What is Perfectionism?

Google define perfectionism as the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection. There are so many people who struggle with this but don’t realise it.

To clarify, perfectionism isn’t something for “perfect” people or something that only “perfect” people experience. Perfectionism is the feeling of shame or fear stopping you from taking action – it is the need to have everything “perfect” before you can start. 

Perfectionism = Procrastination 

With it comes to a lot of blame and shame, so much so that you become stunted and unable to take any action, often resulting in procrastination. If you have the mentality “all or nothing” mentality and you feel the need to please people all the time then you may be struggling with perfectionism. 

It often leads back to how you feel about yourself. To work through any procrastination issues you may be facing, we have created a list of things that you can take action on to overcome these issues.

Work on Time Management

If you think you have a time management problem or think that you lack the time to do things you need to work on your time management.

For example, you want to start a YouTube channel but you think you need the perfect camera, lighting and backdrop before you can start. Or you want to start a blog but you don’t feel like you can start until you have the perfect name then these could be signs that you are struggling with perfectionism.

Poor time management can often come from a place of fear.

A feeling of shame you think you’ll experience if you fail, instead, you do nothing at all. To avoid this it’s important to think about your goals and the reasoning behind why you’re not acting on them. If the answer is lack of time, equipment or money then you’re probably just making excuses. 

Learn to enjoy the process and the time that it takes you to achieve your goals, knowing that you’re moving forward every single day.

 

Take Messy Action

By taking messy action you will continue to move forward rather than staying stuck where you are – even when you feel like it’s not completely “perfect”.

 

Set Yourself Deadlines

If you have goals that you think I’ll do that “one day” yet you just keep yourself busy with little tasks then you need to set yourself deadlines.

It’s important to set deadlines to actually take direct action on your goals. By committing to deadlines, we allow ourselves to take messy action towards our goals. 

Work to deadlines no matter the circumstances and use the feelings of disappointment due to inaction to motivate you to keep doing what you’re doing.

  

Remind Yourself That It’s ok to Feel Doubt

If you’re putting yourself out there it can be really scary sometimes. It’s ok to feel scared or have feelings of self-doubt but it’s important to push through those feelings because that’s where the magic is. Continue to show up for yourself and take action so that you continue to self-motivate.

Lower Your Expectations

A lot of us have a tendency to really build things up in our mind to be bigger than they actually are. We can build things up to think that they are going to make a huge big difference in our lives however, publishing your website or posting a video won’t always be life-changing.

If you can limit your expectations it can remove some of the pressure and remind yourself that you need to be consistent in order to see results.

 

Have People Around You