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How to Overcome Perfectionism and Start Now · Candid Coach Conversations

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Hello. Hi Kimberly.
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So glad to see you. my gosh. I am ready for you to live closer,
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as you know. So.
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She reminds me of this
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minimum weekly. Like she's got a lot going on.
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It's only once a week, but it's it's it's often
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Okay.
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So with that, thinking about that,
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I'm like, well
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action there's a better way to say that but taking action even when you're
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not ready and so maybe we can even figure out a way to get you to move closer even
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in the messy I'm kidding and I'm not kidding.
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No, she's not. She's dead serious,
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but she's she's a lovely human
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being who who cares about how I feel.
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She's very compassionate, but she's deadly serious,
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just so we're clear about that.
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Yes. Yes.
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but yeah, seriously though, I yes,
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seriously. And I do want to talk about or hear from
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you about that action when when we take action when we're not ready.
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I think about it as the messy I think about a finger painting just
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all looking messy and yet in the mess.
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There's so much power there when I think about those finger paintings.
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And so I just I want to hear from you.
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I want the audience to hear it from you.
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Love this topic. I
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I first heard the term massive imperfect action in my first year
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as an entrepreneur, and it was such a revelation,
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this idea of not having everything be so polished and perfect before
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it ever even started. I think there's some reasons that we feel pressured
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to to be perfect and
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Especially among heart-centered people and women,
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I noticed this need that we have to be so perfect all the time.
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And the thing is, is there's a perfect tax,
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there's a massive tax on not moving or
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to to spin another cycle thinking about a thing.
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And I this is actually something that I'm working on and constantly working
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to overcome. But but it's it's common,
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really, really common among very high performers to struggle with action
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and massive action.
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So I'd love that you brought that up about this perfection piece.
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And I'm I'm curious, like when you think about perfection,
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Amanda, where do you think it starts from?
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Other people's opinions, usually.
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Okay. ~
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Yeah. Yeah.
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I've I've given this a lot of thought and a lot of study and a lot
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of reflection and a lot of practice as a coach.
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I've worked with a lot of high achievers and high performers.
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it's like we have this time booked very intentionally,
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very on purpose. You're a successful businesswoman with multiple businesses that
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you're taking care of. Like this was the time,
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right? So I think ~ what happens is we catastrophize about what
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is gonna happen.
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If I show up imperfectly. We worry about being bullied by people in our life.
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Yes, I use the word bully. we worry about leaving people behind that we love.
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We worry about whether we're good enough compared to other people.
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And I mean, I could get right back up onto my soapbox about like
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the misuse of social media, how we use that to further reinforce narrative
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in our own mind about what is ideal.
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And so as a perfectionist myself,
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I have experienced the reward of excellence.
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So I I know what it's like to get the high marks.
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I know what it's like to earn the spot that other people couldn't get.
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And like that's not coming from a place of braggadocious.
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That's just when you are rewarded for extraordinary achievement on
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a few things that can be almost addictive to to get to that place and
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to be the best. but it but it's so interesting because what is best?
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I remember as a as a kid I've always been a bit of a nerd.
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You know I like books, I like words,
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I like math. I love a spreadsheet.
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Get me a good spreadsheet any day.
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And that's always been me. And
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And I remember the first time I really got teased as a kid at school
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was because I used such big words.
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And I thought the words were fascinating,
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I thought the vo the vocabulary was interesting.
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I was I was a early reader and I got lost in the fantasy of books and
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I just loved it. Loved it, loved it,
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loved it. And I also loved being able to understand what the adults around
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me were saying.
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But that was not perfect in the eyes of my peers.
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My peers wanted me to speak with the same words that they would choose
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so that they could understand what I was saying.
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I think they were worried I was saying things that they couldn't understand
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and that it was maybe not good like good intent behind it.
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and so then it results in teasing.
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And I I know I'm like picking it apart a little bit,
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but
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Perfectionism, I think it actually comes from a really authentic place
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of wanting to belong, but also there's so many ways to belong.
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And so if you want to belong really,
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really badly, you'll tend to try to contort or conform
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to what that standard is of whatever population you're wanting to be a part of.
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Yeah. So I think that's where it comes from.
