait and more of an anxiety management strategy.
Speaker 1: Perfectionists set themselves incredibly high standards because they're worried if
Speaker 1: they don't, someone will spot all they're hidden inner defects,
Speaker 1: and as I unfortunately know very well, when perfectionists actually
Speaker 1: do screw up, that internal anxiety goes into overdrive.
Speaker 4: So they feel a lot of shame and embarrassment, painful
Speaker 4: shame and embarrassment, and intense shame and embarrassment, and the
Speaker 4: trepidation is so fierce sometimes that they can be overwhelmed
Speaker 4: by anxiety. And this is very common in perfectionists. They
Speaker 4: are very self critical, very harsh on themselves when things
Speaker 4: have gone wrong, because again, it goes back to that
Speaker 4: core deficit belief inside deep down, they know they're imperfect.
Speaker 1: But if being a perfectionist feel so miserable, why don't
Speaker 1: people set more realistic standards for themselves.
Speaker 4: People who struggle with perfectionism don't see perfectionism the problem.
Speaker 4: Quite the opposite. Actually, they see perfectionism as the one
Speaker 4: thing that's holding them up in the world, whereas everything
Speaker 4: and all around them seems to be collapsing. The challenge
Speaker 4: there is to bring people around to the awareness that
Speaker 4: it is actually the perfectionism that is the root of
Speaker 4: the problem. It's something that's causing profound distress.
Speaker 1: I've seen the consequences of this distress, not just in
Speaker 1: my own life, but also in the academic community around me.
Speaker 1: I can be pretty harsh on myself, but I'm not
Speaker 1: half as mean as my Yale students are to themselves.
Speaker 1: They're hyper ambitious, hyper anxious, and deeply self critical. They
Speaker 1: beat themselves up about not finding the perfect relationship or
Speaker 1: an amazing internship, or getting top grades. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: watched pupils have panic attacks after earning a single B
Speaker 1: plus on some random quiz. It's heartbreaking to see that pain.
Speaker 1: And my experience at Yale isn't unique.
Speaker 4: I was getting a lot of students come in for
Speaker 4: help on their coursework or their grades or how to improve.
Speaker 4: That's quite routine, but more and more as seeing students
Speaker 4: come with real profound struggles that quite transparently came from
Speaker 4: self imposed pressures that they were placing on themselves. So
Speaker 4: that was really the spark for me to try to understand, all,
Speaker 4: is this something that's increasing? Because I suspect from what
Speaker 4: I can see that it might be, but we don't
Speaker 4: have any data.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Thomas tracked down every paper published since the eighties in
Speaker 1: which young people had filled out a survey on perfectionism,
Speaker 1: more than forty thousand data points across three countries to
Speaker 1: see if rates had increased, and he found that they
Speaker 1: very much.
Speaker 2: Had, and that's cause for concern.
Speaker 1: The average level of perfectionism in the young shot up
Speaker 1: thirty three percent since nineteen eighty nine. But there's one
Speaker 1: form of perfectionism that's skyrocketing even more than the others.
Speaker 4: It's that social element of perfectionism that's really taking off
Speaker 4: among young people. They really feel high precious to be
Speaker 4: perfect from the outside world.
Speaker 1: So what's pausing this. Well, culprits like Instagram and Facebook
Speaker 1: might be to play it.
Speaker 4: People within social media see images are perfection all around them.
Speaker 4: They take those images at face value and feel themselves
Speaker 4: to be inferior. And those expectations, in turn, are being
Speaker 4: internalized by young people's perfectionistic pressures, and it's highly pressurized,
Speaker 4: very insecure in it never really stops.
Speaker 1: When Thomas first published his findings in twenty nineteen, he
Speaker 1: was taken aback by the sheer level of interest in
Speaker 1: the topic.
Speaker 4: I've got the media officer from the university desperately emailing
Speaker 4: me at twelve o'clock at night with all these requests
Speaker 4: from the international media. We wanting to know what's happening.
Speaker 4: And clearly it struck a nerve. Clearly people feel like
Speaker 4: perfectionism is something that's becoming much more prevalent in their
Speaker 4: own lives and the lives of other people. I think
Speaker 4: it's something you know as a society we really need
Speaker 4: to start grappling.
Speaker 1: With But how do we all come to grips with it? Well,
Speaker 1: we'll start by learning from a recovering perfectionist.
