How to overcome perfectionism

Do you have unrealistically high expectations? Are you incredibly hard on yourself? Do you procrastinate on what really matters? If the answer is yes, chances are you are a perfectionist. But don’t you worry, in this post you will learn how to overcome perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a real treat to success and many people have no idea about it. It took me years to realize that I was suffering from perfectionism and procrastination and that those patterns where holding me back from becoming the person I was meant to be and from being successful in life and work. So often my community asks questions like how to find motivation, how do I feel more confident, how can I stop procrastination or how can I be happier. Well friends, I hate to break it to you, but maybe you need to do some reflection and ask yourself the tough question: Am I a perfectionist?

If you…

• Set yourself unrealistically high expectations and standards
• Expect everything, incl. yourself and others to be perfect
• Are frequently disappointed that things don’t go as planned
• Are exceptionally hard on yourself
• Feel like no matter what you do, it’s never good enough

…chances are you are a perfectionist and the very reason why you aren’t as successful or happy as you’d like to be yet.

But this is about to change, don’t you worry.

What does perfectionism look and show up like?

Before we dive into exactly how you can stop perfectionism and find inner peace we need to clarify what it looks like and how it shows up.

I already mentioned a few things on how perfectionism looks like above but you can sum it up in a few character traits:

• You are often frustrated and unsatisfied
• There is always a sense of notenoughness
• You are way to much in your head and not in your heart

Perfectionism can show up as following behaviours:

• Procrastination
• Lack of self-worth
• People pleasing
• Overthinking
• Overanalysing
• Overworking
• Beating yourself up and dwelling on the past
• Having a hard time celebrating your wins
• Not being able to accept compliments or credit for what you achieved

Now that we know what it looks like and have identified how it shows up in your life, let’s have a look at how to heal perfectionism.

How to trick your mind out of perfectionism

When it comes to overcoming perfectionism, you need to work on three things: your beliefs, your personal growth and your self-worth.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Change your beliefs and stop perfectionism

Look I get it, you are constantly hard on yourself and have a hard time seeing why you deserve to win. You are frustrated and unsatisfied and you have no idea why. You constantly think things like “It’s not enough”, “I can do it better” and “Why did I do this”.

I have been there… I have had all those thoughts and many more. The truth is this is how perfectionism shows up in your beliefs and thoughts.

You believe you are not worthy.

You believe you are not good enough.

You believe things need to be perfect.

And that is WHAT is holding you back from everything you ever wanted.

Sooo… You need to change those beliefs in order to move past perfectionism.

The first step of changing your beliefs is to become aware of them. Once you know how perfectionism shows up for you, what thoughts trigger those behaviours and what beliefs you hold about yourself and your life that result in perfectionism, then you need to take them and rewrite them.

Identify them as not the truth. Understand that you have the power to change them into something that serves you much more. And then go and belief those things.

How to use personal growth to heal perfectionism

Many of you may know how powerful personal growth is and how important it is when it comes to increasing personal potential.

We can use personal growth to let go of perfectionism and procrastination.

How?

The easiest way to overcome perfectionism is to identify the ways in which it shows up in your everyday life. This will take you some time and you will need to do a proper life audit.

Shed light on all your habits, behaviours, routines and patterns and identify above traits.

Make a list of all the ways in which perfection manifests in your life.

• Write down your perfectionist thoughts
• Write down habits that feed into perfectionism
• Write down beliefs you hold that result in it

And then each week take one thought, habit or belief and turn it into something better. Actively work on it by setting intentions of what you want it to be like. What should that better thought look like, what is that new habit you want to build or that new belief and WHY do you want to build it.

Remind yourself of sticking to that intention every single day until it became part of you.

Work on yourself worth to overcome perfectionism

From my personal experience and from working with countless clients on healing perfectionism I have learned that the roots of it most of the time lie in a lack of self-worth.

For some reason so many women (myself included) suffer from lack of self-worth. We identify our natural quest for contribution with having to put ourselves last. We believe that we don’t deserve care and breaks and recognition because we are here to serve.

But the truth is: We need to put ourselves first and we need to establish a good sense of self-worth to show up as our best and to serve in the way we want to serve.

Without the right amount of self-worth destructive patterns like perfectionism can creep in and take over.

So, the more you work on establishing self-worth and seeing how valuable, unique and special you are the easier it will be for you to let go of perfectionism and procrastination because you know what you deserve. You know what you are here for and you know what you need to do in order to get there.