Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 475. The Perfection Trap: The Power Of Good Enough In A World That Always Wants More - Dr. Thomas Curran

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475. The Perfection Trap: The Power Of Good Enough In A World That Always Wants More - Dr. Thomas Curran · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Mental Health Week is presented by Instill.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Our friends at Instill have created a modern, purpose-built platform to help cultivate deeper, more holistic relationships within your community.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: They're passionate about lifting mental health and wellness because they put people first.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Check out the link in the show notes to learn more about how Instill can help you maximize your impact.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Non-profits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: We're non-profit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, this is going to be a good one.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: B.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I mean buckle up.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Buckle up audience, because if you're someone who struggles with perfectionism, with pouring in failing that, you're not enough.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We have the world's leading expert on perfectionism here on the podcast today we are overjoyed to have Dr Thomas Curran.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: He's the associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Science at the London School of Economics.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: John, what is our life?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: So, today we're going to be talking about the perfection trap, the power of good enough in a world that always wants more.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: I feel like we will uniquely understand that as people who take on too much in the non-profit and impact sector.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: But let me tell you a little bit about Dr Curran, because not only is he brilliant, but man, he's funny and kind.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: We love the time that we've gotten to spend with him, but he's a chartered psychologist and also an associate professor.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: He is the world leading expert on perfectionism and has written about it for Time Magazine, the Harvard Business Review.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: But here's what I really want you to do I want you to go over to TEDx.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I want you to watch his TED talk.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: It's guarded more than 3 million views and his research has been featured in a wide range of media, including CNN, new Scientist, the Guardian, harvard Business Review.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: There's so many here that I can't even repeat them all, but this year he has published his debut book, the Perfection Trap.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about how to release.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about mindset shifts and we're going to talk about how this is affecting our mental health.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: We hope you guys are going to breathe at the end of this.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: So, thomas, welcome to the show.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: We're so glad you're here.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: One before introduction.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Becky.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here with you and your listeners.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: I'm John.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We never start our podcast just diving right into the topic, because we think the person and the experience that you've had in your life informs your work.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: So we would love to go back and tell us about Little Thomas, tell us about growing up, tell us about where perfection intersected and what led you into this work.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, my, okay.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Thank you for allowing me to tell my life story.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: I'm going to try and keep it short, though.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Good luck.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of twists and turns.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I was always a bit of an anxious kid, I would say Definitely had some perfectionism from a very early age.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I can look back and say that was certainly the case.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: But I was also quite talented as well, particularly athletically.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: So I was in the academy system at a couple of professional football clubs when I was younger and I thought that was what I wanted to do.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: You know, I was going to do it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: I was going to be in the Premier League.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Europe, Manchester United yes.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: That was my, honestly, up till I was about 14, that was my dream.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: So I hit 14 and everyone else was hitting puberty and I wasn't.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: And so people you know these kids were coming blowing past me with strength and speed and agility and all the rest of it, and so I got cut and that was crushing.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: It's had to regulate and it's had to understand that this wasn't anything that was my fault, it was just the way I was born.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, there was nothing I could have done about that.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: But you go in and you start to play yourself.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I didn't play football for like three or four years after that.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I only took it up again when I went to university.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: So that was that was early Tom's life experience and certainly where I started to really get interested I think not subconsciously perhaps in perfectionism and how it can impact us and how it interacts with stress and difficulty.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: And then, when I went to university, I did quite well, I did a PhD, and then I went into the workplace very competitive academic workplace and I was putting so much pressure on myself and all that perfectionism started to come back.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: And then you start to hit setbacks and you start to hit difficulties and you feel like you're not succeeding and you feel like everyone else is so much better than you.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: And that's when I started to have another episode of sort of difficulty and stress and anguish.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: And that was that that was worse because that was more prolonged and obviously I had a job to do, so I couldn't, I couldn't escape it, I couldn't get out of it, and so I had what I would probably describe as a bit of a breakdown when I was about my late 20s, pushing through, using perfectionism to try to push through those difficulties, when it was actually perfectionism was creating those difficulties in the first place.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: And so that was really the jump and off point for my own inquiry into perfectionism.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: I did the first study that looked at perfectionism over time, showing that it's increasing among young people.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: So it wasn't just me who was feeding these things, there's a lot of other people too.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: And then the TED Talk, and then the book, and here I am talking to you.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, yeah, just your authenticity that's coming through this conversation.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you for taking us into some of those vulnerable moments, because I mean, you can easily hide behind the pedigree and the research and the human that you are today.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: But to take us back into that just allows me to walk into this conversation with a different tone, because we all see ourselves in those parts of your story of just not feeling enough or feeling disappointed about something, or the perfectionist that's just all chasing all of us.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But you did something really interesting you conducted this multi-generational study of perfectionism.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: That was really groundbreaking and I want you to talk about this because I feel like it's imperative for just like tone setting for this conversation.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Take us back to what set that up and what did you learn through it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: Well, I was really interested in perfectionism because it was something that affected me so research is me searching in this respect.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: We don't know a good deal about perfectionism.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: That's the curious thing about this area, like a lot of research is done in other areas of personality psychology, but perfectionism and hostility of entry is a bit of a pop psychology topic.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, armchair psychoanalysis.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Like it is not.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: It's just not taken that seriously and obviously impacting me profoundly.