Speaker 5: My ruthless self careticism was just weighing me down that
Speaker 5: whole time. It was like these heavy weights tied to
Speaker 5: my ankle, and if I could learn to release them,
Speaker 5: not only would I be just as successful as I was,
Speaker 5: I would be even more so because I would be
Speaker 5: liberating myself from really like the jail cell that my
Speaker 5: terror of failure was keeping me in.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab continues after the short break, Little Jordana
Speaker 1: was this totally wacky, free spirit creative. Jordana Confino fondly
Speaker 1: remembers the days before her perfectionism too cold.
Speaker 5: I just would spend all of my time making up
Speaker 5: shows and things like that, and just really living in
Speaker 5: my own fantastic fantasy universe.
Speaker 1: Little Geordana never gave a second thought to her grades
Speaker 1: or her academic performance, but all that changed when she
Speaker 1: turned fourteen.
Speaker 5: My dad actually got really sick, and all of a
Speaker 5: sudden things started happening that were scary and upsetting, and
Speaker 5: lots of people in my family were upset and I
Speaker 5: couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: But Jordana eventually discovered one thing she could do to
Speaker 1: make her family happier.
Speaker 5: I could come home with these really pristine report cards,
Speaker 5: and my parents were excited and happy and relieved, And
Speaker 5: that was like what I could do to seemingly make
Speaker 5: things better.
Speaker 1: In the years that followed, Jordana engrossed herself in her
Speaker 1: schoolwork and especially her grades.
Speaker 5: As long as I worked hard enough, I could perfect them.
Speaker 5: And that was really what I committed to doing.
Speaker 1: From the outside, Jordana looked like the picture of the happy,
Speaker 1: successful pupil, but on the inside she was a mess.
Speaker 5: I was so sad, and I was so insecure, and
Speaker 5: I was so lonely. And this is because if you
Speaker 5: want to get literally perfect grief, you have spend a.
Speaker 3: Lot, a lot, a lot of time throwing yourself into it.
Speaker 5: And it got to this point where my whole identity
Speaker 5: at that point was completely bound up in my ability
Speaker 5: to perfect this one. And so because my entire feelings
Speaker 5: of self worth run the line, I threw everything into it.
Speaker 1: Jordanna graduated valedictorian of her high school class. She nailed
Speaker 1: her college applications and got into her top choice school,
Speaker 1: Yale University. Her family and friends were thrilled, which was
Speaker 1: kind of sad. Jordana's insanely high standards were harming her,
Speaker 1: but her perfectionism was being reinforced and rewarded. In college,
Speaker 1: Jordana's overwork grew even more extreme. Achieving perfect grades in
Speaker 1: the IVY League was much harder than in high school,
Speaker 1: so Jordana spent every waking hour working.
Speaker 5: I was the loneliest person on the planet and it
Speaker 5: was just so tragically misguided.
Speaker 3: I was having no human contact.
Speaker 5: I didn't go outside for ten days once before final exams.
Speaker 1: That sense of isolation also pushed Jordana to cast a
Speaker 1: perfectionist eye on her peers. She grew judge of her
Speaker 1: fellow students, who never seemed to work as hard as
Speaker 1: she did.
Speaker 5: My college sophomore year dorm was right across from Ashley's
Speaker 5: ice Cream with the famous Yell ice cream place, and
Speaker 5: I would watch people like going out for ice cream
Speaker 5: with their friends on Friday or Saturday night, and I
Speaker 5: would just think, like they are so weak, and like
Speaker 5: I thought that I was so superior because I was
Speaker 5: willing to do the work that they weren't. I must
Speaker 5: care more, and therefore I would do better.
Speaker 1: But yet again, Jordana's harsh standards appeared to be working.
Speaker 1: She graduated top of her class and went on to
Speaker 1: Yale Law School.
Speaker 5: I mean, if five minutes went by before I was working,
Speaker 5: after I woke up in law school, it was like,
Speaker 5: you're weak, you're slothsful, you're lazy, you're not good enough.
Speaker 5: You're the only one who doesn't deserve to be here.
Speaker 5: Everyone's going to find out.
Speaker 1: She then graduated at the top of that class too,
Speaker 1: and followed it up by walking in one of the
Speaker 1: most prestigious legal clerkships in the land, but she didn't
Speaker 1: enjoy any of it.
