How to Quiet Your Inner Critic & Escape Perfectionism | Dr. Ellen Hendriksen
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Our world today, you know, 2025 is turning into a perfectionistic climate all on its own between capitalism, consumerism, social media, advertising. If we're put in an environment that makes us feel like we have to perform and achieve and consume to ever higher levels, of course we're going to respond by feeling like we're not good enough.

So have you ever poured your heart and soul into a project only to look at the final result and feel utterly deflated, like that sinking feeling of this isn't good enough despite all your hard work?

I know I have more times than I can count. Whether it was writing or art or just about any creative endeavor, that inner critic voice would pipe up telling me I'd had just kind of fallen short again. Perfectionism or overly harsh inner critics can be so hard to shake. They're

the constant striving to meet impossibly high standards and the self-judgment when you inevitably miss the mark. You still do want to operate and deliver on a very high level. That's still a big thing for me. I want to show up and give my best, one that makes me feel amazing about what I do. But I'd also love a break from feeling like what I do and who I am are never quite good enough.

So what if I asked you to imagine a world where that harsh inner critic lost its power? A world of self-acceptance, creativity, genuine fulfillment, incredible self-expression, not based on flawless performance, but on self-compassion and living by your deepest values.

Well, if you're intrigued, then stick around because my guest today, Dr. Ellen Hendrickson, may just blow your mind. She is on a mission to help self-critics and perfectionists like maybe you and probably me

quiet that inner voice of harsh judgment, and still show up and do amazing things in the world. Ellen is a clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders and the author of the new book, How to Be Enough, Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Professionists. With a scientifically-based zero-judgment approach, she has helped

Countless people break free from the perfectionism trap and cultivate true self-compassion. Drawing on decades of research and her own personal experiences, Ellen really shares actionable strategies to reframe the way that we evaluate our self-worth,

Whether you're a high achiever feeling burned out, a people pleaser spread too thin, or just someone who can't shake the feeling of not being enough, this conversation will open your eyes to a kinder, more sustainable, and joyful way of being. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

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Alan, it's so good to be back in conversation with you. We talked six years ago, something like that. And that conversation actually became one of the most popular on the podcast over the next year or two. Apparently, not everybody feels all that comfortable in social situations with themselves. So just notion that conversation around anxiety and social anxiety in particular was really fascinating to see how that kind of lit up our community.

You are deep diving into a topic that I know now is, it has gotten so much, I don't want to say coverage, but I think it's a conversation that's on the top of a lot of people's minds and they struggle with greatly in the new book, How to Be Enough. You really sort of tee up this idea of perfectionism.

Now, perfectionism we hear talked about regularly enough so that I'm not actually convinced that we're all talking about the same thing when we talk about it. So why don't we start out there? What are we actually talking about when we talk about perfectionism? Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that because I do think that there is a lot of confusion out there about perfectionism.

I think perfectionism is really like one of those optical illusions where you look at it one way, you see one thing. You look at it another way, you see another thing, like the bunny and the duck or the young lady and the old lady, you know. And so some researchers would disagree with me, but some would absolutely agree with me that perfectionism can be helpful.

It's when we strive for excellence. We do good work for the work's sake. We set high standards. We care deeply. You know, please, please keep doing that. In fact, the healthy heart of perfectionism is a personality trait called conscientiousness. More than a big five, yeah. Yes, exactly. Yes. And it is when we...

We tend to be responsible and diligent. I like to say it's the least sexy superpower, but it is definitely the one to choose for a good life, for both objective and subjective success. Whatever that means to you in life, conscientiousness is the personality trait to choose. Okay.

However, where it tips over into unhelpful perfectionism is when we get into two things. And this is the work of Drs. Roz Schaffran, Zafra Cooper, and Christopher Fairburn from when they were colleagues at Oxford University. And they say the two pillars of unhelpful perfectionism are self-criticism, and that's something that's probably familiar to a lot of us, but in perfectionistic self-criticism, that

it gets particularly harsh and personalistic. So perfectionistic self-criticism could look like

overt name college. So I was working with someone today, a client who definitely does this, calls himself an effing piece of ass. Or it could be like, oh, I'm such an idiot. Or like, I'm so stupid. It could be rhetorical questions like, why can't I do this? Or what is wrong with me? Or it could simply be sort of an underlying rumbling current of dissatisfaction with our lives, with like disillusionment with ourselves. So...

Self-criticism is one pillar, but the second one is something that I think might be new to a lot of people, and that is something called over-evaluation. And that is when we start to conflate our worth with our performance. So in other words, it's a mindset that says we have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person. So, you know, forgive my grammar, but it's when I did good...

equals I am good. Now, we can over-evaluate almost anything. So classic examples might be like a striver student who needs to get all A's, like that's who they are. And that when they get a B or God forbid, a C, you know, that's not just a

a bad grade to them, that means something about them. Or we might over-evaluate our social behavior. Perfectionism is the heart of social anxiety. And so we might rise and fall based on our social interactions and like, did I say something stupid or did I tell a joke that went off poorly? We could over-evaluate our quarterly evaluation. A musician or an athlete might define themselves by how well they performed in their last show or their last game. It's

anything where our performance is a referendum on our character.