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I think it's a social drive.
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And then also I think about perfection coming from you know,
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as we're kids, we're often corrected all the time.
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And what I say to a lot of people is stop over correcting your children because
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it does lead into that perfection piece.
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And so I love this whole
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Right.
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idea and the phrase you said
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imp imperfect action. And that can be scary.
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Especially
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Big time.
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for kids.
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Yeah, especially for people that as a child like they really got in trouble
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for not doing things exactly so.
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a personal story that does come to my mind is our oldest son.
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So he was in Mother's Day out at our church and there was this gumball machine.
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a paper with a gumball machine and so it had the ball on the top that pulled
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all the gumballs and then it came down like a little the like a neck going
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to the base and then the base had these three rings.
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It was like three layers of base.
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Okay. The instructions were to cut the gumball machine out.
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Cut it out on the lines.
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Our son, Mother Sayout four years old,
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cut out each of the three bottom pieces,
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and then the neck, and then the gumball machine.
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It's boring downright. So the three pieces,
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the neck and then the gumball machine.
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She studied
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I mean, like was so angry, she had a conversation with us and made
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him throw his work in the trash.
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Give us cool.
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makes me actually crazy as a parent because so often but it does
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Yeah.
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it it doesn't just happen to children it happens at all ages but what's happening
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is there's a standard a standard that somebody has of an
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Yeah.
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expectation and one of my favorite little experiments that ~ that I've heard about
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is giving the instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
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And the way it goes is the kid is writing the instructions to making
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a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,
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and then you as the adult need to follow exactly what they wrote.
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And so often it is missing context.
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It's missing these details in the communication.
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That's what the whole purpose of the exercise is to show.
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And what happens is like people get so emotional when the world doesn't conform
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to their exact specifications.
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Like they get angry, they they
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blame they do all kinds of stuff that is scary,
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~ certainly inconvenient, and you know,
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troubling. And and here's the real issue and the reason that I decided
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to break up with perfection is without massive imperfect action there
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can be no further learning. You cannot learn by speculating on what
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you think the world is really like.
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You can learn
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By taking that audacious action.
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I grew up as a figure skater and I didn't learn to do jumps and spins
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on the very first day. The first thing we learned was to fall and
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how to fall safely. And the reason that was so important is like when you're
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hurtling your body through the air and doing all kinds of contortions,
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you're gonna fall down. Like that is an absolute certainty that you will.
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And
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I remember there was this one element as a figure skater,
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the axle. So it's different than all the other jumps because all the other jumps,
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you have a transfer of momentum when you're going backwards,
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like you're you're backwards on your edge.
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With the axle, you start on a forward edge.
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And I remember first being introduced to the axle,
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and I I'd learned all the other jumps relatively quickly.
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and I went to go do the axle, and that was a big fat
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nope.
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Like it was not happening. and I fell on my butt a lot over and over.
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I was first introduced to the axle when I was 12,
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11, or 12. I didn't nail that sucker until I was 16.
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And when you consider that I was at the rink five days a week and I lived
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in an Arctic town full of ice,
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that's like a lot of months out of the year.
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That I'm throwing my ass up into the air and not landing that
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Dinking stupid axle. And for a long time,
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I was resentful of the axle. I was angry at the axle.
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I was then I got mad with like the coaches who couldn't teach me the axle,
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and that I was on this tiny club that didn't show me how to do the axle.
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And you know what didn't help me land the axle was blaming everybody
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and everything else. What helped me land the axle was when I took off,
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and instead of
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Instead of listening to what I'd been told the axle was like,
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I experimented and I tried a different feeling and I landed it.
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And you want to know what happened after I landed that axle?
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I did another one and I landed that one and another one and I landed that one.
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And I like I still remember that this practice gives me geosebumps.
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I'm literally goosebumps right now,
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Kimberly. When I finally landed that silly jump!
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Not only could I land the axle,
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but I could put double jumps on the back of it.
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And the reason is because I had been progressing all of those jumps that whole time,
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but there was this missing piece,
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this imperfect thing that wasn't working.
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And it wasn't until I changed my mind about what was supposed to happen
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and I just let myself do the dang thing again that I could I could land it.
