The cure for the recovering perfectionist

What if the thing keeping you stuck isn't your strategy, your offer, your content, or your consistency? What if it's your need to get it right?

Today we are exploring the hidden force that shows up for every entrepreneur: perfectionism.

In this episode, you'll learn why perfectionism has nothing to do with high standards and everything to do with fear, how the nervous system responds when we become overly focused on avoiding mistakes, and why play, experimentation, and messy action are often the fastest path to the results we're seeking.

You'll also hear a powerful story about a professional athlete whose performance transformed when he stopped trying so hard to get it right and started playing again.

Inside this episode:

✨ What perfectionism actually is (and what it isn't)
✨ Why fear of failure often disguises itself as "being responsible"
✨ How perfectionism creates nervous system rigidity and blocks creativity
✨ The surprising connection between growth, visibility, and control
✨ Why your next breakthrough may require more experimentation and less certainty
✨ A simple challenge to help you loosen your grip and create momentum this week

If you've been waiting until you're more prepared, more confident, more certain, or more qualified before taking the next step, this episode is for you. Because your most magnetic self isn't the version of you that gets everything right.

It's the version that's willing to play.

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Transcript

0:00

Hi, and welcome to Fuck Around and Get Paid, the podcast where fun, flow, and strategy meet to help you get paid for doing what you love. Sounds good? I think so. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the truth about perfectionism and that the reason that you're stuck has actually, I hate to tell you, absolutely nothing to do with your strategy. Let's dive in. Hey there, friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Oh my gosh. So today, on the day that I'm recording this podcast episode, I just got out of a call inside the expansion room in the possibility experiment. And it has been one of the most fun and revealing things that I have ever run in this inside this community. And I'll be fully honest with every single person in the community and with you that this is 100% an experiment for me because I have this idea, I have this concept, and I wanted to test it. And I happen to have a whole crew of magical unicorns who are open to having fun and testing things and seeing what happens on the other side. And that's what we're doing. The whole premise of this experiment is simple. You pick something that you want to manifest, you form a hypothesis about that, and you run it for four weeks. And we're leading with this possibility energy. And I'm going to dive into what we're learning because this is really relevant to every single person, whether you're part of this experiment or not, we all need to hear this. Because all we're all we needed to do is do that. People are starting to see that some things are shifting, but we're also starting to see some other things. And of course, like I said, this is an experiment for me too. So there were some things that I did not expect. Like from the very first call before the experiment even fully began, there was something that showed up that snuck its little sneaky legs into this experiment. And it shows up for all of us from time to time as we try to step into something new. Scientists call this interference. Interference, something that is in an experiment. It comes into the field and it disrupts the results. It contaminates the data, so to speak, and it makes it harder to see what is actually working in the experiment. And so there was a certain piece of interference, a certain frequency of static energy that I was seeing very quickly from the time that we started this experiment, which, you know, when you think about it, it's like, oh, I guess I could see that this kind of thing happened, would happen because it happens to all of us. People were getting stuck on whether their hypothesis was perfect, whether it was right, whether it was worded correctly, whether is this, is this the thing? Is this it? Is this good enough? Is this big enough? Is this the right way to do a hypothesis? And we need to talk about this because this is not just a problem in this experiment alone. This is a problem that every single person faces. Like all of us have this happen. It is a life problem, it's a business problem, it's a relationship problem. It's uh why are we not playing this life as big as we freaking can problem. So I want to talk about perfectionism. What is this little sneaky snake that keeps coming up for all of us? And where does it come from? What is it costing you? Now, some of you might consider yourself recovering perfectionism. Like it's not, it's not unusual for somebody to have identified that you have perfectionist qualities, but perfectionism is not actually about like holding a standard to something. This is what I used to tell myself it was. Like, I just have really high standards. I just really like quality. It's I'm just a high achiever. That's what I would tell myself. The truth about perfectionism, though, is that it is a it is a sheep in wolves' clothing. A wolf. It is a wolf in sheep's clothing, even when you think that it's about your standards, when you think it's about, I just want to get things right. I just want to make sure that it's good. Because anytime that we catch ourselves in trying to get it right or trying to get it good, that is actually perfectionism because it's rooted in fear and it's rooted in control. It's specifically, it is the fear that I'm gonna mess it up and other people are going to see me mess it up. It's like I'm gonna be, I'm afraid that I'm gonna be seen looking like I don't know what I'm doing. That is a big, sneaky one. We don't want people to think that it doesn't look like we know what we're doing. So we will try to perfect it and get it right before we put it out there so that nobody sees that I don't know what I'm doing. Uh, whether you actually know what you're doing or not, you don't want to be seen like you don't know what you're doing. You're afraid of somebody it looking like you're not as qualified as you are, which is ridiculous because you're exactly as qualified as you are, and you can be no more