So it's the self-criticism based on that really evaluating us as human beings, our value as a human being, based on how we perform in this one particular domain or project or whatever it is, you know, insert whatever it is that's relevant to you. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So again, it could be anything we truly value and how we define ourselves. And what happens is that we set the bar for adequate at flawless, right?

And that means that whenever we struggle or we make a mistake or we come up short because we're human, that really flips us from all to nothing. There's a huge gulf in which we can criticize ourselves for not reaching that bar of flawlessness. Right.

So let me float an example from my own life from when I was a kid. I'm curious what your take is here. So I was a painter as a kid. I used to paint album covers on jean jackets, like back when album covers were like the coolest art on the planet. This was how I made my walking around money in high school. And I like to choose really brutally hard album covers like, you know, like for Zetta, Molly Hatchet up like all these absolutely wild things that I had no idea how to paint and then do it.

And then I would steal away my basement and I would pay for days and days and days, sometimes weeks. And if I got done with that, right? And I poured myself into this. I had no training. I just was doing what I felt like I was just compelled to do. Nobody told me to do this. I love doing it. So when I got done with it, it was not unusual for me to stand back. And if it didn't meet my bar, right?

I would destroy it. I would throw it out. I would give it up. I would start over. Now, of course, it was somebody else's jean jacket. I was not going to do that. But canvases, I would do that on a fairly regular basis. I would look at it. I was like, not good enough. Where do we cross from those high standards, that self-criticism that says, I can do better and I want to do better, to this is actually destructive? Where is that line between this is actually helping me

be more of who I want to be, perform at a higher level that makes me feel really good to this is actually now dysfunctional. Yeah. So I think something that you point out is that you had really high standards. Like you, we wanted it to appear on the jean jacket like it appeared in your head or on the album cover. Like you, again, you set those standards really high. And I really want to shout from the rooftops, the high standards are not the problem. It's the over-evaluation. If for you,

having a album cover that was not good enough meant something about you, like that meant you were not good enough, that you were not adequate, then this absolutely qualifies as perfectionism. And you can also ask yourself, and your listeners can ask too, and certainly I put myself in this category. I wrote this book certainly for everyone who identifies with this, but also for me, perfectionism and overvaluation also comes packaged with a focus on flaws and details and

So we tend to zero in like on metaphorically on the one frowning face in the crowd of smiles. Like, you know, we see the crumbs on the otherwise clean counter that no one else sees. We see the typo in the slide deck no one else sees. So for you, maybe if you saw a detail that was not quite right and that rendered the whole thing not good enough.

Maybe that could qualify. And the other thing is that we evaluate things as all or nothing, as I was saying. So if we make a mistake, we screw up. Other examples might include, you know, one cookie ruins our healthy eating for the day. Or like losing our temper with our kids once makes us a bad parent. So there's that all or nothing evaluation that goes along with the high standards, which are not the problem.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? Because as you described when we first started talking, this notion that perfectionism is not inherently bad, that there are elements of it that actually can help us aspire to do really cool things, to become better at things that we really care about. It's when it tips into these different zones, right?

But it's interesting also, because if I use that same example for me, oftentimes when I would look at this, I wouldn't just look at the jacket and say, oh, the jacket isn't good enough or the painting isn't good enough. I would turn that back on me and say, I'm not good enough. I'm not skilled enough. Like I have a clear picture of what it is in my head, or maybe if I'm reproducing something, I'm literally looking at what I want to reproduce as exactly as I can. And it's not coming out. Like I don't have the actual skill yet.

Or if it's something that I'm creating just from my brain, my skill hasn't reached a level where I can close the gap between taste and expression. So I'm looking at me and saying, I'm not good enough yet. Why is that a bad thing? If it's true. I think in your story there, perhaps your skills were not good enough or you weren't there yet enough.

You had some room to grow. But did that mean that you yourself as a person were inadequate? And I think that's the line. So it's less about qualities or skills that may be associated with you. It's more like me as a human being. Correct. Exactly. Yeah, I could see how that would be pretty brutal. And I think...

This is a phenomenon that is probably so prevalent. I'm curious whether you have prevalent state on this. Like, how widespread is this phenomenon among just adults? Yeah. What I found, so I'm a clinical psychologist. I work at an anxiety specialty center. And

Something I've found is that most of my clients have perfectionism at the center of the overlapping Venn diagram of the issues they're coming in for. But nobody comes in and says, Ellen, I'm a perfectionist. I need help because everything needs to be perfect. Nope. No one has ever said that. What happens is that people come in and they say, I feel like I'm failing. I'm

I feel like I'm falling behind. I should really be further ahead in my life by now. Or I have a million things on my plate and I feel like I'm not doing any of them well. I think that's because perfectionism as a word or a term is a little bit of a misnomer. It's

not about striving for perfection. It's really about never feeling good enough. And a lot of my clients are very accomplished, very impressive. And I like to say that we really look like we're hitting it out of the park, but we feel like we're striking out. And I think, therefore, the prevalence data, whatever it may be, is probably much lower than it actually is. There is prevalence data for kids, and

And there, one third of kids have some kind of clearly maladaptive perfectionism where they're over-evaluating their character and their performance and criticizing themselves harshly because of it. Yeah, and that would actually make a lot of sense to me because probably...