Speaker 5: With each additional achievement, I actually grew more and more
Speaker 5: anxious because the second that I approached success or got
Speaker 5: it all of us and I would panic because then
Speaker 5: the bar was just set higher, and it was an
Speaker 5: even higher bar that I would have to clear in
Speaker 5: order to not be a disappointment.
Speaker 1: Take for example, the time Jordana got her paper accepted
Speaker 1: to the world's top law journal.
Speaker 5: There was not more than one second of actual happiness
Speaker 5: or celebration before the panic set in and literally, the
Speaker 5: thought that went through my mind and I remember this
Speaker 5: was well, what am I going to do next so
Speaker 5: that they don't call me a one hit wonder?
Speaker 1: The constant self criticism made or Dana miserable, but she
Speaker 1: just couldn't bring herself to stop all those skathing critiques.
Speaker 5: One of thought that they were fact, and two I
Speaker 5: thought that they were helping me and those thoughts were
Speaker 5: the things that were driving me to succeed. And that's
Speaker 5: why for so long I was so reluctant to give
Speaker 5: up on those thoughts.
Speaker 1: The constant need to be seen as uber, competent and
Speaker 1: superhuman meant that Jordana put herself forward for any and
Speaker 1: all job opportunities.
Speaker 5: There are no boundaries for the perfectionist people. Please, aren't
Speaker 5: you give every ounce of yourself? And what happens when
Speaker 5: you do that is everyone else is thrilled because they're like, great,
Speaker 5: you know, we didn't have time to do all these
Speaker 5: things because we have families and other priorities.
Speaker 3: But Jordana can do it, and she's she's excited. Look
Speaker 3: at her.
Speaker 5: She's volunteering. And the more and more you do that,
Speaker 5: the more insecure you grow, because you're just convinced that
Speaker 5: your value is contingent on you saying yes all the time.
Speaker 1: But there were a few things that Jordanna did say
Speaker 1: no to. All the stuff that's essential for work life
Speaker 1: balance and mental health. She neglected social connection and all
Speaker 1: elements of rest and fun. And when she did go
Speaker 1: out to get fresh air or to get exercise, she
Speaker 1: still couldn't set her work aside.
Speaker 5: I literally had a laptop tan on my thighs because
Speaker 5: I would let myself go outside but only if I
Speaker 5: was doing work. Similarly, I would let myself go to
Speaker 5: the gym, but only because I downloaded the notability apps
Speaker 5: so that I could documents.
Speaker 3: On the treadmill. Like this was my version of work
Speaker 3: life balance.
Speaker 1: You might be amazed to learn that Jordana was in
Speaker 1: a relationship throughout this time. Her boyfriend came a very
Speaker 1: distant second to her legal work.
Speaker 5: He lived two blocks from my apartment, and I saw
Speaker 5: him on Saturday nights between like eight pm and eight
Speaker 5: am on the next day, and the same on Friday nights.
Speaker 1: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jordana developed a host of serious health issues
Speaker 1: once her doctors just couldn't figure out and what her
Speaker 1: body was suffering was nothing compared to what was going
Speaker 1: on in her mind.
Speaker 5: It just felt really bleak, and I felt really trapped.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, while yet again working at home alone, Jordanna
Speaker 1: finally realized that she needed some help.
Speaker 5: I was just desperate at the time, and I was
Speaker 5: googling how to be happy. One of the first things
Speaker 5: I found was Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project, and
Speaker 5: so I read that and she starts referring to this
Speaker 5: thing called positive psychology, and I had never heard about
Speaker 5: positive psychology before. I remember thinking, I hope this isn't
Speaker 5: one of those things that you have to really believe
Speaker 5: in for it to work. I was so, so, so skeptical,
Speaker 5: but I was just desperate.
Speaker 1: Jordana soon learned about the importance of social connection and
Speaker 1: engaging in work that fits with your values, and she
Speaker 1: made some real changes as a result. She left the
Speaker 1: stressful law job she didn't enjoy and retrained as a
Speaker 1: wellness specialist to help law students.
Speaker 3: But I did not touch the perfectionism at that point.
Speaker 5: I did not touch the workaholism at that point, and
Speaker 5: I was doing work that actually imbued me with a
Speaker 5: sense of meaning and purpose. I was leaning into my
Speaker 5: relationships more so, in that sense, it was better, but
Speaker 5: I was still tearing myself to shreds on the inside.
