6. The Art of Progress Over Perfection

Striving for perfection nearly held me captive in its unyielding grasp, but I've since learned it's the imperfect steps that choreograph life's most profound dance. As your guide Sarah, I invite you to join me on a journey of reflection and self-discovery, where I open up about my own skirmishes with perfectionism and how embracing imperfection led to a richer life experience. We'll explore together the delicate dance of setting high standards without being ensnared by the impossible quest for flawlessness. Whether it’s the silent struggle you face in your personal endeavors or the pressure you place on relationships, this candid discussion aims to liberate us from our own unrealistic expectations.

As I wear my many hats, I share the wisdom garnered through a myriad of challenges and triumphs. I personally delve into the empowerment that comes from recognizing our limitations while still aspiring for excellence. This episode is an impassioned call to celebrate progress, however minute, and to continue this dialogue beyond the podcast. Your stories and feedback are the lifeblood of this independent venture; they inspire and drive the conversation forward, helping us all to find balance in the pursuit of our ambitions. Together, let's redefine what it means to achieve a truly fulfilling life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the podcast between hard and brave. I'm Sarah, and I'm here to be with you in your personal growth and self-improvement journey, and I'm here to share my own life experiences with you. I'm a yoga teacher, a business intelligence manager with a master's degree in IT, and Nobel Queen International 2023 with health and wellness advocacy. I'm so excited to start this journey with you, to uplift you with positivity, the power of mindfulness and yoga and the freedom of conscious living. So let's start together and take a moment for yourself. Take a moment for yourself. Hello, hello, sarah's here. Welcome back to my podcast If this is not your first time listening, or welcome to the podcast if it's your first time listening to my episodes. I'm so happy to have you here and I sincerely hope that you find this episode useful after listening to it. I try to share with you the things that really helped me with my personal development, with my personal life, my professional life, and I'm more than glad to share it with people, those who are interested and would learn something from it. Even one person who can use this information to their benefit can give me a feeling of fulfillment. So please do let me know if you are able to use these tips to your benefit and what's your experience? All right.

Speaker 1: 1:38

So today I want to talk about the idea of perfectionism, and I believe I'm a good person to talk about this because I have been, and still am, sort of a perfectionist. But my point today, or my topic here, is to not allow perfectionism to stop us from living life, and that can happen a lot of time. So let's talk about what is perfectionism. Perfectionism is that when is the time when an individual only aims for what they see as perfect and if it's not perfect, they don't want it? So it's like a black and white kind of mindset. When you hear this, you probably think that these people do have everything really awesome and they put in a lot of work for everything to work great or look great or sound great. And that's true they do. But what are the cons of being a perfectionist? When you want everything perfect, it's given that you will be disappointed, because that's not how the world works. Am I correct? I believe I am Not. Everything is perfect. I'm not perfect, you're not perfect. Our parents are not perfect. Our children are not perfect. Our neighbors, our teachers, our colleagues, our bosses, our employees you know everyone does have something about them that can be considered as a flaw or is a flaw. So expecting things to be perfect is not very much realistic, and we might lose a lot of opportunities and people if we always aim for the best of everything and imagine yourself starting a project, something that you really like to do.

Speaker 1: 3:51

For example, for me it would be this podcast. Let's use this podcast as an example. I knew that I had to prepare for it, so I did my research. I knew what I wanted to talk about. I took my time thinking about it and actually I took a very long time thinking about it. That could be my perfectionism. When I say long time, I'm telling you like two years. Yeah, that's a long time. So then I started researching what are the tools that I need to have and how I need to prepare myself, testing Sometimes. I recorded some episodes, I deleted a lot of them and at some point, suddenly I realized that it's been months that I've recorded my first episode and I'm not satisfied or ready to publish any. At that exact moment, I realize it's my perfectionism that's holding me back.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Yes, true, it's true that, being a perfectionist, you would like to make things work great. However, what's great to me cannot be great to other people or between two people. They can have you know something, they can look at something and describe it as nearly perfect, and the other person would absolutely dislike it. So it's hard to really aim for something that's perfect, especially if it's in the eyes of other people and if it's only about you, how you see it. Perfect. Look at yourself. You're only a human. You're not a robot. You're not built perfectly. You do have flaws. It's human to have flaws. It's human to get tired. It's human to feel burnt out. It's human to learn through experience.