I would imagine that a lot of this comes out in the form of academic striving. So that's the age right there, right? Because all of a sudden they're put into a system where they're in a group of people and they're all being rated and judged and graded and scored on a regular basis and striving towards a particular outcome. And then they get a report on a regular basis saying how close or far that they've come with that. So I would imagine there's sort of like a feedback mechanism and a system to support that perfectionism in a way that just...

either fall away or just morphs into all sorts of other weird things once you sort of like step out of that structure into, you know, like adulthood. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think for kids, I think grades, 100%, absolutely. But I think it can also be very prevalent with athletics.

I think it can be prevalent in terms of like musical performance. I think it can be, again, our social performance. Like, are we cool and charismatic or are we awkward and weird? It could be how we appear, whether we think we're attractive or not.

Some people will over-evaluate their reflection in the mirror, the number on the scale. And so it really can be anything. And I imagine, especially with social media, showing us a constant highlight reel of how we think things, quote-unquote, should be, that that would be very hard to fight. Perfectionism, we usually think of it as sort of a personality profile, like we think of the Martha Stewart's or Serena Williams or like Hermione Granger's of the world. But

Research is increasingly showing that it can come from within. You know, it can be genetic. It can absolutely come from our families of origin, but it can also come from all around us. It can come from what the researcher Andrew Hill calls a perfectionistic climate environment.

And that's if we're in a high-pressure, high-stress climate where there's no room for mistakes and we're criticized harshly when we inevitably fall short because we're human. That, of course, is going to make us respond by feeling like we're not good enough. Originally, this research was meant to characterize the highest levels of women's gymnastics.

or like symphony auditions. But I think our world today, you know, 2025 is turning into a perfectionistic climate all on its own between capitalism, consumerism, social media, advertising. If we're put in an environment that makes us feel like we have to perform and achieve and consume to ever higher levels, of course, we're going to respond by feeling like we're not good enough.

Which makes me curious also, do you see, or are you aware of either any research or do you just see clinically representation strongly beyond age, beyond just sort of saying like there is data that says a third or so of younger folks exhibit this? Do you see any association or correlation with things like gender?

Or any other sort of, like, identifiers where it shows up more often than not. Yeah, for sure. Continuing along that theme of how, you know, it can come from within, but it can definitely come from all around us as well. So I think folks from marginalized communities or, you know,

minority communities. There's another layer there because, again, if all humans react to the situations we're put in, if we're put into a society or an institution that, due to racism, homophobia, ableism, you know, name your prejudice, either overtly or covertly tells us

You don't belong here. You don't deserve to be here. Of course, the result is going to be a pull to prove ourselves, like a way to earn our way into the group. And then it's no longer a personality trait, but an understandable reaction. I give an example in the book. This is the research of Dr. Gary Mitchell from Duke, and he researches conflict.

prep programs that are designed to launch high-achieving black and brown kids into impressive career trajectories. And he finds that sometimes at those elite schools, those kids may be subject to higher standards of academics,

of behavior than, for example, like legacy kids or donor kids. So perfectionism can even be institutionalized. And again, then it is a pretty understandable reaction to being put in a situation that says you are not good enough.

So then some of this can come from the outside in, as you were describing earlier. There can be a really strong cultural influence. And that could be large-scale culture. It could also be just, it sounds like, immediate culture within an institution or a class even or a small group. I'm curious about, because you also said that there may be a genetic component to this. I was recently having a conversation with a researcher who

And we were talking about this, that very same big five trait that you described, conscientiousness, and how much of this people kind of assume is genetic and also changeable.

And he was sharing that, you know, by the time most people reach somewhere around the age of 20, it's commonly agreed that these five traits are largely set, but that even the expression or the experience of them is, you know, for the rest of your life, probably about half of that is genetically determined. But then there's another 50% with all sorts of other contributors.

Is it similar with perfectionism or is it different? So that exact answer might be beyond the cutting edge of science, but there is definitely a growing mountain of literature showing that perfectionism itself is definitely heritable and certainly disorders that it lies at the heart of. So social anxiety, OCD, eating disorders, some kinds of depression, those are definitely genetic. That said, are

Our genetics are not destiny. And I think there's a lot we can do if we find that we have fallen into some of that clinical perfectionism, that unhealthy perfectionism. Even if our factory settings are tilted towards perfectionism, there's a lot we can do to be flexible and to really live the life we want to live and not be yanked around by it. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. ♪

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You've kind of referenced here and there some of the ways that you sometimes see this show up in people's mental health or even their physical health. Sometimes, you know, like both because we all know that you can't really separate those these days. Kind of broadly speaking, or maybe even specifically, how do you see...