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: So I was.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: So I was so keen to try to do some systemic inquiries to this and I realized there was a little bit out there in the corners of vestiges of psychological science.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: So I looked at all the papers that were available and a lot of it was awesome stuff, like how it impacts our lives, where it comes from, what the mechanisms that lead it to impact on mental health and all the rest of it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: But I was really interested in this a little bit bigger, because I was seeing perfectionism everywhere, not just in my own experiences, but all around me, and so I wanted to scale this work up and take all the possible data that could possibly collect and look to see is this something that's moving over time, like are we seeing more perfectionism now than we did in the past?
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: Because if we are, then that creates a whole new line of inquiry as to what on earth is going on.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: But the first step, of course, is you got to get the data to document the trends and say that's what I set about doing and, as you mentioned there, john, I found that perfectionism was rising very sharply among young people, and so that's really the jumping off point, as I mentioned, to the work that I do today.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I want to thank you for doing this research.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I want to thank you for going in to the data.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: This particular topic is very, very personal to me, to my family.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: We're living it right now and I would bet there are many families out there who are living it or we don't know the basis of why our children or our friends or our spouse are reacting in certain ways.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And when I go into therapy, I can tell you perfectionism comes up a lot and the concept of all these tenants in it, like you know, just not feeling like I'm doing enough and trying to pile more on and the more, more, more mentality, is just truly crippling us.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: So I thank you for this data and I want you to talk about this root, the root of perfectionism, like in a wider society, like when I look at politics, when I look at economics, when I look at even the philanthropy space.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: How did we get here, thomas?
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Okay, again, it's a really, really big question to unpack and I tried to do so in my book.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: That's the second part of a book dedicated a whole section of the book really to just try and unpack what's happening here, because there are so many different factors.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: But I think one of the big things right now is that we live in an inner world that celebrates the overachiever, the 1%, 0.01%, the unicorn, and we never used to live in that world Like post-war consensus in the UK, the Rooseveltian consensus in the US.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: After the war.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: We're really focused on using the market system capitalism, if you like to enrich everybody, lift everybody up the affluent society.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: When the economy grew, everybody did well, that was the whole.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: That was government working hand in hand with corporations to look after people and the average Joe was celebrated.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: The Flintstones, the Jetsons these were the archetypal people that we looked up to in society the middle person, the every person.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: But that shifted somewhere around the late 70s, early 80s and we started to point our compass more towards the extremes, to try to grow our economy in ways that enrich those at the very top, and the idea was that it would trickle down.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: So if we could increase the size of the pie of those at the top, then everybody would be better off and we had a very different way of thinking about the economy, which unleashed it, shareholders and corporations to do a lot of heavy lifting.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Well, what that meant was that everything siphoned upwards.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: Now we all have a really an economy that works for the very richest, the very top, and, as a consequence, popular culture has shifted to celebrate those extreme winners.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: And so all you see now, whether it's in schools, whether it's in TV screens, movie theaters, social media, podcasts, the people that we platform with people that are the extreme examples, and we look at these people, we think not only is that desirable, but, because it's everywhere, we think it's eminently obtainable.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: And these are the warped sense of expectations that are not being met with reality.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And that disconnect is really what perfectionism is.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Perfectionism is used to almost as a cruise liner, I suppose, to carry us across that gulf between that average, normal, ordinary person that we are in the here and now, imperfect and flawed, to try and be this perfect, idealized person that we hold in our mind's eye of who we should be.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot more to it than that, but in a nutshell, I think that's what's going to come.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Dang.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I mean the language you're putting around this is just clicking like it.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: It makes sense that you know.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: You called out that this is a moment in time that there's never been more Perfectionist society in history, and I can see that just of like the convergence of all those factors happening.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious to yeah, and I'm like gosh.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: How do we not be part of that?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: But, I know we talk a lot about under-the-surface Conversations because we want to like systemically fix things for us.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: We believe personally that's a lot of mindset shifts and a lot of internal work that needs to happen.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Could you kind of take us in to that road?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Like, what mindset shifts do we need to embrace around this topic?