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And I had to let go of all these stories,
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all the preferences, because like in skating,
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there's a lot of performance pressure of,
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~ by the time you're at this age,
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you're supposed to be able to do that.
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Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And so I was definitely operating from
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a very imperfect place and I still learned the skill.
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No, I cannot do an axle right now,
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but I do know what it feels like.
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Ha ha ha
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So good. Gosh. Yeah, so good. And such a great example.
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I love that. So I want the listeners to really think about their life and think,
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identify a place where they can take
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even when it's not perfect. Like I want people to really think about where
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can I take some imperfect action.
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One action. Yeah. No, I'm a really Okay.
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Yeah. You know, I have a really I have a suggestion here.
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Yeah. If
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you're if you're very first learning to do massive imperfect action,
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you know, I can talk to you about how your mindset about how perfect
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you are is probably pretty far off anyway.
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but I I think in terms of developing the muscle of imperfect action,
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I would really strongly suggest failing in private first.
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So great place to fail in private is your kitchen.
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Learn to cook.
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for real for real like go to a cooking class pick up a couple
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of techniques with people who know what they're doing but then I double
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the triple dog dare you to make something at home and so for me one
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of the things so I I had like a tough relationship with cooking through my mid-20s.
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you know I really did because my mother is an amazing cook so there's that social
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comparison right a incredible cook.
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And she just like anything she decided to try was always incredible.
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When I got married, the woman made a four-tier buttercream wedding cake hand piped
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with like the gum paste or whatever roses with like dusted ombre,
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whatever. In freaking credible first first cake of that nature that she made.
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Not the first wedding cake, but like and it was perfect.
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And like that, that was like the standard that I found myself comparing myself to.
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So I'm like
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You know, and somewhere in my twenties,
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probably shortly after getting married and having to figure out a lot,
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becoming a stepmother, I wanted to be good at cooking.
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I just I did. I really wanted to be not only good at it,
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I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to have some predictability around it that
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I could repeatedly produce. So one of the things I did is is I did take
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a class and one of those classes was
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Like French cooking. It was eggs all day.
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So if you don't like eggs, don't start with French cooking.
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and I learned how to make a simple omelette in French style.
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And the first time I made that omelet at home,
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Kimberly, it was a rubbery disaster.
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Like it was really bad. And
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I now make a mean omelet, a really good omelet.
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But I had to remind myself of the axle.
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I had to remind myself of those times that I had made a lot of attempts that were
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not going to give me the result.
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And the thing is, is you can learn from your attempts.
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So now I know when you go to make an omelet,
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it matters how long you leave the pan on the stove to heat up.
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Because if you leave it too long,
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it ends up being way too hot. I also now know that you don't put milk in it,
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you put water.
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In with the egg. I also know that it helps to have the eggs come
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up to room temperature a little bit.
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And like I've got all these little tiny insights that when you stack
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all of them together, you end up with excellence.
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And I think that's really the goal.
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You know, it's not, I think perfectionism honestly,
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it is about other people's opinions.
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It's what other people think of you and whether they accept you or reject you.
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And
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I somewhere made up my mind, I don't give a ptoot about perfection.
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I want excellence. And here's how here's the big difference.
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To achieve excellence requires obsession.
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And yeah, I obsessed about omelets,
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pancakes too. I make great pancakes.
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And and but I went through 50 recipes for pancakes.
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And when I tell people that, they're like,
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get a mix. And I'm like, yeah,
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but a mix isn't excellent. You know.
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You know? Right.
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That's about perfectionism.
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That's not perfectionism, that's commitment to outcome and that's
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different.
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I love it. So it's to strive for excellence through imperfect action.
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That's it. You have to start messy.
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There's like, there's no, there are very few,
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you know what? There are some things that the first time you do it,
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you're gonna be great. So first time I opened TikTok,
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I was great at scrolling TikTok,
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Yeah.
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dang,
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you know, because it was just really easy.
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But what's the reward of getting good at that?
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And and I think about
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Mm.
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that when it comes to skill cultivation and and
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Right.
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developing oneself is that there's the things that are really easily done,
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but guess what? They're easily not done.
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Right.
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And the reward and the benefit of doing those things is also not as sweet.