then ripple out into a person's actual mental or physical health? Like, how does this actually show up in the mind and the body and then in somebody's life? Yeah, absolutely. So I think, again, the heart is that over-evaluation and that self-criticism. And there, what I see is when folks set the bar for adequate at flawless and we define failure as not meeting expectations, then over-evaluation

we're going to rack up a lot of failures. And as we do that again and again and again, we start to feel like failures. The perfectionism researcher Dr. Martin Smith finds that most people mellow as they age, but for folks with some perfectionism, something different happens and the wheels turn.

start to come off. And we burn out, or we lose relationships, or struggle with our mental health. What I often see is depression, OCD, eating disorders. For me, it manifested physically. So

I developed a GI illness. I went through, I think, five rounds of physical therapy. I had an overuse injury from too much typing. I, at one point, couldn't turn my head to the right because my neck muscles were so tight. So that was for me. But for a lot of folks who come into the clinic, it might look like marital troubles. It might look like realizing all their friends have drifted away. It might simply manifest as feeling like a failure.

So it can show up in a lot of like really heterogeneous ways. But the core is that as we don't meet our unrealistic standards again and again, we start to feel like failures.

I know I've been there. Haven't we all?

And, yeah, I mean, it's a brutal way to live. And it's going to show up physically in your body. Yeah. So I think imperfection is having sort of a cultural moment, which I love and completely agree with. But I do think that the advice around it is a little bit misguided. So because a common piece of advice, I know I've been told this, I wonder if you've been told this, is to stop when things are good enough.

or to lower, you got to lower your standards, Ellen. But good enough doesn't resonate when it's something from which we derive our value. You know, it's something if we're using that to measure ourselves, of course, we're not going to settle for subpar or mediocre performance, because that means that we're subpar or mediocre. So again, it's not the

problem is not the high standards necessarily. It's the over-evaluation. I think that is the thing that we can try to tackle rather than telling people, oh, you just got to stop when things are good enough.

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, actually, because that has been something that has bothered me in a bunch of different domains, in entrepreneurship, in art, in all sorts of different things. I'm somebody who's definitely mellowed from when I was a kid. I don't have that same standard. I've thankfully tipped more towards mellowing than festering and breaking down. Not always. Sure. But I also still have really high standards. You know, I really, when I have a vision of something that I want to make real in my mind,

and I get really clear about what that is, I really want that to happen. And I want to work and I'm willing to work incredibly hard to get there and to acquire the skill and whatever it is that I need to do. And I found that oftentimes it is really hard and it takes way longer than I thought it would take. And, you know, I get knocked around along the way. But then when I actually achieve what I strive for, the feeling of that,

just so juicy and so alive it's it's like that is how I want to show up this is what I want to do that the thought of never feeling that to me the thought of getting three quarters of the way there and say oh it's good enough I have a really clear vision of what I want it to be but you know it's good enough I'll just like send it out into the world there move on to the next thing and

And never experiencing that closing of the gap and that just full body elation and expression. To me, that's really hard to stomach, just going there and not actually going all the way. Yeah, no, absolutely. And again, I think this underscores that it's not about the high standards. Please keep your high standards. It sounds like that has really brought you a lot, really helped you grow.

follow your dreams, accomplish the things you want to do, please keep doing that. And it sounds like as you have mellowed, as you said, maybe you've come away from that over-evaluation that you might have been experiencing as a teenager. That's the crux of what we need to do in the book, for example. I tell the story about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

and his time at UCLA under the legendary basketball coach, John Wooden. And under Coach Wooden's leadership, the team just reached such amazing standards that a psychologist started to study what was it about Coach Wooden's style that made him so exemplary, that helped bring this team to all these championships. And what they found is that Coach Wooden very seldom played

praised or criticized his players, he would almost never evaluate them. What he did was he taught, he gave information. And so instead of saying like, oh, like that's no good or like, yay, good job. He would say, pass from the chest, take lots of shots where you might get them in games.

Pass the ball to someone short. Run, don't walk. He would tell the players what to do and how to do it. And I think if we've got some over-evaluation, if we're over-identifying with our performance, we could take a page from that. And rather than having this be something about ourselves, like rather than conflating our performance and our worth, we can look at the work for the work's sake. We can strive for excellence for the sake of

of excellence and take the stance of a sculptor, like eye in a block of marble and say like, okay, what would make this work better? What would make this thing better? And that comes at it from a really different perspective of thinking, oh, this performance equals me.

So I think that's one way that we can try to get away from some of that overvaluation and still achieve the bliss and the excitement that you describe from setting high standards and then striving to meet them for excellence's sake.

And I think we're kind of shifting into some, well, we're shifting into some of the shifts that you talk about in the book. One of them that really grabbed me is this, and if you want to rephrase this, just let me know, but the way it caught me is sort of like this shift from criticism, especially self-criticism.

Yeah.