Speaker 1: Ironically, Jordana began spending her days helping law students to
Speaker 1: feel happier and fight their self criticism while holding herself
Speaker 1: to impossible ideals.
Speaker 5: Like how many people go into their job interview and
Speaker 5: when you're asked what your weakness is, you go, oh, well,
Speaker 5: I'm a perfectionist. When we say that, because we're proud
Speaker 5: of it, we think that it's a strength. Eventually, someone
Speaker 5: else noticed how hard Jordana was pushing herself. One of
Speaker 5: my former bosses called me into her office one day,
Speaker 5: and I thought that it was because I wasn't taking
Speaker 5: enough student appointments.
Speaker 3: I was convinced that she was calling in to read
Speaker 3: me out.
Speaker 5: I was convinced I wasn't doing enough, and really she
Speaker 5: was sitting me down to say, Jordana, are you okay?
Speaker 3: You look like you're running yourself ragged.
Speaker 1: Jordana's therapist, it turns out, couldn't have agreed more.
Speaker 5: She said, Jordana, if you had a racehorse that had
Speaker 5: just completely broken down from injury and exhaustion, would you
Speaker 5: just keep whipping it to try to get it up
Speaker 5: and to move faster, and I said, of course not,
Speaker 5: And she said, then why are you doing that to yourself?
Speaker 1: That racehorse analogy was life changing. Jordana finally saw the
Speaker 1: futility of her perfectionism.
Speaker 3: It was never just going to stop.
Speaker 5: There was a always going to be the next thing
Speaker 5: if I didn't do something different, because it always felt
Speaker 5: like just clearing one more hurdle would then.
Speaker 3: Free me up to live the life that I wanted.
Speaker 5: And then you know, one hundred and fifty hurdles later,
Speaker 5: you realize, wait a second, maybe that's not going to
Speaker 5: happen unless I do something different.
Speaker 1: So what exactly did she do differently? She'll tell us
Speaker 1: when the happiness lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 5: I think the problem with perfectionism is that it doesn't
Speaker 5: even feel like a choice.
Speaker 3: It's just the necessary course.
Speaker 1: Recovering perfectionist Jordana Confino has spent the last few years
Speaker 1: learning to reject the exacting standards she judged herself by
Speaker 1: for decades.
Speaker 5: And when I say rejected, I don't mean like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: I conquered it and it's gone. I mean I committed
Speaker 5: to work back against it every day and not let
Speaker 5: it drive the car and rule my life.
Speaker 1: Now, a Fordham University law professor and co coach, Jordana
Speaker 1: helps overachieving professionals who struggle with perfectionism, overachieving professionals just
Speaker 1: like me. I'm embarrassed to admit how much of myself
Speaker 1: I saw in Jordana's story. I too have a terrible
Speaker 1: time establishing boundaries and saying no. I spend my days
Speaker 1: teaching my students and podcast listeners to be self compassionate
Speaker 1: while privately beating myself up. If Jordana was able to
Speaker 1: scale back her harsh standards, maybe there's hope for me too.
Speaker 5: I was so vicious to myself, and I was so
Speaker 5: ruthlessly self critical, and I believed so little that this
Speaker 5: could work. And if it could have that effect for
Speaker 5: even someone like me, I truly believe that anyone is
Speaker 5: capable of doing this for themselves.
Speaker 1: So I asked Jordanna, what are the first steps that
Speaker 1: a perfectionist like me can take to become kinder to herself?
Speaker 5: If you do a simple thought journal of just what
Speaker 5: are the thoughts that are going through my head? What
Speaker 5: are the things that I'm saying to myself? For me,
Speaker 5: it would be things like you're not good enough, you're weak,
Speaker 5: you're lazy, you're slothful.
Speaker 3: Literally, it was so funny.
Speaker 5: Words like gluttonous and slothful would come up from my
Speaker 5: inner critic, and I'm like, swear, I only have heard
Speaker 5: those words in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in like seventh grade,
Speaker 5: so it's just hilarious to me that they had such
Speaker 5: an impact on my critic. But you want to recognize
Speaker 5: these phrases. You want to think about what words do
Speaker 5: they use, whose voice do they remind you of, so
Speaker 5: that when they come up, you can recognize them and
Speaker 5: then make a decision about how to respond to them.