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So I think massive imperfect action,
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a massive willingness to release your attachment to other people's perceptions
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of how come you're doing this and and how come you'd you'd waste time with
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50 different pancake recipes? Are you crazy?
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Maybe, maybe
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that's possible. I'm just saying that that.
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tendency towards obsession does help in a lot of different domains
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and areas where people feel very intimidated.
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I've built excellence and this is not to brag but it was built on the back
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of a mass a desire I never want to look bad.
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Like that's never the goal. But I'm more connected to the reasons that
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I want to win.
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And the reasons I want to develop that excellence.
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And so then I'm gonna tolerate that stucky beginning to middle where people
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do question how come you're doing this?
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You know, what what would be the payoff or what is the actual benefit of doing it?
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And it's up to you to have that clarity.
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~ but yeah, I'm I'm pretty clear that other people's opinions of me they're kind
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of like weather. They can change pretty damn quickly.
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And a lot of it's way out of my control.
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Very true. my gosh. Yes. Yes,
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yes. Okay, so everybody is going to take imperfect action.
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Yeah.
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Learn from it. That's the whole thing.
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Any other takeaways that you hope people are walking away with today?
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You know, feel that permission to start where you stand.
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I think that atomic habits are overrated,
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right? So like little
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Okay.
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a lot of times when we're afraid of other people's opinions,
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we make very small moves that are so
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~
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far beneath your current capability because you are worried about being seen
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to fail big. So
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I do think that there is a place for starting small-ish.
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Just please don't stay there. Because because that's what people do,
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is they hear, like, ~ it can take very little effort,
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very little risk, and it's gonna,
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you know, little things make a big impact.
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I'm like, yeah, but you know what?
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Big things make a big impact too.
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So if you're if you're wanting to make a material change,
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like, you know.
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Maybe you're starting a business,
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or maybe you're making that career change,
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or you're finally gonna have a hot marriage and you've never had
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a hot marriage before, right? And you kind of want to do it with your hubby.
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Well, that's probably gonna take more than small adjustments.
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That's probably gonna take big ass risk.
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And if you're willing to take those risks,
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here's the thing that I'll tell you:
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very few risks that you're contemplating taking are gonna be fatal or final.
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Like if you're listening to something like this,
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then
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There's a very good chance that your consideration of the path is the thing that
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is probably holding you back the most.
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Like just take the step. Just start.
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Yeah. And and take a bigger leap than you think is necessary.
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Because you can always pull back.
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But I think so many people start so pulled back that there's very little progress
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and then you get very little reward.
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And then you don't stick with the thing.
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So you don't develop that excellence.
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Sure. Absolutely.
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Yeah. So
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So good. Good stuff. Okay, do something.
18:30
Yeah, do something, dang it. Yeah.
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Start. Yes.
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Start and you know, you are gonna stumble.
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It's okay. It's the human experience.
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Yes it is. And we learned that when we learned to walk.
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Stumbling was part of it.
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Absolutely, stumbling, stuttering,
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all of the things start
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~
18:49
with the uncertainty, right? And I mean
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I just wish more people would break up with the certainty of their familiar past,
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you know, and I wish they would I wish they would give themselves
19:03
the permission to risk an an amazing future.
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That's what I wish.
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Me too. Me too. And one way I know for sure this just popped into my head.
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and I don't even talk about it that often,
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but one way to give yourself permission for that risk taking that could lead
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to such an incredible future is a clarity call with the Live Life Fully Coach.
19:24
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what?
19:27
And it's great.
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I just
19:28
realized that I squirreled your whole thing about moving.
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I led us I led us gently away from that path.
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but
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Yeah.
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like for real, talking about a move,
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like we have lived in the same location for very good reasons for about 15 years.
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And those reasons just went off to college.
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So we we still have we still have kiddos here,
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you know, and they are correspondence learners,
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which means that we have this enormous amount of flexibility right now.
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Right.
19:56
And I think that can be one of the biggest stallouts for massive imperfect action
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is when you have so many possibilities and options,
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it
20:06
Yeah.
20:07
is so tempting. And this has been me and on this subject of like I'll think about
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it later.
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I'll I'll I'll work up my options later.
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And something
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Yeah.