20 years into my writing journey now, and I'll read something from a writer and I'll laugh slash cry at a sentence. And then I'll tell myself, so if I was the younger me, I would probably be really frustrated that I can't do that yet. And that, you know, like I should be able to do this. And that would be the standard, which, and it would beat myself up for not being there. Now I'll kind of look at that and I'll say, this is stunning. This is gorgeous. This is amazing.

I would love to be able to write this sentence one day. And maybe in 10 years, if I keep writing and I keep paying attention to the craft, I'll be able to. Does that fall under sort of like this shift or is that a different reframe? No, absolutely. I feel like that sounds aspirational and inspirational for sure. It's

lighting the fire under you to keep doing the work, not because you're not good enough, but because you want to reach those high standards. And so I think that, again, not, you're not over-evaluating is really the key there. And for my own kind of self-compassion journey, something that I've found is that I've learned to

take my self-criticism less seriously. We were talking about conscientiousness at the beginning, and those of us with perfectionism are very conscientious. We take things seriously. But that also means that we take our self-critical thoughts and feelings really seriously and really literally, and that can make us perseverate or spiral or feel inadequate. And so what I've learned to do is to sort of take the stance of listening

listening to my self-criticism as if it was the music in a coffee shop or as if it was the music at the grocery store. So it's still there. And

I can hear it. But, you know, just like some brains are wired to be more optimistic or pessimistic or like more introverted or extroverted, you know, my brain is just wired to be self-critical. But I can hear the self-criticism, but I don't have to listen to it. I don't have to like dance along. And that has been particularly helpful for me. It brings up something that just popped into my head as you're describing that. I've talked with folks in the past who

they will give that voice of self-criticism a name and a personality within their head. And then basically...

treat it like as like the person living in their head. I've heard some people say that's such a great technique. I've also heard some people say that's a terrible technique because you're giving it more almost like rigidness and more like validity and more realness. I'm curious where you land on that. Yeah, I think if giving it a name or like a persona helps you see that that self-criticism is just a series of thoughts.

then I think it's magical because then you can sort of get some perspective on it. There's...

there's a term called cognitive diffusion, which is pretty much exactly that. And that's when we play with our self-critical thoughts and make them like a little bit ridiculous or a little bit irreverent in order to emphasize that they are thoughts. So like I have a client who has named her self-critical voice Helga, and she pictures Helga with like a Viking helmet and a stern expression. I have another client who has not named his self,

self-critical thoughts per se, but he pictures animal from the Muppets, like beating his drum set and like yelling the thought, everyone will judge you. And then I have another client who her thought is, you're going to let everyone down. And so she has decided to play with this thought, to emphasize that it is just a thought. It is not truth. It is not reality. She pictures the thought on a coffee mug, and then she pictures herself taking a little nonchalant sip

from this coffee mug. And that's their way of emphasizing that these are just thoughts. They're kind of the products of our own self-critical minds. And I take that, the subtitle of my book, Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists, really pretty literally. And I find that, you know, this is just what our brains are going to do. That's just how we're wired. And that's okay, but we don't have to get tangled up in the content.

of the self-criticism. We can just like let it flow by like a revolving sushi restaurant. I may have to now actually like take on the personality of one particular Muppet with my voice in my head. It's a good one. Here's what else I'm curious about. Okay, so this is fun. This is cool. Like these are something where you can kind of do this and maybe really help make that shift from self-criticism to self-compassion to kindness. What about somebody who's listening to this, watching this, and they're in a work situation, right? Yeah.

And they're on a team where the stakes are very high. The standards are exceedingly high. The pressure is very high. And the culture in that team, and in fact, the entire company, is perfectionism. The culture is like, we do perfect all the time when it counts the most, when the stakes are the highest possible. And you get paid an ungodly amount of money to do that and great perks, but

But that is the standard. Like, that is what we do. And I know people who work in firms like that. And I know firms, entire, like, large companies and teams that function like that. So let's say, like, that's your situation. You don't want to leave. There's a lot of good stuff that's going along with this. How do you deal with something like that? I think we can deal with it in private, like, personally. And then I think we can also deal with it with the team.

We were talking about self-compassion. And I think there we can take care of ourselves. So I was taught that self-compassion was talking to myself like a good friend. But then my perfectionistic brain thought that that meant that I needed to generate like this steady stream of self-compassionate articulate hype, you know? I need to do that perfectly. Right, exactly. It's too high a bar. So I want to pose the idea that self-compassion doesn't have to be words.

at all. Self-compassion can be actions. And because that's way easier to control too, right? Like we can control our behaviors way easier than we can control our thoughts or our feelings. So we can give ourselves a few more minutes under the warm spray of the shower in the morning. We can give ourselves a moment to breathe

when we're stressed. We can go to yoga because we know that, you know, from experience that we're going to feel better afterwards. Or importantly, we can give ourselves permission not to go to yoga because we're already exhausted, we're already overwhelmed. So for those of us with some perfectionism or those of us in perfectionistic environments, self-compassion can be either doing a thing that will take care of ourselves or permission not to do everything we expect of ourselves. So I think that's something we can do sort of

I think something we can do with the team, and this will take a little bit of nerdy background, but perfectionism is what researchers call interpersonally motivated, meaning it's trying to help us belong to the tribe. It actually guides us down the wrong path to get there. And it tells us the lie that we have to perform as superbly as possible to get people to like us.

