From Stuck in Perfectionism to Always Winning
If you are looking for a way to overcome perfectionism, stop procrastinating and start achieving, this 3-step guide is for you.
“You are a perfectionist”.
When I used to hear that from someone, my response was always “thank you!”.
I used to think being a perfectionist means I am excellent, that I am exceptionally good at something, I was wrong.
It is easy to think that perfectionism is a quality of success. How can it not be? How could striving for the highest standard be a bad thing? Some of the most of successful people of our lifetime are well known for their perfectionism. Steve Jobs rejected hundreds of prototypes of the first iPhone because the button ‘didn’t feel right’. Maria Carey kept recording every track until individual breaths and harmonies were flawless.
There are many more examples. But looking at success stories of perfectionists is only half the story.
For every famous perfectionist, there are countless examples of exceptionally skilled and talented people who got nowhere. Because perfectionism is usually procrastination in disguise.
And it is a wicked cycle – before a perfectionist starts something, they must feel “ready” first, so they go hunting for information, skills, qualifications…etc, but the more they know, the more they realise how much more there is to know, and round and round they go seeking safety in infinite knowledge.
And if they decide “they’re ready”, they’ll often go down a rabbit hole of analysis paralysis, not knowing what to apply from the million things they’ve learned, or they get so frustrated with the results – how could they not get the perfect outcome after all this learning – eventually they find it easier to just abandon the whole thing.
The reality is, we’ll never get anything 100% right before we start it. It’s the other way around; if we want to get something right, we first must start it, then focus on improving it.
So how do we get out of the perfectionism cycle?
We need a different cycle.
Step 1: Enter the Competence Cycle
I love this thing; it has helped many of the people I work with transform their results. This is what it looks like:
In the learn phase gather enough essential knowledge to be able to start, then immediately apply what you learned.
Then evaluate your performance to find what needs improving and fill the gaps.
Now you’re ready to build on this by finding the next layer of essential info and skills and jump into the next iteration.
When you apply this strategy correctly, you will:
Get started immediately,
Save time by focusing on what’s important,
Accelerate and compound your results through feedback loops.
The magic happens when your ‘wiring’ is changed and you become comfortable with taking action despite not having all the answers beforehand, even relish it, because you realise how much time it saves you and how quickly you develop.
Perfectionists also almost never seek feedback on what they’re doing, it has to be perfect first of course. The new wiring makes you fall in love with feedback, because it propels your progress like nothing else.
Competence breeds Confidence
There is a phrase that I hear quite often; “I wish I was able to (………), but I am just not a confident person.”
Many people seem to think that confidence is something you are either born with or you’re not. And if we believe that, it becomes easy to avoid taking chances on ourselves or facing our fears. That also reinforces perfectionism and makes us more likely to procrastinate.
But the good news is confidence isn’t an exclusive club. It’s tricky to get in though, because when people look for ways to improve self-confidence, they often go for quick or superficial fixes.
We need something real, something we can measure, we need growth. Believe it or not, confidence is a skill that you can build just like kicking the ball or playing the piano.
You can become competent at being confident. That’s earned confidence, the best kind. Yes, it takes more time, but it’s true and it lasts. And it comes by taking action.
Blessed be the shift when we see that instead of waiting to feel confident before we take action, we need to take action to feel confident.
When your confidence becomes a product of action and not a prerequisite to it, your approach to everything changes and you start to see results that you haven’t seen before.
But with the growing competence and confidence, it is still often easy to fall back into old procrastination habits. Why?
Often because there’s an essential ingredient missing: purpose.
Step 2: Without purpose, old habits resurface
If competence is the car that will take you to confidence town, purpose is your fuel.
Often people think of their ‘purpose’ in terms of their career, or the one mission they have in life. But purpose can exist in everything we do, and our life can have many missions.
Purpose is having strong enough reasons behind what you do. It gives you the urgency you need to succeed.
Purpose is intentional living, a transformation from a life of reaction to one of action. When you have purpose, you have direction, you become empowered, and you live according to you what you value.
Purpose is what shines the light on what your life needs, and what you might lose if you don’t go after it.
Purpose changes how we approach everything. We must have purpose in our relationships, behind the bad habits we want to break, for the weight we want to lose, in the way we raise our kids, and what version of ourselves we choose to be.
But if the ‘screen’ is smudged with overwhelm and negative thinking patterns, purpose is hard to find. Worse yet, we may end up making poor choices and engaging in behaviour that doesn’t serve us.
Once we step through the process and systematically peel off this screen and replace it with one that is clear and empowering, everything else becomes easier, purpose becomes clearer, and fears become welcome challenges.
Step 3: To get something, let it go
Another culprit for perfectionism and procrastination is outcome-oriented thinking. If you’re often dissatisfied with your progress or stressing about it, despite having the competence and being on purpose, chances are your focus is only on the destination, not your way to it.
Outcome-oriented people often seek certainty of an outcome before taking any meaningful action towards it. This creates a number of problems:
The time and effort that go into trying to guarantee the outcome end up being wasted - a guaranteed future result is nearly impossible.
Outcome-oriented thinkers often end up playing it safe with small goals that they feel they can control, which often leads them to feeling unfulfilled.
Focusing purely on the end-result creates heightened states of stress, fear of failure, self-doubt and even anxiety, especially when things aren’t ‘going to plan’.
In a nutshell, being too focused on the result ironically works against it.
Process-oriented thinkers on the other hand focus on the immediate benefits that come with incremental growth. It helps us realise that the best part about the mountain is getting to the top, not the top itself.
Outcome independence is a big deal. It is a critical coaching principle that is a central to mindfulness and developing a growth mindset. You can find it in philosophies like Kaizen (a Japanese concept for continuous improvement) and Non-Attachment in Buddhism. It is also a core principle in many neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) processes.
If competence is your car and purpose is your fuel, detaching from the outcome is how you will cruise on the scenic route while getting there faster.
When we detach from the result, we no longer get stuck on “are we there yet”, instead we find success in every step forward, and we start to gamify the challenge.
And if you’re always growing in confidence and enjoying the process of accomplishing your goal, do you think your goal becomes easier to accomplish?
If you’re done letting perfectionism keep you stuck and you’re ready to take real, confident steps toward the life you want, book a free strategy session with me. I’ll help you break the cycle, build momentum, and start winning on your terms. No pressure, no salesy pitches — just clarity, tools, and insight.
In our strategy session Omar helped me create a clear plan to begin the career change I’d been struggling to make. It was exactly what I needed to finally take action.
— Jeff A