Speaker 1: Jordana also uses other creative ways to visualize her perfectionist impulses.
Speaker 5: So I've actually found it even really helpful to draw
Speaker 5: my inner critic. It looks like this little green goblin
Speaker 5: that kind of reminds me of the guy from the
Speaker 5: Musinex commercials. So now when these thoughts come up, I
Speaker 5: imagine this little green goblin on my shoulder like squeaking
Speaker 5: these things at me, and my inner critic is a
Speaker 5: very squeaky, annoying voice. But that enables me to detach
Speaker 5: from the thoughts and separate from them.
Speaker 1: And once you begin to separate from that goblin voice
Speaker 1: inside you, you can finally start pushing back. You can
Speaker 1: grab your journal and scribble down some bules to all
Speaker 1: your nasty inner critiques, and when you write those replies down,
Speaker 1: try not to match your critics mean tone. Instead, use
Speaker 1: as compassionate a voice as you can, treating that inner
Speaker 1: goblin like a well intentioned but utterly misguided friend.
Speaker 5: Listen, I know what you're trying to do here. You
Speaker 5: really really want me to do well. You're trying to help,
Speaker 5: but you're not. You don't meet it with criticism or
Speaker 5: just rejected outright. You kind of greet it with compassion
Speaker 5: and say, hey, listen, we're going to try a softer
Speaker 5: approach here.
Speaker 1: Pushing back on your inner critic is at least initially
Speaker 1: very very hard, especially when it's the only voice you've
Speaker 1: listened to for so long.
Speaker 5: When I first started practicing self compassion, my therapist would say,
Speaker 5: talk to yourself as if you were someone who unconditionally
Speaker 5: loves and supports you, And I was like, I don't
Speaker 5: even know what that feels like.
Speaker 1: Jordana had been driven by her punishing perfectionism through school
Speaker 1: and into the workplace. She had to go back decades
Speaker 1: into childhood to find a version of herself that was
Speaker 1: free from the need to constantly perform at the highest level,
Speaker 1: a version of herself she could be proud of and
Speaker 1: kind to.
Speaker 5: And so I picture that little creative, free spirit, Jordana,
Speaker 5: and when I look at her and when I imagine her,
Speaker 5: I can talk to her in this way, like I
Speaker 5: do believe that she is worthy of love for just
Speaker 5: being who she is, and if she makes a mistake,
Speaker 5: it is not because she is a fundamentally unworthy person.
Speaker 5: And that was actually a really good trick for me
Speaker 5: to start practicing those different ways of speaking to myself.
Speaker 1: Hardcore perfectionists like Jordana won't find the mental switch from
Speaker 1: criticism to compassion easy.
Speaker 5: I did not believe these thoughts at all. It felt
Speaker 5: so forced and faked and phony. When I took my
Speaker 5: you are lazy and I replaced it with you are
Speaker 5: doing great, You can do this compassionate thoughts like that
Speaker 5: they felt like total bogus. But the amazing thing about
Speaker 5: our brains and neuroplasticity is that if you practice thinking
Speaker 5: in a way over time, and those new thoughts will
Speaker 5: become stronger, and you'll see them popping up versus plausible
Speaker 5: alternatives to the vicious thoughts, and then eventually they'll just
Speaker 5: pop up as an instinctive thought.
Speaker 1: The next step in perfectionism recovery is to set healthier boundaries.
Speaker 1: That inability to say no to extra work and responsibilities
Speaker 1: is often rooted in our fears of not being good
Speaker 1: enough and being seen as not being good enough to
Speaker 1: fight these people pleasing tendencies, we need to take a good,
Speaker 1: hard look at what we miss out on when we
Speaker 1: just say yes.
Speaker 5: I've now recognized that there is a trade off for
Speaker 5: every yes. For every yes I give, I'm saying no
Speaker 5: to something else. If I want to do the very
Speaker 5: best at multiple things that are important to me, I
Speaker 5: can't just keep saying yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: But what are the practical steps we can use to
Speaker 1: turn a yes into a no. It begins with asking
Speaker 1: yourself specific questions whenever you're attempted to sign on to
Speaker 1: something new. What cost will agreeing to this task have
Speaker 1: on the people I care about? And what am I
Speaker 1: saying no to with my yes? But we also need
Speaker 1: to explore the reasons we're tempted to say yes to
Speaker 1: a potential ask in the first place.