That we have to be good at things in order to belong. So you described a perfectionist environment with that and might actually be true. But what we can do is, in addition to all that uber-competence,

or not allowing mistakes, we can also bring in some humanity. So I'll tell you the story of a client I had who we will call Gus. So he worked in one of these perfectionistic climates. And he came in because he wanted to optimize his performance, which for me is always a little bit of a flag. And he specifically wanted to work on his public speaking.

And for him, his kind of perfectionistic self-presentation manifested as over-preparing and over-practicing to the point where he would kind of come off as wooden

And then before the meetings where he would present, so he would sort of stand at the podium and like silently go over his slides, silently rehearse his slides as people filed in, didn't acknowledge the people. And then when he gave the presentation, he would sort of perform his slides. Like it didn't even really matter who was in the room. He was just focused on like not making mistakes, doing it perfectly.

So what we tried to do is we tried to add on another dimension of how we evaluate each other as humans. In addition to competence, we can talk about this more later, we tried to add on worth. And so for him, that looked like instead of over-preparing and over-practicing, we tried to roll that back to simply preparing and practicing, but not doing it to the point where all he was doing was trying to reduce his anxiety. Instead of silently rehearsing his slides,

As people filed in, he greeted them by name. And then as he presented, rather than sort of performing his slides as if it didn't matter who was in the audience or who was there, he tried to tell a story and like focus on sharing his knowledge with the energy of like, look at this cool rock I found, you know, rather than like trying to perform his slides as like Gus the Impressive expert. So what he was doing at the beginning was certainly avoiding misguidance.

But he also missed out on the connection and possible trust with his colleagues that adding on that dimension of warmth, I think, really bought him. So, yes, he's still in this perfectionistic climate. He's still trying to avoid mistakes. But I think what he can do is rather than trying to avoid mistakes, avoid screwing up, is he can add on some connection and some display of like trustworthiness and trustworthiness.

I think instead of just trying to avoid mistakes, he can add on some warmth and some trustworthiness and some connection. And I was just momentarily reliving like me being Gus in a very early iteration of my speaking career. So

It took a long time to learn how to let go and just relax and tell stories. Absolutely. And yet then I actually remember also then transferring a sense of perfectionism to the art of storytelling. You know, we're buying anything. Absolutely. Right. Exactly. It's like searching for the next target there. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Hmm.

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That's $50 off with code LISTEN at BlueNile.com. You know, one of the things that you talk about is, and again, use a language that if I'm not getting this right, is the sense of shifting from rules to a sense of adaptability or flexibility, agility, as one way to really help with this. Take me into that a bit.

Absolutely. So those of us with perfectionism want to know the rules so we can follow them. And then what happens? I know I can relate to this. If there are no rules, we make up our own personally demanding rules and then we follow those. So like, you know, think about making up rules for like healthy eating, for example. Like that's not necessarily bad. When three things happen, we've kind of tipped over into the unhealthy perfectionism. So when the rules get rewritten,

rigid. We apply them in any situation, like we try to follow that healthy eating rule even on Thanksgiving. Two, we apply the rules as all or nothing. So if we follow the rules acceptably, we are acceptable. But if we slip or mess up, even in the slightest way, that renders us unacceptable. So like with our healthy eating example, like I ate a cookie, so I'm bad. And then the

we start to impose our rules on other people. The classic example is there is a right way to load the dishwasher, and that can get in the way of our relationships. So we orient to rules. We want to know what we're doing. We want to know we're acceptable, but it can get in the way if they're rigid, all or nothing, or we impose them on others. So I think the next question is, what can we do about that? We're going to try to shift over to values.

And I really want to define values because I think that's a word that gets thrown around a lot. So values, just so we can be on the same page, are a person's principles or a sense of what's important and meaningful in life. And values

researchers, Dr. Michael Tuhig and Dr. Clarissa Ong, when they were colleagues at Utah State University, came up with four qualities of a value. And I'll give you them all, but I think the last one is really what's the most important. But one is a value is continuous. You're never done living a value. So a value is different than a goal. So like

making a million dollars isn't a value, but like maybe wealth or financial security is. Two, values are intrinsically meaningful, meaning you would care about them even if nobody else knew. Getting famous isn't a value, but putting in the work is. Third is values are under your control, so they're not contingent upon anyone else. So like being loved isn't a value, but being loving is. And

And this is the fourth one, which I think is the most important, especially when we're trying to move from rules to values, is that values are freely chosen. Values are never coercive or obligatory. So you freely choose values.

to follow them, and you're likely willing even to tolerate some discomfort or inconvenience to do so. So like, for instance, the value of sustainability or the value of giving back might be why you're willing to give up your Saturday morning to go volunteer to pick up trash on the beach rather than spending the day like relaxing at the beach.