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I think it's about embracing average again, like, like Realizing that on any distribution, most people are gonna be around the average.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: About 70% of us are gonna be women.
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: One standard deviation the average.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: So most of us are very probably average, ordinary.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: The people that we use to celebrate and hold up as people who we look up to in society, they just, you know, this is, this is, it's just rekindling, I suppose, what's what's normal, what's not true, and I suppose, redefining success in those realistic tabs, because you know, it's nothing wrong with striving and there's nothing wrong with having aspirations, and if we can get one standard deviation, even two standard deviation, that's amazing.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: You still better than 95.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: But it isn't this kind of impossible or I should say it's not impossible, nothing's impossible for this improbable 56 sigma Outcome that we hold in our minds eyes as some of this M and the obtainable.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's something beautiful about being average, actually something very humanizing about being ordinary, and way more Humanizing than being the outlet.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: In fact, there's something very unhuman about being a six-ingred Individual in some ways, because it's so extreme and it's so far away From what it is to be to be ordinary and you know.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: So I think I think that's if you want a mindset shift.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: I mean that that really, for me, is is where, collectively, we have to.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: We have to Realize that the expectations that we put on ourselves are warped, manufactured and are a function of things that are way beyond our control, and that actually, what's much more important is Acknowledging and accepting that the things in life that matter the most just time with people around us you know, you know kind of communities and and Spending more time with those people and people at work if you belong family it can be helps us Reconnect actually with what is normal.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: So I think that, for me, is the big mindset shift in society that we need to be, that we need to be engaging in, because at the moment, I think our expectations are way out of whack and that's what's causing a lot of stress and anxiety.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, listeners, friends, humans on the other end, thomas is just giving you the gift of being Ordinary, giving you permission to be average.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: You know, we don't have to be on this hamster wheel chasing this thing.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Give us permission to step back, because the effect of perfectionism on mental health has got to be seismic, and I want you to talk about that with our audience, because we want to be the most healthy versions of ourself.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: And I feel Myself on the hamster wheel.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I hang out in our community and I, and I see it, I see all the plates that our friends here are spinning all at one time.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: How has that pressure to be perfect affected our mental health and what can we do about it?