qualified or any less qualified, but we want to control how other people are perceiving our level of qualification, which spoiler alert, you can't control any of how somebody perceives you. They will perceive you how they will perceive you. And your attempts to perfect the or control the way that they perceive you is actually making it so that they perceive you as somebody who is attempting to control the way that they perceive you. I'll pause on that one. We're afraid of other people seeing us, like we just don't have our shit together, right? At the end of the day, what we really want is for people to not see us as good enough. We want them to see that we are indeed good enough. And so your nervous system does what your nervous system does, and it tries to protect you, and it tries to keep you safe. And in doing that, it tries to control things, and so your body tenses up, your cortisol spikes, and you can't think as creatively. The right side of your brain turns off and your breathing goes shallow and you can't think straight. You freeze up. Like I just got off this beautiful call with one of my clients, and at the beginning of it, she's like, I feel like I'm freezing. And we identified, she's like, I think that I'm really trying to get a lot out of this call, and I want to make sure that I get it right, and I want to make sure that exactly what I want to get out of this call is what I'm gonna get out of this call. So I want to get it perfect. And I said, Let's dance. And so we danced and we had such a good call and so many good ideas that came out of that call because we got out of the energy of that level of control and that I need to get it right. I need to get the right thing out of this call. I need to make sure that I get exactly what I need out of this call instead of letting it flow with the universe. I also want to tell you a story. This is actually a story that comes from a mentor of mine. So he was working with a professional baseball player, and this is somebody in the MLB. So this baseball player had hired him because he wanted to improve. He was a really good baseball player and he had gotten a massive contract. And after getting the massive contract, his performance had begun to dip. And he wanted to get back to where he obviously knew that he could be, and he's getting paid so good. And so he's feeling a lot of pressure, obviously, to get it right. So they start working together. And this mentor noticed pretty quickly what was happening, and it was something that the player was completely unaware of, that he was trying so hard not to hit the ball. Of course, he was trying to hit the ball, but what he was trying really, really hard at that he was not aware of was that he was trying so hard not to mess up. He was like gripping the hell out of that bat. His body was tense. He wasn't going up there with the lightness that he used to with the loosey goosey body. His shoulders were tense, his hips were tight. He was actually having pain after the games because he was so tight. And so this the coach said to him the exact opposite of what he wanted. This was his actual step that he wanted him to take. He said, Here's what I need you to do. I need you to go let yourself mess up. He's like, uh, excuse me, looked at him like he'd lost his damn mind. Like, are you serious? I'm getting paid millions of dollars. There are thousands of people in the stands watching me every night. You want me to go out there and you want me to mess up on live TV? And he's like, Yes, absolutely. I need you to start allowing yourself to mess up because the reason that your performance, which used to be good, like you got that contract for a reason, the reason that you have dipped is because you've stopped playing. You've stopped letting yourself fully be yourself. You're out there trying to get it right, you're afraid to get it wrong, and you've completely lost access to freedom. There's no freedom, and all of our gifts and all of our talents, the things that we have access to when we're having the most fun are lost when we get into that perfectionism, which again is actually fear-based control. It's controlling ourselves, it's controlling our actions, it's controlling our behaviors because we are afraid of what will happen if we don't get it right. So the player was resistant to this at first. I love this story so much, and I think of it really often when I'm coaching people. I think about it for myself. I think about it in so many things because he was really resistant at first. Like, why would you not be? For this person, like letting yourself go and mess up feels feels like a really big deal. But he listened and he did it, and he won like one of the top awards for that baseball players can get the very next year. I think his team might have even won the World Series. I'm not actually exactly sure, but it went really well for him. So if that story can give you any kind of inspiration, so what I also want us to understand is look at his scenario. Nothing had changed for him in his playing until the stakes went up. When he got that big contract, now all of a sudden he started to lock down. So, in this experiment that we're doing, it's like we're moving through our day and we're just living day to day. But then we have this experiment, and I'm like, okay, form your hypothesis. Let's see. And we have something that we want to manifest. I started there for a reason. I said, What's something you guys want to manifest? Because we raised the stakes, and then our system's locked up. Because when there's something that we want, and when the stakes go up, our nervous system will lock down because it's like, I need to get it right. So if you're making, if you're wanting to make more money, or if you do start making money, if you're wanting to become visible, and so therefore you're taking steps to become more visible, if you're launching something new that could possibly grow your business like a hundredfold, the stakes have gone up. And so know this. Know that it's gonna happen and start to notice it and catch yourself when it does happen because your nervous system is doing the math. It sees where things are adding up. It sees like the more visible you are, the more people are gonna see you, the more people are gonna see you, and that more that people might perceive you a certain kind of way. Like maybe it's okay. Okay, I've worked through it, I've worked through it with