So, as we move from trying to just follow rules, whether the actual rules or there are own made-up rules or there's someone's generic idea, we might end up doing things differently. Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with another podcast host, and she said that she used to struggle with the rule of, I have to have a beautiful home.

And so she would see like gorgeous homes on Instagram or like in magazines. And she'd think, oh, now I have to have this beautiful, like white and beige house. Like even though I have two toddlers and she had this big epiphany where she realized that's

That's not even what she valued. Like, she wanted a climbing wall in the living room. She wanted her kids' toys everywhere. She wanted to have a fun house, not a beautiful house. And she noticed that it was this great weight off her shoulders when she gave herself permission to have a home that matched her values, you know, rather than blindly following some arbitrary rule. So that's a, I'm making air quotes with my fingers, kind of an easier example because

Because as we move from rules to values, we might also actually not do anything differently. So for instance, if we're trying to move from rules to values, and we're used to following the rule of like, I have to be a good friend.

That means there are certain things I have to do. I have to remember my friend's birthday. I have to ask them detailed questions about their life. I have to surprise them with their favorite coffee order when we go for a walk. Okay, none of those things are bad, right? Those are actually lovely. Like, please keep doing those. But what gets in the way is that sense of have to. That fourth part of that definition of values was that values are freely chosen. And so if there's

a sense of coercion, a sense of duty, a sense of obligation behind it that can make the friendship feel like a people-pleasing grind, then we're living by a rule. Whereas if we can shift to a value of being attentive to our friend, a value of being supportive of our friend, and we're freely choosing to run towards those, we might still remember their birthday.

We might still ask them detailed questions about their life. We might still surprise them with their favorite coffee order. But the quality of the experience changes. Like it starts to feel like a want rather than a should. So our behavior on the surface might not change at all, but it's really driven by something different, something that's freely chosen rather than something that is obligated.

No, I love that. And it makes me curious about a distinction on that fourth one, freely chosen. Is that always an easy distinction to make? Because what's popping into my head is that how do we know if we're actually, we legitimately, this is freely, like we just want to actually exhibit this value. This is really what's important to me. Or I know that if I do this thing or behave a particular way or make a decision,

I am going to belong. I'm going to be loved. And we want to belong and we want to love. And that's what we're actually like. But to me, that makes it feel murky. Like, how do we tease out when it really is emanating from us rather than we're doing a thing because it's going to result in a feeling that we want coming back to us? Yeah, the lie of perfectionism says that we need to double down on perfectionism.

performance, you know, in order to earn our way into belonging, like rather than focusing on connecting or focusing on enjoying each other.

One thing that goes along with that is that following your values might not always feel good. I think there is often an expectation of, like, if I'm true to myself, if I live my values, like, then I'll feel great. And that might not actually be the case. Like, it can be really hard to

live our values, it can open up a lot of emotion. I'll tell you a story about a client named Steven. He wanted to follow the rule of like, I need to prove myself at work. And that meant that he

He would answer work emails on the sidelines of his kid's soccer game, or he would duck out of kid bath time and kid story time to go sit at his laptop because he felt like he needed to prove himself at work. He was very aware that he was missing out on his kids. His partner was resentful because she was picking up all his slack. And so he really tried to shift towards a value of being attentive to

to his kids. But what happened is that then he would stand on the side of the soccer game and he would feel his phone buzz in his pocket and he would feel anxious and a little guilty. Or he would stick with kid bath time, but he would have to sort of surf the urge of like, oh my gosh, I should really be working. And if we looked at his behaviors, he was living the life he wanted to live. He was being the person he wanted to be. He was truly running towards his values, but it didn't necessarily feel good.

So I think that's important to understand that that might happen. But if

If you're going to feel uncomfortable either way, you might as well feel uncomfortable while following your values. Yeah. In the name of something you genuinely care about. And that's important too. Yeah. Because we're going to feel uncomfortable with all sorts of different things all day, every day. So might as well be aligned with what really matters to you. Free spark. This is really fascinating. There are a bunch of other shifts that you actually write about and speak to in the book, but there's one other that I really want to just dive into with you. And it's this notion of what you describe as demand sensitivity. Yeah.

Take me into this. Yeah, I loved researching about this because like light bulb after light bulb just went off over my head. I was like, oh my gosh, this is so common. It has a name. This is what I do. So, all right, this is the work of Dr. Alan Mallinger. And so demand sensitivity is exactly that. It's a heightened sensitivity to perceived requests or demands. In perfectionism, we orient towards the shoulds of life, like what we should be doing. But what that means is

is that, to quote Dr. Mellinger, we often turn the volitional into the obligatory. So, for instance, if our kid can't find their phone, we feel obligated to start looking for it. We sit down in front of Netflix and we feel like, oh, I should really watch a documentary. I should learn something. Or we get invited to somebody's house and we feel like we should bring a dessert. But then it spirals into like, oh, well, I should make something from scratch. And it just becomes this overwhelm of shoulds.