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's quite it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: There's a massive link in the literature between perfectionism and various mental health difficulties things like anxiety, depression, low mood, self-presentational concerns, ruminative cognition, self-harm and sadly is also correlated things like anorexia and believe you also have correlations with infections.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: There's a whole host of psychological difficulties and and the reason perfectionism is so problematic in terms of mental health is where it starts and it really is a deep-rooted sense of the need to feel that we matter, to feel like we love, that she leads the same things and and and.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: In order to feel loved, recognized that we matter, we feel, the only way to guarantee that is to be perfect.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: Perfectionism comes from a place of lack.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: It comes from a deep down, since that we're not enough, that we're not good enough, that we're not perfect enough and that we have to move through the world concealing those imperfections and improving to all times to other people that were okay, we're worth something and we matter.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Now, of course, if you go about the world trying to people please and Image and manage your impressions and at all times being someone else, someone perfect, and you go, is going to create a lot of difficulty.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: You're gonna.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: You're gonna create dependency in other people's approval.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: You're gonna try and be perfect all the time, but of course you set yourself up for the very, for the very value setbacks and vulnerabilities that create those doubts in your own eyes.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: So you feel a lot of low self-esteem, worry, especially in things haven't gone well, and so you overcompensate, try squash these things down.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm gonna try to be even more perfect next time and to make sure people know that.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: I'm okay, that I'm worth something, and so begins.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: It's like you know, it's really negative.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: So I call perfection traps is the trap of perfectionism, where we continue to overcompensate it for deficiencies, hiding, concealing and and that's where you see the anxiety, the worry about how we look, relatives of other people, those really negative thoughts about our self presentation, whether we're perfect enough, and, of course, some of the more pathological outcomes I described.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, that's why perfectionism could be, so can be so damaging because of where it starts.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: That degree needs to Feel love because we don't feel that we're good enough or perfect enough.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Can I make a pseudo observation as someone who has absolutely no training or science behind this?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: But I want to make an observation to you all when you chase perfectionism, you are truly tamping down that which is so unique and special about you, because you're chasing the idea of what you think people want to hear, what they want to see, what they want delivered, and yet you, as a human, are beautifully and uniquely different than anyone else and You're not making space for that.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I I see that so much, and the world needs your humanness, it needs your imperfections and all of that lived experience.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: And so I Think that's one of the dangers of chasing this, and I've witnessed it in myself, I've witnessed it in people I love and I'm just like I want to create Space and put a heart steak in the ground to say let's stop that, let's embrace who we are and let's embrace the evolution that is us and not the world.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, stepping up my soapbox.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: But you know, there's something so liberating about that because I try, I try this.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Now to the lectures and Talks.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Talks, I say to say to the audience, because they come in with an impression that the prof knows everything.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: This guy's bulletproof.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: And of course, if you're a young student or you're a PhD student or whatever, you're gonna hold this, this person, in real high regard.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And the moment you tell them I did something wrong or screwed up, I didn't do that analysis right or I didn't know what was doing on that study, you see, this, this immediate release, it's always like okay, is one of us, and that is that's so beautiful.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: There's something so liberating about that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: The first time I did that it was just like a pop of air and not in the audience.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Suddenly there's a connection and and I think there's, there's a, there's a, there's a commonality in our imperfections and I think we need to show them more because it's so appreciated in it and it is so healthy.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and just creates more connection and all the things.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: So I mean you let us into talking about perfection trap and you obviously have this incredible book coming out too, but what are some practical steps that we can take to get out of that trap and overcome it?
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a few things I would say are really, really important.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: The first is to recognize that the joy of being human really is in doing things that give you purpose and meaning, and a lot of what holds us back when our perfectionism is that we don't feel we're very good at them, or even that we're not world champion at them, and it's so important to ignore that in a voice that's telling you don't show your weakness here, don't show your fallibility, don't do this thing that you enjoy, because other people are gonna see that you're not quite perfect at it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: So you've got to be brave, you've got to be courageous, you've got to try and show your vulnerabilities, and I know that's difficult and it's easier said than done.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: But it's a journey, right, and you have to take small steps, push yourself out a little bit more.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: You can't present every single day.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: If you go to work, for instance, and you don't think you're a very good speaker or you find that difficult, but you're handed up to do a talk in a safe setting and just go through the emotions and anxiety that that will bring.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: Like, just try and sit with that discomfort, don't quash it or try and recycle it into something else.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Just sit with it, because it's a very humanizing feeling and you realise, actually in that moment, something very profound about the perfect person that you're trying to emulate, because is it really worth living in fearful?