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that I know is true is that okay,
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accountability here. I I must get my dreamer with a spreadsheet mugs made.
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Like this has to happen. I'm doing it today.
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I'm doing it today. Today
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Okay.
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is the day. Finally, this is the day we are doing this.
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Dreamer with a spreadsheet. The reason I love a good spreadsheet is you can
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You can put all the lines of all your assumptions about what
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you think something's gonna cost or what your different options are,
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and you can duplicate that same tab that's laying out whatever scenario you're
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looking at, whether it's like business or home or anything.
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Girl, I have a spreadsheet for Thanksgiving dinner,
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right? So like literally you can put you can map out any scenario,
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but there's just something really magical about putting the possibility on paper.
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So if you're not a spreadsheet person,
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you can totally do it on like actual paper.
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just try the spreadsheet, so much fun when you get the math
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Yeah.
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in there. ~ but but what it's also doing is it's modeling possible futures.
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So
21:15
Right, right.
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something that I can do with regard to the whole moving thing is I could have like
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I do have some initial ideas of possibilities of like what it could look like.
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And I think that perfection piece is.
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thinking you have to have the entire answer completely laid out in advance
21:34
True.
21:34
and that you have to pick the right one always,
21:37
which is not true. Right?
21:37
gosh. Not true.
21:40
Not true. So so start
21:40
Right. But so true for
21:43
how people typically think.
21:45
It is, it is, because we we fall in love with the familiar and I I mean like
21:48
I have lived where I've lived for fifteen years and when my
21:50
Yes.
21:51
my bra when I start thinking about moving,
21:53
which is going to happen one way or another at some point,
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I s my brain immediately goes to,
21:59
~ what what's my husband gonna think?
22:01
What's the kids gonna think? What's the family's gonna think?
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What what what's Kimberly gonna think?
22:07
What what's the people gonna think if I pick the thing they didn't want me to pick,
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right? Or
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You know, and and the brain immediately goes challenge,
22:15
challenge, challenge, challenge,
22:15
challenge. And like that can be very exhausting.
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But if you push the paper thing,
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push it into a spreadsheet, it starts to replicate actual action.
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So if you're if you're really on the verge of massive action,
22:26
but you're like, you know, and you're at this big
22:28
Yeah.
22:29
crossroads and there's so many options that you're that even
22:32
me suggesting putting it into paper or something like that,
22:35
you're like, I can't. Yes.
22:37
Of course we can. We can create we can create some possibilities.
22:41
And when you start seeing possibilities on paper,
22:43
things start to surface. We talked about this in another episode around courage.
22:47
That when you see the options laid out,
22:49
it starts to some just start to pull ahead in your intuition.
22:54
That's right.
22:54
And then, you know, you can
22:56
you can start testing ideas. You know,
22:58
we could plan, for example, some trips this year that are just intentional about
23:02
like what could it be like trips.
23:03
Right.
23:04
Right. I love that. yeah. And because when you get it out of your head
23:08
and you externalize it onto paper or onto a spreadsheet,
23:11
you're able to see more clearly.
23:14
Because sometimes our thoughts get all jumbled up and in the way.
23:18
You're exactly because you're serving so many different values and
23:21
and those people whose opinions that you value,
23:24
it's because you value the people.
23:25
Like we're supposed to do that.
23:28
But the the the question is is like,
23:30
are you doing that to the detriment of making the progress that you were meant
23:35
to make?
23:36
Okay, so you're gonna create the spreadsheet today.
23:38
And my mug. I've been threatening to make this mug forever and I need to I need
23:44
to I I always have a mug on my desk.
23:46
So I'm like I
23:47
Yes.
23:47
it needs to say dreamer with a spreadsheet.
23:49
I have it all visual. I got yeah,
23:51
this must happen.
23:53
Okay. Well I can't wait to see it.
23:54
And to see the mug. So good. Awesome,
23:56
Amanda. Thank you for joining us today on Candid Coach Conversations.
24:01
And I hope you'll come back soon and share some more of your insight
24:04
and wisdom with all of us. Yes.
24:07
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
24:09
Absolutely. And for everyone listening,
24:11
remember to live life fully and enjoy every moment.
24:14
We'll see you soon.