Speaker 1: 5:42

So you have to start and you have to take that first step so that eventually, through experience, you get closer and closer to perfect if not perfect at some point, or you might get perfect at some point, but basically your first step is not going to be perfect. So if you only aim for what is perfect, you might just be holding yourself back from creating, from new opportunities, from feeling achieved or fulfilled. So it's a good thing to reflect on and find for yourself what are the things that you've been wanting to do, or give it a chance, and you haven't because you are being very picky about it. That can apply to our friendships, our relationships as well with boyfriend, girlfriend, with husband or wife that's my Persian accent, but anyway, wife. So you cannot accept your partner to be perfect, because they're also human like you. So when you set a standard and they are not able to achieve it, you feel disappointed. They do feel disappointed and it brings a lot of negative feelings in your relationship.

Speaker 1: 7:10

So what we can focus on, instead of being a perfectionist, is progress. Progress is, or could be, slow, but it's still a progress. For example, you wake up today you do something different compared to yesterday that's already progress. You get a project done that you've been working on for some time or has been in the backlog for some time that's a progress. Or you are practicing a better way of communicating with your family also progress. Or you started boxing for the first time that's you tried a new pose in yoga. You're not able to do it, but at least now you know what are the steps to get into that pose, even if you're not doing it completely and perfectly. That's progress. So let's have this mindset, because this is actually the mindset that keeps us motivated to reach success. It's the want for perfectionism, but being logical enough to know that it's not achievable overnight or ever. However, you can take baby steps and focus on the progress, and that's how you can achieve it someday, maybe even sooner than later.

Speaker 1: 8:46

One more thing about perfectionism, which is unfortunately something that a lot of people can relate to, is burnout. So I myself, I put a high standard on myself and I believe that's why I can say that I have quite good achievements in life. However, what I've learned recently, especially during the past year, is that my standards should not always be so high. Or they can be if they're not bothering me, or they can be if they're not bothering me. However, if it's affecting the quality of my life or my well-being physically, emotionally or mentally then it's not worth it. I'm not saying that you should always baby yourself. There are times that you really have to suck it up and get up and get the work done, even if that's not what you want, and try to do better or step up, and that's what you have to do.

Speaker 1: 9:59

But for me, there was a time that for a few months, I was feeling absolutely burnt out. I could not enjoy my personal life because of the amount of time I've put into my work willingly. I wanted everything to run smoothly and I wanted every requester, stakeholder to be happy, which is not possible, humanly, not possible, and that pressure, that standard, really did make me feel burnout On the side. I was aiming for other things as well. I was aiming for deepening my skills in my yoga career. I was aiming for building a community. I was aiming for getting my paintings done and much more and much more, and much more. So that was a lot of pressure. So I just took some time, by December 2023. So I just took some time by December 2023.

Speaker 1: 11:13

I took the last 10 days of the year to just sit down and think. I didn't do much. I didn't rush myself, I just sat there and started thinking and I concluded that, for now at least, I should only focus on one thing a day. I wanted to finish or accomplish multiple tasks in a day and I was able to. For some time and a lot of days I wasn't able to, which made me feel like, oh, I wasn't able to succeed today, and that's not a good feeling. So I told myself that I'm gonna do only one thing a day Two. If I'm not able to do it, I'm not gonna beat myself up, it's okay. If I'm tired, then I will rest. Doesn't matter if I've already slept nine hours and I need one more. I'm going to rest until I feel rested, and I did so, and it did feel really, really good.

Speaker 1: 12:17

So sometimes it's important to look at what our perfectionism is doing to us. It might make us successful. It might make us feel accomplished. You can achieve goals in a shorter timeline. However, are you losing something on the way and if yes, how impactful that thing is on the quality of your life? Are you sacrificing a lot? Do you have the option not to sacrifice that much? If yes, if you do have that option, then take it slow.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Enjoy life Sometimes, enjoy being still, enjoy pausing and simply existing. That's also one thing I use sometimes in my yoga classes. Enjoy the simple feeling of being alive and the gift of existence. All right, I guess I'm going to wrap it up here. I hope that you found this useful and it gives you ideas to think about it.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Are you a perfectionist? Do you have to tone it down or do you actually need to raise your standards a little bit higher? It's up to you. Let me know what you think. Thank you, dear listeners, for joining me on this empowering journey today as we conclude this episode, remember that your potential is boundless and your journey to a more fulfilling life has only just begun. I'm here to support you every step of the way, so keep coming back for more insights and inspiration. And remember this podcast is proudly independent, created with a passion for making a positive impact. Your support means the world to me, so please consider subscribing and sharing it with the people you know. Together, we can inspire more individuals on their journey to empowerment and a better life. See you soon for more life-changing discussions. Until we meet again, stay empowered.