When I started my first business, I had no idea what I was doing. I had been in upper management roles for years; however, I had never built a business from the ground up before. I had never signed a five-year lease committing myself to expenses I had no idea I would be able to afford. I had never been the one that if it didn’t work I would be the one who’d deal with it financially & emotionally, never had all the responsibilities on my shoulders. I had never overseen HR, accounting, marketing, admin and customer service or built systems and procedures from an unknown operating system. I was learning to build a reputation and curate a business built on loving connections, spiritual practices and growing consciousness. I had lofty goals and I was in over my head, and I birthed the studio only four months before I birthed my daughter!
Not only is business complex and each industry met with its own unique challenges, I had no one to turn to and made decisions without being able to forecast the outcome. I fumbled a lot. I made countless mistakes. I was socially awkward. I stumbled in accounting and I was overwhelmed by to-do lists. I was exhausted by a child that did not sleep for the first four years of her life. I was so self-conscious about what people might think that I wanted to hide all the time so I didn’t have to face their disappointment.
I was constantly contending with ‘imposter syndrome’, thinking someone would find me out and tell me I couldn’t do this any longer.
One of the skills that I did have going for me, that kept me at this, was a lack of perfectionism or the need to have all the answers and do everything right. But I did think that others desperately wanted me to be perfect. Every time I felt that projected onto me I would get defensive and angry, yet it was my anger that lead me to realize that I didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought I should be doing or how I should meet all their expectations. As I owned the journey as my own, I effortlessly let go of my need of perfectionism and as I did that, I slowly unpeeled the idea that I should care what others thought of me and how I was performing. This created freedom and allowed me to continue forging my own path and pushing my dreams up higher and higher.
You don’t have to want to start a business to face the toxicity of perfectionism. You can face it in your everyday life in parenting, intimate relationships, creative projects, exercise, dating, cooking, writing, career and your opinions of others.
Perfectionism keeps us small and affects our relationships with others. It kills creativity, playfulness and our libido. It creates tension and over years can manifest into dis-ease in our bodies and minds. Not only does it hold you back from doing the things you dream of, but you hold others back because you’re critical of their progress. When we have unrealistic expectations of what progress looks like, we set unachievable standards for ourselves and project those onto others, either in person or behind their backs with gossip.
As children we are constantly learning, growing, changing and excited to see new things and have new experiences. As we age, we seem to resist growth and lose our youthful curiosity. We experience the virus of wanting to appear impeccable in all that we do. We stop following our dreams and we say things such as “I don’t have that skill”, “someone else is already doing it” or “I can’t get it right the first time, so I just won’t do it”. Our worst self-sabotaging behavior is worrying about what other people will think of us.
In Marie Forleo’s book, Everything is Figureoutable she writes “Here’s how destructive perfectionism can be. Between 2003 and 2006 researches interviewed the friends and family of people who had recently killed themselves, and discovered something shocking. More than half of the deceased were described as “perfectionist” by their loved ones. Another study revealed that perfectionists tend to die early while, by contrast, conscientious optimists tend to live longer” (pg 177)!
The only reason I was willing to write and publish a book was because I’m OK with doing things wrong, be it grammatical errors or having the book fail. I walk toward failure and I don’t spend too much time ruminating in my failures. I enjoy figuring out all that I learn from my experiences. I am willing to look silly and be courageous with my life and my dreams. Are you?
With love
Noelle