How to Stop Being a Perfectionist

How to Stop Being a Perfectionist

A 30-Day Plan to Control Negative Thoughts, Eliminate Analysis Paralysis,

Steven Schuster

Steven Schuster Books

Copyright © 2021 by Steven Schuster. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the author.

Limit of Liability/ Disclaimer of Warranty: The author makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaims all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and recipes contained herein may not be suitable for everyone. This work is sold with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering medical, legal or other professional advice or services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. The author shall not be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an individual, organization of website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the author endorses the information the individual, organization to website may provide or recommendations they/it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work might have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on the products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact the author.

Contents

Introduction

1. How Does the Perfectionist Mind Work?

2. Why Is Perfectionism Bad for You? What Are the Good Parts?

3. Negative Side Effects of Perfectionism

4. How to Overcome Perfectionist Habits

5. How to Heal the Perfectionist Soul

6. How Much of a Perfectionist Are You?

7. The 30-Day Perfectionism Cure

Days 1–3: Noting, Naming, and Releasing

Days 4–6: Perfectionism Diary

Days 7–9: Urge—Thought—Emotion Triangle

Days 10–12: Guiding Beliefs, Principles, and Convictions

Days 13–15: Your Core Belief

Days 16–18: Find the Origin Story of Your Core Beliefs

Days 19–21: Change Your Core Beliefs

Days 22–24: Remove the Cues Triggering Your Perfectionist Habits

Days 25–27: Add Cues That Facilitate Your New Habits

Days 28–30: Notice the Rewards of a Less Perfect Life

Closing

Reference

Notes

Introduction

Are you harder on yourself than everyone else? Do you hold yourself to incredibly high standards and are disappointed with yourself when you fail to meet them? Do you find that sometimes those self-imposed standards put so much pressure on you that they can actually end up holding you back? If so, then your perfectionism might be working overtime. While this may seem like an average problem, it can become a pervasive presence that will slowly sabotage your growth and limit your potential.

Perfectionism has a twin brother, you see, called procrastination. In most cases, they show up together. They are like misbehaving children, enforcing each other in their deeds. Perfectionism may say, This is not done well enough. I can’t give this work out from my hands. Procrastination would reply, Damn right, let’s just sit around and think about how we could improve this work. But in the meantime, let’s have a snack, it helps with thinking. Also, let’s take a nap, our brain needs rest. How about some entertainment? No wonder our thinking is so dry. We haven’t had a good laugh in ages. And on and on it goes.

Procrastination is the ultimate road to hell paved with good intentions. No one ever procrastinates without a good reason—or should I rather say, a well-rounded rationalization. Our thinking mind is tricky that way; it can provide a convincing explanation as to why we should or shouldn’t do something. How does the thinking mind decide which action it will defend? Well, our emotional mind is the judge of that.

NYU psychologist and the author of the book The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt explained this phenomenon with the metaphor of the rider and the elephant. Our emotional mind is the elephant, the thinking mind is the rider. While the rider of the elephant seems to be in charge, when there’s a disagreement between them, the elephant usually prevails.

Chip and Dan Heath expand on this metaphor in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. They argue that the rider (the thinking mind) is responsible for planning and direction. But it often falls into the trap of overthinking, trying to motivate the elephant (the emotional mind) to get things done and avoid instant gratification. It’s an exhausting business. In psychology, we call this phenomenon willpower depletion. We consume all of our rational, delayed gratification-bound credits over time. This is why it is more likely that we will likely choose cookies instead of baby carrots to snack on in the evening.

Procrastination is the favorite pastime of the elephant. And a comfortable go-to place. We learn to procrastinate as early as childhood. We leave our homework to the last minute because we watch TV. We get out of bed just before the school bus arrives because we stayed up late finishing our homework. We even observe our parents putting off tasks, so we have a lot of fertile ground to adopt this bad habit from and practice it. Procrastination rolls over into our adulthood. We postpone important tasks and choose immediate gratification instead. It feels better in the moment, doesn’t it?

We invent all sorts of creative reasons why we procrastinate. Still, it can really be broken down to just a handful of emotionally motivated reasons in reality. We fear failure. We fear judgment. We fear to prove to others (and ourselves) that we don’t measure up. We fear imperfection. We feel too much pressure to perform, so we avert our focus from the task at hand counterintuitively. Some are just simply bad at time management. If you recognized yourself in these, worry not. This book will strive to distill the ways the perfectionist mind works. You will discover the positives and negatives that can come from being a perfectionist and what you can do about it.

This journey will leave you with a greater understanding of yourself. You will be able to overcome the challenges of perfectionism with a simple yet powerful 30-day program. Get ever closer to reaching your full potential and living the productive, prosperous life you deserve.

1

How Does the Perfectionist Mind Work?

Dory, a computer model designer, considered herself a person with a growth mindset. She was never satisfied with the work she produced. Day after day, she scrutinized her projects, finding flaws in the color choices, template layout, size and font of the letters, and so on. She was the first to arrive and last to leave her office. Despite her outstanding hard work, she