Latest / The Uncommons / Perfectionism: When High Standards Help and When They Hurt | Ep3
Transcript
- speaker-1: I have multiple businesses and a lot of people that are working in it at any given time. Someone's fucking up. how I've been raised doing things for 50 years before I got married and it was just me. And if anybody didn't fit my blueprint or whatever it is, you know, they were out. The lowest bar that you could ever set is perfectionism because it'll never happen. Hiya. Peace. I ⁓ I come from a background of perfectionism and I look at it similarly as you and I've had a significant change in what I call success in the past few years. Perfectionism was a part of my daily goals but you know I was raised the family that my mom wanted us to be perfect, we're Persians. And I see a lot of that in the Asian culture. And what you were talking about is actually one of our medical colleagues who was a physician and his kid got into UCLA medical school and the day of the commencement, he committed suicide and blew his brains out in the car. you know, it's like... and it gives you a whole different reality check when it's that close. But I understand that has been a lot of the success quote unquote what we the world defines as success, is accolades, money, education, even to some extent, how you interact with people and with the I'm not on social media, but I've also noticed and I've heard and there's a lot of talk about how social media glorifies the idea of perfectionism. know, so I've lived through it, but now I've changed my definition of success. One thing was that one of my definitions of success was financial success. And I think we talked about it before that we had a significant drop in my net worth on a situation with an industry that went south. I had nothing to do with how well I did or I did not. In fact, I think myself and my team performed at 110%, but the industry wasn't there. And what you talk about your blueprint. which is what you think what's supposed to be success. And you have this idea and concept or dreams or things that you think about on daily basis. I think perfectionism is kind of like what you're, what is happening in the environment and what your blueprint is are the same. And that makes you or anyone happy because if you think I need to have $150 million in my account to be successful and that's your blueprint and you have $150 million in your account, then you're good. But I've realized that a lot of the people that I know that are in that category, they're not inherently happy because their blueprints change and usually people's blueprints change for higher. More. As opposed to when it happened to me, you know, I had small kids and I started looking at what's valuable to me. not on financial money terms, but like my time with my little boy or my little girl or with you or with my friends or just sitting around in a meditative state, which I used to do. So that's changed a lot. And the idea of perfectionism and not being perfect also has changed a lot. So when the industry went in a direction that I had no control over, I lost control and it wasn't in my hands anymore. It's really cultural. And I also think there's a balance, right? And I don't know where that exact balance lies. I'm all about allowing kids to flourish and show what they're really good at. And I've become that more recently. was much more geared towards, know, let's train them, let's train them hard, do an Elon Musk kind of a thing. that you know the story of his dad his dad used to send him out you know to to camps if they didn't fight for food they wouldn't get any food and make him tough and I've seen the other side my mom pushed my brother my little brother just to play the piano he ended up being playing in concerts at a very young age he's super smart this kid's very smart you know once he had control of his own doing He never touched the piano again, even though he was so talented. And I saw that and I'm like, my God, what a waste of all these years because of, I mean, he didn't commit suicide, but it was almost similar to that. He committed suicide to an instrument and he never ever played it again or played any instrument for that matter. Right. So I think there is a nice balance with the kids, but I... honestly believe that it first has to start internally. I have a similar experience with you, but also at work in a way that I have certain things in my brain that how these things are going to go. And, know, I'm, I have multiple businesses and a lot of people that are working in it and any given time, someone's fucking up. Right? I you can't, someone's on the phone and I walk around the office and I'm like, you know, what an idiot here and what kind of mistake is that? And just constantly coming up with things that are not going right. As opposed to taking a step back and saying that, you know, we have multiple businesses and this one's profitable and this one is not. And being able to have a global view of where we're going as a company as a whole as opposed to being so worried about everything being perfect. Right, and I've learned a lot. I've learned that at any given time, people are gonna call in sick, your meetings are not gonna happen, there's gonna be up and downs. You you do a real estate project and you think, ⁓ I'm gonna spend X number of dollars and this amount of time, and it's always double that, at the least double that, maybe even more. But what bothered me even more than that is my... perfectionism which you call OCD is unlock my environment clean. It allows me to think, expand, be organized, and to be able to do things because when things are not organized for me, if I'm constantly trying to find things or do things, I'm not able to run my businesses like that and I will bring that home. And it used to be a time that Saturdays was your Nightmare because I would come in and you know, is this here? And what is this there? What you guys are