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: I've just done this thing that created that anxiety and it wasn't as catastrophic as I thought it was.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So maybe this person I've been living in fearful for this time isn't actually worth it.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: There's a big realisation there in those moments and I'd encourage your listeners to try to find more of those moments and they'll be uncomfortable at first, but the more you do them, the easier it will become and the more comfortable you'll become in your skin of being a human being that's exhaustive or that's fallible and that makes mistakes.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: So that's really, really important.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I think also talking and being open with people about when things haven't gone quite so well Again, we just talked about it a moment ago but showing vulnerability, showing people that you're imperfect, this has shared.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: You might be very shared about those experiences.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: It brings us together and that can be with people that you're mentoring.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: That can be with your children, that can be with friends.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: Just have open conversations.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: If it wasn't a good day, talk about it.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: If you made a mistake, talk about it, laugh about it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: There's something really cool about those experiences.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: And finally, if you are going to push yourself out there and you are going to find that you're going to make mistakes, you're going to encounter difficulties and struggles things aren't always going to pan out the way you planned.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: You have to make sure that you bring self-compassion to the table in those moments.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: In the self-critic, the perfectionist is what really harnesses all those mental health difficulties Constant nagging how could you be so stupid?
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: You're not good enough.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Everybody's watching.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: You have to turn on his head and say, if you managed to take care of this, fine, I'm human and every human makes mistakes.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: It's all right.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: There's always next time.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: You have to always treat yourself with kindness.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: It's so, so important in those moments of struggle.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: So those are the things that I recommend in the book.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: I have some other more practical strategies, but those are the big ones.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: I'm going to run and buy this book.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: It has so much practical application and I thank you so much for talking about how we need to silence the self-critic and bring in more self-love.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And here's the thing, y'all, if you are scared to do it, my pro tip would be getting community with people and talk about that.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Pull your squad together.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Who's your sustainable sisterhood, your hype squad, your tribe?
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Who are those people you really trust and say I'm about to put myself out there and I'm scared.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: You know those people are going to lift and cheer you to success and it's going to make whatever that outcome is so much more palatable.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: And so we really talk a lot about how do we activate on good all the time, and I want people to have a really clear activation point, because there is this concept of good enough that you talk about and the power of good enough.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: How can we embrace this imperfection?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: How can we look at it not as this weakness or albatross, but something that's going to help us evolve and grow into the best and most healthy version of ourselves?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I would love to hear you talk about embracing and perfection.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: So here's the thing, one of the other difficulties of perfectionism and there's many, as you probably have gathered but there's no space for savoring Like, there's no space for recognizing and drinking in our accomplishments, because that was part of the course for the perfectionist we're expected to do well.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: So when we do well, well, that's just what we were expecting.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Also, it's doubly bad, oh dang.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: That is so true, that's so good.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: But this is doubly difficult because also in those moments of success, not only can you not savour it, but then you also set a new floor for yourself.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: So now, the better you've done, the better you're not expecting yourself to do, and so perfectionism becomes.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: There's never an intraderate, where it's kind of like chasing the horizon the closer you get, the further it moves.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: And that's what perfectionism is.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: It's a life that doesn't allow us to savour and recognize our achievements, whilst at the same time creating a lot of these psychological problems that mean life can be really exhausting and really difficult.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: And I think there's something really important to bear in mind when we're talking about good enough and how we break that cycle, because there is to recognize there is no perfect outcome, and especially in activities where the outcomes can be nebulous and there may not even be a defined outcome.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: But we know we're moving in a direction that we need to move in.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: But we don't.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Particularly in areas like the creative economy and jobs, where outcomes can be difficult to define, and also in the third sector, charities and people working on causes that are close to their heart, the direction is movement in the right direction.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: You can't really pinpoint an end point.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: It's about trying to win the arguments, and that's really.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: You have to recognize there's no perfect outcome.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: There could be thousands and thousands of good enough ways to get those messages across, win those arguments and move forward.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: Thousands and thousands of possible good enough ways, but no one perfect way.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: And that's so important for us to recognize as we move through our works, our jobs, our causes, the things that we hold close to our heart, things that you know it's all about.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I suppose what I'm trying to say is it's all about progress and that's the most important thing.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: And we have to let go of having some idealized perfect outcome where we want to be right now, in this moment, because this is where we have to be and actually recognize that life's more difficult than that.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: It's going to be ups and then it's going to be downs, and the most important thing is to keep going in the direction we want to go in.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: So good enough, finding that sweet spot of good enough is so, so important and really it's about progress over perfection.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: That's insurance.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, do you just feel our like hype from this?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Like okay, I gotta thread this together, because we started our season talking to Seth Godin and he blew our minds, honestly.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: But he was like coming in and saying the nonprofit sector is should be trying stuff.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: We're trying to solve problems that haven't been solved yet.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So we need to have this attitude of trial and risk and embracing that kind of subject.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And what you're saying is the same too.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: It's like we don't know the answer either, so like we have to change how we're being measured.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: You know, if we're really gonna solve some of these systemic issues, like these things stack and I think us taking care of how we're talking to ourselves as big, at least for me, of how we approach this.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So I wanna talk about you know, there's a lot of leaders that listen to this podcast that are shepherding a team along in these journeys.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: How do you really model and build a culture that celebrates imperfection?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: You know when you are chasing a probably ridiculous KPI or some kind of goal, but how do you balance that tension?