And that what happens, as I like to say, all work and no play makes anyone a resentful human. And that brings us to demand resistance.

which is when we feel so overloaded with tasks and shoulds that we start to balk. We start to procrastinate. We start to rebel, even if it's something that we initially wanted to do. I can tell you a story about myself. I keep a writing list of books I want to read as I come across them on the internet or I hear recommendations. I keep a list of movies I'd like to see. But

But then they're part of a list. And my life is already full of lists of things I have to do. So when the book comes in to the library or the bookstore, or when I sit down to watch a movie, now it feels like a chore. It feels like it's something on my list that I have to do. And then I lose interest completely. And so what I've really tried to do there, and I write about this in the book, it's a tool I call dare to be unproductive, is to really tune in to whatever I found interesting

interesting or cool or fun in the first place. And I think if we're used to only doing what we should, that can be really hard to do at first. It can be hard to know what we like or hard to even know what we're genuinely drawn to. But I think with some practice, it's quite freeing to dare to be unproductive. And fundamentally, you don't have to slog through a history of the Taliban. You know, you can go ahead and read that rom-com that you've been eyeing.

I'm wondering if this kind of describes a phenomenon that, as you're describing it, that popped into my head when our daughter was in elementary school. She was a kid who loved to read. She would power through book after book after book after book. She would just curl up. In, I think it was fifth grade, she started in a classroom and the teacher instituted a reading requirement. You know, like every day, 45 minutes a day, five days a week.

from that day forward, she wasn't a reader. Is that what we're talking about? Absolutely. It became a chore. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I understand what the teacher was doing. The teacher was trying to get... Yeah, well-intended, of course. Yeah, well-intended. They were trying to get kids on the other end of that spectrum to read. But for her, yeah, then it felt like a chore. It wasn't freely chosen just to do a callback to values there. Yeah. So interesting. The way that these things just show up

in all different aspects and all different ages of our life. If we zoom the lens out a little bit, you know, and we really think about

just perfectionism and how it shows up in all the different parts of our lives. One other curiosity I just wanted to dip in also is I imagine that you see this in the context of relationships, wanting to be the perfect ex, the perfect partner, the perfect spouse, the perfect parent. And again, it's one of those things where you want to have really high standards in the way that you show up for the other people, aligned with your values even. You value being emotionally and physically present in the lives of the people who you love dearly.

Do you see this aspiration tipping into perfectionism in a meaningful way? Yeah, I more often see feeling like they're never good enough. I feel like I see, wow, like I'm so lucky to be with my partner. I don't know how they put up with me. I'm just not good enough for them. Or I'm trying so hard to be a good parent. But well, here, actually, I can tell you a story about that one. I

who's very concerned with being a good parent and for a good reason. She came from a very unstable family where there was some emotional, there was some physical violence. And she's working really, really hard to break the cycle with her kids. She's working really diligently. But she still yells at them on occasion. She doesn't hit them, but she will still lose her temper sometimes because we all default to our factory settings when we're under stress.

Okay. But when she loses her temper, she automatically relegates herself to, I'm a bad mom. All the work she's done, like all the progress she's made, all the times she stopped herself from yelling, like really means nothing whenever she breaks her rule. And just as a connection to our earlier conversation, if you told her to lower her standards, that would not go over well, nor would it be appropriate, right? Okay. What we can do there is to try to

Make some room for mistakes. Hear me out on that one. So we're going to move from either or, move from I'm a good mom or I'm a bad mom to

To both and. So Jamie and I worked together to set an expectation. So like how often could she reasonably expect herself to screw up and yell at her kids? And the answer can't be zero. You could also phrase it as like what standard would you hold someone else to who's in the same position? And so Jamie decided that 90% of the time when she was tempted to yell, she would expect herself to stop, like to get it together and not do that.

which I thought was actually quite high. But now she has 10% wiggle room. And it doesn't mean it's okay. It does not mean she approves of it. But now it makes it understandable. She can take it from either or, good mom, bad mom, to both and. I'm a good mom who sometimes loses my temper. And the kicker is that when you make room for mistakes, it actually diminishes.

the chances that they'll actually happen. We can do this around anything. I'm a smart person who sometimes doesn't know the answer. I'm a capable person who sometimes screws things up. I'm an easygoing person who sometimes makes executive decisions. I'm a dedicated person who sometimes doesn't try my hardest. But making room for those mistakes doesn't lower our standards, but it gives us some much needed wiggle room and room to breathe.

Yeah, I love that. It's like it normalizes them as just a part of the human condition rather than saying, this is a problem. This is an error. It's a glitch in the code that needs to be fixed. It's like, no, this is just, it's going to happen. It's life. Yeah. And we don't like it. And we love it didn't happen, but it's also going to. And so let's just acknowledge that and sort of like get okay with it. So many other places I'd love to go with you, but I feel like we need to wrap this up. There are a whole bunch of other shifts in the book that I think are deeply fascinating too.

So zooming the lens out here in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I say live the life you want to live, not someone else's generic idea of the right thing. Thank you. Hey, if you love this episode, before you leave, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Ellen a few years back about overcoming social anxiety. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes.

This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, Crafted Air Theme Music, and special thanks to Shelley Dell for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app.

And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy.

Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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