those girls from middle school, but what about 100 more people? What about 1,000 more people? The nervous system can't, it can't predict the outcome of all of those people. So that lockdown, your nervous system trying to keep you safe, trying to protect you, will happen and then it prevents you from actually doing the thing that you want to do. Your performance dips, just like the baseball player. We get into that perfectionism. So here's the invitation my coaching to you if there's anything that you feel yourself locking down in, anything that you notice that you are perfecting on, I want to give you full permission today to go fuck shit up. I'm not kidding you. Like, go mess it up. Let yourself play, like let yourself play on purpose. And that's my actual intention with this experience, this experiment that we're doing is what if we literally treat things, everything as play? What if we really treat it as an experiment? What changes in our actions? What changes in our behavior? What changes in our physical body? Because remember, the things that we do, the things that we think, the things that we feel, the actual physicality of our body, it is all connected. There is no, in my viewpoint, like I know that we have had this very straight, like our fingers are separate from our elbows, are separate from our heart, are separate from our toes, but it's all connected. And your body is not just dissected into parts. Your brain is not separate from your body, your spirit is not separate from your emotions. Everything is connected. So if you're tightening up, then everything is going to tighten up. A baby does not learn to walk by getting it right the first time. It screws up, it falls down a lot over and over and over and over. So a single fall is just some data and it picks up its information, it picks it up and it goes again. I promise you that your soul did not come here to get things right. If you are listening to this podcast, you did not come here to get things right. You came to play, you came to experiment, you came to have fun, you came to try to climb and then fall back down. Not off of a mountain, a literal mountain. But letting yourself get seen as messy and perfect, still figuring it out, you can be powerful. In fact, I believe you're actually more powerful when you know exactly who the F you are. You know what you came here to do, you know what your soul's mission is, and part of that is having fun and playing and experimenting. You're in that powerful, like, I know who the F I am energy. You are owning your shit. My ladies who are in own your shit right now, you are owning your shit and you're letting yourself play. I think that's the most powerful leader. You look at the really powerful leaders, you look at, I mean, the best baseball players. Again, you look at anybody who is successful, they are doing this. They are letting themselves mess it up because they know Michael Jordan said that he shot more shots than anybody else. He missed more shots than any other basketball player because he shot more. You know you're gonna mess it up, but with all of those mess ups, you're going to find your way to your method. You're gonna find your way to the truth, you're gonna find your way to your fun and to your joy and to your most easeful, exciting, powerful way of doing things. And that's where the money is. That's where people are like, wow, wow, I want to do what she's doing. I want to have the courage to do what she's doing. I want to, I want to stand in my power like that too. I want to let myself mess up and still feel like I'm a powerful creator in this universe, right? Like those are the people who I look up to the most. So although it seems like it's going to be a hit to you to let yourself mess up, that level of vulnerability, that level of letting yourself play and getting into the experience of life is actually so much more long-term deposits than trying to get it right. And let's look at business. Like nobody wants to buy from people who are trying to get it right. That energy of control, of neediness. If you're needing something from yourself, then other people feel that neediness too. Like we've I'm I'm working my way out of that in my own ways. Every business owner is working out of that in their own ways. I'm telling you, this is the way. This is the way. So, my invitation to you is to go mess stuff up. Go do it messy, go try something, go play simply for the sake of playing. That client that I worked with today, I'm like, what feels literally like the most fun thing that you could do? It often will surprise you. And it will sit feel so disconnected from what it is that you think makes sense for your business. Go back to if you listened to last week's episode about Substack, I'm like, I know that if I just let myself go be playful on Substack, I'm gonna find my way, whether it's right to staying on Substack or if it's some other thing, I'm gonna find my way to the next best thing by letting myself just go in and do it the way that it's feeling really good to me. So go mess it up. That's my that is my invitation to you today. And also invitation to the expansion room. If you want to come and do this possibility experiment, all of the work that we've done so far is there and available for you so that you can do your own possibility experiment. And we're still doing it live for another week. So you can come dive in, get started with us, and even come to the live calls if you want to. We're in the final week. So if you want to come be part of it, we would absolutely love to have you get all the recordings and all the goodies that there's so much goodness inside the expansion room for just $27. So the link is in the show notes if you want to come be part of this community of magical unicorns who are out there fucking shit up. Come be with us. Uh, I look forward to seeing what happens for you, hearing what happens for you. You know that you can always reach out to me at hello at genless.com and send me a line if something lands with you in this podcast. Another thing that you can do is if you love this episode, you can go onto Apple Podcasts, scroll all the way to the bottom, and leave me a review. That would absolutely mean the world to me. And if there's somebody who you know who is perfecting things in their life, you might send this episode to them just as a little tasty treat. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.