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: The first thing you gotta recognize is that you're gonna fail away more than you're gonna succeed.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: You know, failure is just regression to the mean.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: It's just a normal, inevitable part of anything, particularly in the nonprofit sector.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: When you are pushing against some really really strong forces really really strong in the sometimes almost impenetrable forces you're gonna lose the arguments way more than you're going to feel like you're making progress.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: But it's all worth it, because the one time you do breakthrough and you have a win, you have a success.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Then that makes all of those failures worth it, because you've learned, you've developed, you've iterated, you've found different ways to move forward and you've finally been able to make a breakthrough.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: But that wouldn't have been possible without those many, many moments of failure.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: And if you're a leader, it's so important to embrace that inevitability and to very start from the get-go with that being the culture, the expectation almost, that a lot of this stuff that we're gonna try isn't gonna come off and that's okay.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: This is all about innovative iteration, development and growth, and that's the most important thing.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: And if we succeed or fail, we do it together.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: There's no.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: You know, this is a safe place.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: We can share ideas.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: No question is a stupid question.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: It was a really good mantra for really a bow.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: Bow and the culture really of knowing and accepting the inevitability that things aren't gonna always go to plan is so important, particularly for young people coming into organizations because they worry a lot about, you know, having done something wrong and we made a mistake.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Was it my fault that we didn't succeed on this occasion?
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there are so many factors maybe on that control that mean we didn't succeed and that's okay.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: We just move on, we get to the next thing.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: So I think accepting the inevitability of failure and really embracing that is very important for each of you.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I just wanna create a scene for everyone, because this is what I would love to see happen in non-profit when you're done with a campaign, when you complete an event, when you complete some project in your organization, can you create a ritual We've talked about this in building healthy cultures, that rituals are so important.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Can you create a ritual where you gather as a team and you talk about what worked and you celebrate it?
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: There's your joy, what didn't work, and we're gonna celebrate the failures of the things we know didn't work.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And then we're gonna talk about how we're gonna iterate.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: I mean, we are social scientists at the end of the day and we've gotta figure out what that is.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: And how safe and comforting would that be if your leader brought you together and said, hey, we just did this direct mail campaign, we just did Giving Tuesday.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: It's coming up Couple weeks now and here's what worked, here's what we're gonna celebrate.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Nothing is a failure as long as it's progress.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: And so if we can work on progress and look at it as a whole and something we all own and celebrate, my gosh, you guys.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: That's how cultures shift.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: That's the kind of organization I wanna work in and I wanna feel like I have a voice to say.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I think we could try this differently, and I may be a young professional to your point, Thomas but I may have unique insights on what's gonna work the next time because I'm the target market or because I understand that uniquely based on my lived experience.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited about this I am already retooling it in my head for my house.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I just think you are onto something very, very precious that really could alter the state of the world, and so we really celebrate story here on this podcast.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: We believe our ability to share story with each other humanizes us and gives us a broader worldview.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So I'd love to ask you is there a moment of philanthropy in your life where generosity, giving gratitude, something has come in and changed you for the better, or maybe even for the worse, and why did it stick with you?
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I would love to hear a story from you.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: Gosh, that's a really a really good question.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Do you know what?