doing? You know, it's just like why is this house such a mess? I always walk around and be pissed off at my wife and forget about how amazing you are and how beautiful you are and you know, I'm gonna make this amazing sex life, you know, how am I complaining about where the pliers are, you know? Who cares about the pliers when you have such a good, you know, but But you don't notice it because perfectionism is your underlying denominator. And don't get me wrong, it's not gone. It's part of my blueprint because I've been, you know, that's how I function. You know, in my office, my car, it has to be organized the way I want it. It's easy. I'm not talking about her heart. I'm just talking about what my underlying belief has been and how I've been raised doing things for 50 years before I got married and it was just me. And if anybody didn't fit my blueprint or whatever it is, you know, they were out. You know, that's why, you know, I didn't get married. So this perfectionism, by the way, had a significant effect on my personal life. because nobody was good enough. Nobody was perfect. In fact, in fact, one of the things that I now, teach a lot with my team and other people, and one of the things that I say now is that the lowest bar, that you could ever set is perfectionism. Things to be perfect is the lowest bar because it'll never happen. It's easy to tell. I think that we don't have to be exactly perfect on where this exact perfect place is. For me, even the fact that we are now realizing it and it's in front of our brain as opposed to behind our brain, now we make decisions with knowing that, where we used to make decisions without knowing it. Some other software was driving our decisions and our actions and our happiness that we were unaware of. And now it's in the forefront. And even if we choose to yell at our kids, or if I choose on a Saturday to lose it a little bit, I'm aware of it. Bats fly blind with sonar. So they send out these sound waves that it comes back. And the more of these waves that we get back as we try and we bring it to the forefront of our brain and it's not sitting back there and we're just kind of like, ⁓ like, you know, I yelled at my wife on last Saturday and this is what happened, you know, or my kids or all these things that happened, but we were aware of it. We get more inputs. Like AI, they give them enough information that you'll be able to figure out where that line might be. And trying to say, where am I gonna cut that line and where is it gonna be exactly? It's like, trying to find perfectionism in imperfectionism almost as opposed to letting it kind of flow. And ⁓ I can't believe I'm saying letting it kind of flow. But ⁓ I believe it. I understand that. It's funny. There was, I think it was a 60 minutes or one of these programs. They're interviewing a family that had a quant to let's five kids at the same time. ⁓ Probably in vitro. gone wrong or something like that but I five kids at the same time and this guy that know looked like he's 50 probably was actually like 30 years old or 33 years old or whatever it was and and they asked him so what so how do you do it like tell us what is like how do you deal with this he's like I just have less rules and because if the more there's five of these kids and now they're like five or six you know I don't know what are the age they're like at the age of like know, disturbance of five and six and they all want to do different things and the more rules you have at any given point, someone's breaking the rules and you're upset and your state changes and all that kind of stuff, right? So, yeah, I agree. Take away. Yeah, I think it's a little different when it comes down to your kids than anyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Right? And if we hold ourselves in a certain decorum, meaning that we live this way, like if I find a penny underground, I'm going to pick it up. I'm not going to tell them they need to pick it up, but they know that I value money. I respect it. that's something that was new to me, by the way. Right? And then I started doing that and my kids saw me doing that. I wasn't telling my kids. you better pick up that penny. They just saw me pick it up. And then they started to pick it up. And now they have a lot of value for money. sometimes they take it overboard. Like, ⁓ I don't want to spend my piggy money out of my big way. You pay me. Yeah, which is kind of, you it's cute. But I think what we do is way, way more important and imperfectionism and allowing us ourselves not to be perfect. and holding them responsible to a certain extent so they have certain boundaries. And again, kind of like this sonar back and forth to find the right space. I think that's the takeaway. Takeaways for me at least is to be open enough that. Yes, to be able to and I'm sure I'm sure we've made mistakes and we're gonna keep making mistakes Right who said all right is right anyway But being open to the fact that our right is not right or our wrong is not wrong is this I think it's a lesson for me and ⁓ I just find a lot more beauty these days in life as I've let go more and I try to change my state and what's more important as opposed to being perfect, what's most important. And I've been doing that. I'm sure as you can see this, like ⁓ with our puppy and our children, you know, I put their heart next to my heart every morning. I try to that every morning and just kind of recalibrate this like what matters, you know, and it allows you to be more, more gentle with yourself. myself and hence my children would see that gentleness and not being so rigid and perfect that would allow them to be more open and again it gives everybody an ability to realize where we stand in this whole ever-changing world. I would love to learn from anybody that has more knowledge or practice or this whole sonar back and forth that could say, by the way, this is what I did. So yeah, I'll be very thankful.