Speaker 5: Why do I want to do this? Is my desire
Speaker 5: to do this thing driven by my values? Or is
Speaker 5: it driven by fear?
Speaker 1: Jordana says questions like these have helped her remember the
Speaker 1: social opportunity cost of taking on too much, a problem
Speaker 1: she had ignored for decades.
Speaker 5: Told that it took earn the people that I love
Speaker 5: the most is that they just got the leftovers. They
Speaker 5: would get the shadow version of me once I had
Speaker 5: given all that I had to give to other people.
Speaker 1: The boyfriend Giordana devoted so little time to during her
Speaker 1: clerkship is now her husband, and so to prevent her
Speaker 1: old perfectionist instincts from harming her and her loved ones,
Speaker 1: Jordana now uses a timeout strategy whenever she gets a
Speaker 1: new request.
Speaker 5: So I'm no longer allowed to just respond immediately. I
Speaker 5: have to wait at least two hours. During that period,
Speaker 5: I ask myself, one, do I actually want to do this?
Speaker 5: Is this something that's driven by excitement or by fear?
Speaker 5: To What am I giving up if I say yes
Speaker 5: to this?
Speaker 1: Jordana now says yes only to projects that improve her happiness,
Speaker 1: and that's made the work she's done over the last
Speaker 1: few years much more fulfilling.
Speaker 5: It turns out that you're much better at your work
Speaker 5: when you're not like beating the crap out of yourself.
Speaker 1: But for all her progress, Jordana knows her inner goblin
Speaker 1: voices haven't been banished entirely.
Speaker 5: Again, this is why my blog is called Chronicles of
Speaker 5: a Recovering Type A plus perfectionist. It's a daily practice
Speaker 5: of keeping them in check. But that act of keeping
Speaker 5: them in check is Oh, It's just makes such a
Speaker 5: world of difference in terms of your ability to live
Speaker 5: your life in a joyful way.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say that making this episode has
Speaker 1: fully cured me of all my own harsh standards, but sadly,
Speaker 1: perfectionism recovery doesn't.
Speaker 3: Work that quickly.
Speaker 1: But there are at least some people who I've noticed
Speaker 1: that I've been making some progress.
Speaker 2: I think you're doing much much better. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: just glad you've kind of confronted it, I mean, bring
Speaker 2: a name to it.
Speaker 1: Even since chatting with Jordanna, I have begun noticing all
Speaker 1: the mean stuff I say inside my head, and I've
Speaker 1: totally taken on her suggestion to the social opportunity costs
Speaker 1: of my usual anxious yeses. These new strategies have begun
Speaker 1: helping me to set new boundaries, which has made a
Speaker 1: huge difference in my sense of overwhelm.
Speaker 2: You'll always be a bit of a perfectionist, by at
Speaker 2: least you're dealing with it now, which is like, so
Speaker 2: much better than before.
Speaker 1: Making this episode has also given me a healthier attitude
Speaker 1: as I turned to the other happiness challenges I'll face
Speaker 1: this season. I've promised myself that I won't go all
Speaker 1: perfectionist when it comes to addressing my well being struggles
Speaker 1: over the next few episodes, because as much as we'd
Speaker 1: love it, change doesn't happen overnight. But with the right strategies,
Speaker 1: hopefully we can all start taking some compassionate steps in
Speaker 1: the right direction. In the next episode, I'll tackle another
Speaker 1: factor that I struggle with, the act of not doing stuff.
Speaker 1: Will explore why a constant workaholic like me should embrace
Speaker 1: the power of boredom. We'll hear about the benefits of
Speaker 1: feeling bored and learn some strategies for enjoying our empty
Speaker 1: moments in a healthier way. You answer these statements from
Speaker 1: one highly disagree to seven I really agree. In situations
Speaker 1: where I have to wait, such as in a line,
Speaker 1: I get very restless. It seems that the same things
Speaker 1: are on television or movies all the time.
Speaker 2: Seven that one be sure.
Speaker 1: I am good at waiting patiently.
Speaker 3: One pretty bad.
Speaker 1: All that next time on the Happiness Lab with me,
Speaker 1: Doctor Laurie Santos