Welcome to Episode #67 of The Planner Podcast.
In this episode, I dive into exactly how you can push perfectionism and procrastination to one side, and take an opposite approach to finally have success in reaching your goals!
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Listen to Leila Hormozi’s episode.
- Got questions? DM me @paperplannerclub
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Transcript
Hi, this is Mim Jenkinson, and you’re listening to The Planner Podcast.
Hi, lovely. I hope you are well. I wanted to share this episode with you today because I was listening to an older podcast from Leila Hormozi, and she used a phrase in that podcast, which really hit me and made me think. Oh, I’ve been in denial and I wanted to share it with you now. I don’t know whether you label yourself as a perfectionist or a procrastinator.
I definitely used to call myself a perfectionist and then I called myself a recovering perfectionist and then I realized they’re the same thing. So then I decided I wasn’t one at all. I just didn’t want to have. Perfectionism or procrastination as part of my identity whatsoever. However, I have realized that the perfectionism was certainly showing up more so in my life than I wanted it to.
So while I don’t want it to be a part of my identity, I definitely recognize that there are goals that I’ve been working towards where. Procrastination or perfectionism, really same thing, has been showing up. And it probably has for you too, because we’re all human, aren’t we? We’re all imperfect. And this is the phrase that I heard Layla say in an episode.
She said, the goal is to be imperfect. The goal is to be imperfect. And that just clicked something in my head. If I could snap my fingers, I would, but I can’t. Imperfection. But if the goal was to be perfect with everything that I’ve tried to achieve so far, sometimes I’ve hit that goal and other times I absolutely haven’t.
Can you think of any examples where you’ve been aiming for perfection without maybe even realising? I mean, there are a couple of things that I want to share with you. So one personal goal for me has been to get Get stronger to get fitter, healthier and stronger. And one of the things that I wanted to do was go for a walk, a 30 minute walk every day.
Now for a long time, I was going for my 30 minute walk every day. Life was amazing. I was feeling the benefits and then something threw me off. I think I had, um, I think I had an injury actually, but it was a small injury. But me being me, that was all I needed to throw that goal out of the window. So I can no longer walk outside because I have this injury and I can’t walk outside anymore.
I mean, honestly, I think I was pushing it with that excuse. But even with the injury, it recovered really quickly. And after a couple of days, I would have been okay to go outside. Even if it was only a five or 10 minute walk. So have you ever done that? Have you ever thought, well, now things are not perfect.
I can’t do this. I’ll have to wait until things are perfect again. I can’t tell you the amount of diets that I’ve been on over the years where I thought I’ve blown it. You know, I’ve had ice cream for dinner when I shouldn’t have done. And everything’s gone to. S now. So I think I’ll wait until Monday.
Like how many times do we say I’ll wait till Monday? I’ll wait till all the docks are lined up in the row. I’ll basically, I’ll wait till all of the circumstances are completely perfect and then I’ll start again. Whereas instead I could have just said, okay, I had ice cream for dinner. Big deal. I’ll make healthier choices tomorrow.
And with the walking, you know, a five minute walk would have been better than nothing. At least I would have stayed in momentum and not. had fallen off one of these wagons again. Or another example, business wise, when I think about the first Sticker Making course that I put out in gene, goodness me, I labored over that course for months and months, wanted it to be the best course that I could possibly put together.
I really wanted to help people learn to make stickers and not have any of the stress that I had gone through trying to teach myself. I wanted people to be delighted. Really great reviews. I didn’t want any complaints. I didn’t want anyone to complain at all or say it wasn’t good enough because my tender heart couldn’t have taken that.
You know, all of the reasons and the excuses that I came up with that kept me stuck in procrastination for months. Whereas if my goal had have been to put that course out imperfectly and just get it out there and start to help people and start to get feedback, I actually would have achieved my ultimate goal.
Of helping people instead of doing nothing and laboring over it and second guessing everything and cross checking and checking and tweaking and changing and basically getting really stressed in the process. And let me just tell you now, I would never intentionally put out anything to my friends, family, students, anything that I knew was intentionally rubbish.
I would never put out something that I knew was crap, or wasn’t going to do the job, or wasn’t going to deliver on the promise. This is not, that’s not the same thing in any way. However, it would have been so much better for me to have finished the first version of my course. Put it out there and actually got everyone’s feedback, you know, what was good?
What didn’t you enjoy? What did you need more information about? What did you need less about? How else could I improve this for you? And then make improvements based on actual data and actual feedback from people who were taking the course. And I would have been a lot less stressed. So perfectionism is definitely, and has shown up for me so many times over the years, when I think back now and I think, God, all of the time that I wasted by perfecting or tweaking or changing things when I didn’t need to, or by not actually achieving a goal altogether because everything wasn’t perfectly lined up.
So I therefore just didn’t move forward with it. Does this resonate with you? Can you think of any goals in your life where. You haven’t achieved them because you’ve been waiting for perfectionism and for perfect circumstances, or whether you, um, also have been a bit guilty of, I’ll do it on Monday or I’ll start again on Monday, like, surely that’s not just me, it can’t just be me.
So now what I’m doing, and I hope that you can do this too, is looking at my goals list, even looking at my daily to do list and thinking, What would that look like if I did it imperfectly? What would my next decision be? What would my next step be? Especially on those things that move from my planner week after week after week because I either never get it done, or sometimes never even take the first step.
So, It’s time to stop just waiting for every single thing to be perfectly lined up before we start something or complete something, especially those goals where we truly, truly want to help ourselves or help others. How can we do it imperfectly? So I wanted to share that with you. I really appreciated Layla’s episode.
And so I want you to, I want to leave you thinking about this. If your goal was to be imperfect, what would you now do? What would now be possible for you? And I hope that that has helped and inspired you a bit today. Let me know, so feel free to share with me anything that you’ve learned from today’s episode.
You can message me at paperplannerclub on Instagram. And if this has resonated and helped you, I would love for you to give this episode a review. And I’ll see you in the next one.
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