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: There's been so many moments that really humbled me, where people's generosity or health, you know, I think, the moments that have really stuck with me, where people haven't had to do anything it wasn't in their interest, it didn't get anything out of it, but they just went out in their way to help to do something kind.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: And there have been a few individuals in my life who've done that are very key junctures to whom I'm extremely grateful to.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: But I think my story would be about my father, because my father did something that was extremely unexpected and when he stopped being a construction worker.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: He was a construction worker because he couldn't work anymore.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, his joints and back were not in good shape.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Instead of just sort of retiring and putting his feet up on the sofa, he went and helped out at a homeless charity, completely like off his own back and from nowhere as well.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: So this wasn't something that I ever expected to ever do, and he's been doing that now for a decade, and he's had some tremendous stories about making people well, finding shelter and homes with people who have fallen on hard times.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: He generated all sorts of income through various different ways which he'd never thought that.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: You know this was a.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: He's really used his skillset from that work that he used to do in different ways to try to make sure that this project that he ran was successful and gave people homes and so that the entrepreneurship, the ability to reach out to members of the community, to speak to even members of parliament I mean he had a conversation with MP to try to lobby for money all of this stuff incredible, incredible and all off his own back as a volunteer.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: So that would be my story, and sometimes people can surprise you in incredible ways, and that was certainly the case with my dad.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: What's your dad's name?
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: His name is Paul.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: Paul, thank you for being the light in the world.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: We are all looking for extraordinary story.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: That was so beautiful.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I love these moments.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: They just bring us back to it's like we all have the agents, we all have the power to plug in like that in this world, and I think that's what really excites us and keeps us motivated too.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So I want to ask you, thomas, as we round this out we ask our guests to bring us a one good thing and this could be a mantra that you say in your head.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: It could be a secret to your success, or it could just be what you're feeling in this conversation to leave with our community today, what is a one good thing you could offer us?
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Goodness me.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: One good thing I would say that's really helped me in my life, come through my perfectionism is you have to let life happen and listen.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: That's a very privileged thing to say, by the way, and for some people that's a lot easier than it is for other people, and I come from a poor background.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: So, trust me, I know that life happens to you and there's not a lot you can do.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: And you can fight and fight and fight, and you should.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: You should add a change for change.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: You should always add a change for change, but good, you know, positive change.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: But at the same time it's really important for our mental health to make sure that we recognize and accept that sometimes life will just happen to us and we cannot control and perfect everything and all around us and there's that kind of radical acceptance which is has been for me anyway, the gateway to much more contentment, much more joy in my life and actually I feel more success too in terms of, you know, my career and family life and all the rest of it.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: So that would be my one thing that I would leave listeners with.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: It's sometimes life will happen to us and that's OK, accepting it and being able to recognize that the most important thing is progress.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: That's what I believe your listeners with.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Thomas, I like you so much.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: You are such a good human and I honestly don't think that you could be the world leading expert on perfectionism if you didn't come at it with the level of humility and humanity that you bring to this work and I feel that so deeply in the way that you talk.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I feel really changed by this conversation and I know our audience is going to want to connect with you.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: They are 100 percent going to want to get this perfection trap book.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: So tell us how our listeners can connect with you.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Where can they get the book?
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: And don't worry, friends, we will drop that TED Talk into the show notes, because it is also outstanding.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a LinkedIn and I have a Twitter.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: If you Google Thomas Curran the perfection trap, all the information will come up where to buy the book, my website and social media channels, and just to leave you.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: This is.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: I really love to hear from readers.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite things to do is to read emails from people that read the book and found something impactful.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: So, please, I encourage you.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: If you read it and you loved it, let me know.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I would love to hear it.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I mean this conversation, the right moment in time.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Just, I'm really grateful for the way you came into this and what you've brought us today.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Thomas, Just rooting for you from this side of the ocean.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, thanks, guys.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: I really love these in chat.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: I've had a great time.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: It's been nice.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us for these powerful discussions.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: If you'd like to dig deeper, you can find additional episodes and resources at weareforgoodcom.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Backslash mental health.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: And these conversations continue over at the we Are For Good community.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Here we'll double click on some of the topics and support each other in community.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Come find us it's free at weareforgoodcommunitycom.