Hey! Welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.
Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. Sometimes I like to throw back to an episode that I think is a really powerful message and instead of just repeating myself over and over again, I figure you likely haven't been listening for four years. So why don't we just revisit a message that I think you might need to hear. And since we just wrapped up, um, a month focused on eliminating perfectionism in the Quitter Club, if you're new here, I have a membership called The Quitter Club.
And every month we focus on one topic and we do a masterclass and we focus on building the skill of whatever that topic is. And for the past month we have been working on eliminating perfectionism so that we can actually go after our dreams so we can stop sabotaging ourselves because things aren't perfect so we can stop criticizing ourselves so we can get on with it. And it's been incredible and watching people go through the class and start doing B minus work and actually get out there and do the things they're supposed to do has been amazing. And so I wanted to revisit this topic because beyond the fact that the only way to succeed, truly, the only way to succeed is to let yourself fail. There is no succeeding by like starting and just being an expert at something. It doesn't work that way.
You have to learn and in order to learn, you have to fail. And in order to fail, you have to let yourself not be perfect. And so because I want you all to go out and create careers that you love and build businesses and do the things you want, you have to be okay being seen, not being perfect because the only reason you want to be perfect is to put on this defense mechanism, this protection that will stop you from being judged that will stop you from being hurt. That will stop you from feeling negative emotions. Because think about it, most of us are not trying to be perfect when we're alone, right? When you're doing something that nobody else will see, you don't really care too much about whether it's perfect. I mean maybe you do. A lot of us perfectionists have to kind of taken on this personality that like everything has to be perfect 'cause we've held ourselves to that standard.
But for the most part, like if you're writing in your journal, you're not trying to make you know sure that everything is grammatically correct. You don't care if you misspell something as much. And so when you start realizing that the only reason you're putting on this perfectionistic air about yourself, this armor is to protect yourself, you have to learn to disarm that. You have to learn to take that off. Otherwise you will never allow yourself to try things. You will never allow yourself to go after those big goals. You will never allow yourself to fail and get back up, which is what is needed in order to achieve anything you wanna achieve. And so we have to learn how to get rid of this perfectionism and this topic that came up for this podcast Nobody Wants Perfect is a really important aspect of looking at this.
I think that a lot of us think we're striving to be perfect where we think that we have to show that we're perfect in order to be loved, find safety, get the job, have our boss like us, whatever. It's, and truly, when you think about the people in your life that you love, the people that are closest to you, are any of them perfect? Does that stop you from loving them? Does that stop you from respecting them? Does that stop you from thinking they're amazing? No, because perfect is boring and nobody wants that. Think about if you were with someone that was always perfect, you had nothing to kind of send memes about and complain about and laugh about and joke about because they just did everything they were supposed to do, right all the time and they never got anything wrong and there was never a hair outta place and they always looked put together and they always did the right thing.
Like it would be frustrating 'cause that's not how humans are. And so I really wanted to talk about this topic, not just because I think you should stop being a perfectionist because it's the only way to succeed, but I think you should do it because it's what makes you human. Allowing yourself to kind of lower that armor is what allows you to connect with people. It's what allows you to create relationships. It's what allows you to allow yourself to be loved, right? It's that vulnerability. It's allowing people to see you with not just your strengths but your weaknesses as well. It is the thing that makes us human and it's one of the most important things and it's one of the most liberating things. When you stop needing to prove that you're perfect or show that you're perfect, you finally allow yourself to take up space as you are.
You finally allow yourself to stop needing to constantly be someone else or be better or get there or achieve so that you can change. So you can finally love yourself. You get to be with the version of yourself that you are today. And how amazing is that person? Do you even know that person? Have you even stopped to be with that person? Because that's what I want you to do. I want you to stop rushing to the future and rushing through your life to get to some place where you can finally be where you can finally love yourself. Because I promise you my friend, you can do that right now. Exactly where you are with exactly what you have. And the way to do that is to stop trying to be something you're not and to really accept all of you. And so I wanted to replay this episode because I think that it's really important, especially if you're in the quitter club and you've been doing the challenge and you've been doing the perfectionist.
I think this is another angle of really thinking about how and why you should work on giving up that perfectionism. So I hope this helps in getting you to maybe let that guard down a little bit. You don't have to do it all the time. You can still wear that armor when you need it, but every once in a while just allow yourself to be fully human and see how people react. All right, my friends, I hope this is helpful and I'll be back next week with another episode. If you follow me anywhere early on the podcast, especially on my social media, one of the things that I really tried to do, and I'm not even tried to do this intentionally, there's not a lot of thought behind it, um, in the sense of like me trying to portray anything. But I really, really wanted to showcase the reality of my life and the business and all of it, right?
And so if you follow me, obviously a lot of what I try to post is very positive because I am a positive person and I work really hard at that. I manage my mind, I do thought work every day. I get coached on it, but I really try to kind of have pers perspective and I really try to showcase that. I really try to showcase like slowing down my life and enjoying the process so that I'm not trying to get to some magical destination that I know is not out there. But another thing I really try to do is show you that you don't have to be perfect to do anything really, to grow a business, to have a life that you love. And I do that because obviously I think that social media and just the day and age with the internet, there's a lot of the opposite of that.
I don't even think people are purposely trying to show you a highlight reel. I think, you know, most of us don't go on Instagram to watch people cry about their problems, right? It's like it's not why you're there. And so people are showing you things that you want to see and they're just leaving out some of the other parts. And I leave out a ton of stuff 'cause obviously you're not posting everything, but I really do try to show that I still constantly have tons of imposter syndrome and people pleasing problems and you know, doubt and fear and I hate failure and all that stuff because I want you to see that there's never a time that you get to that you don't have that. So like, let's not wait for that. And I wanna talk about that today. I wanna talk about like, we've done an episode on perfectionism.
It was episode one 20, if you wanna go back and listen to that. And it was all about how perfectionism is ruining your life and how so many of us have kind of got into our head that like we have to sort of portray ourselves as having it together. And I think that's really the root of a lot of like imposter syndrome, is that you kind of see the mess that's in your head and you think other people are gonna figure it out, right? Like they're not, this thing that I'm kind of portraying is having it together is not the actual reality. And we're so worried that people are gonna find this out. And we're so worried that our weaknesses somehow take away from our accomplishments or you know, whatever. We're so afraid of our weaknesses. So we don't accept them. We try to either cover them up or to quote unquote get rid of them, like try to better ourselves or whatever.
And I wanna talk to you today about that from a different standpoint. Okay? So in one of my coaching calls with our group, one of the participants raised her hand to get coaching. And when I called on her, she started by saying that like, my heart is beating so fast right now. I'm sweating, I'm so nervous to ask a question. And that was her problem is that even in work and stuff, she has such a hard time raising her hand in meetings or talking or whatever, or you know, when she has a talk in front of people. And of course her brain had told her that like, that's her, there's something wrong with her, right? Like that it's just her. Or you know, whatever. I had to convinced her that other people don't feel this way. And quickly every other person on that call confirmed that they also feel the same exact way as soon as they raise their hand and ask for coaching, right?
And it's a very natural way to feel. And we talked a lot about that. And then another participant on the call, another one of our my clients said that she had heard someone on the panel at a conference during the question and answer portion, somebody had asked her a question and she said, oh, I'm so sorry, I only answer easy questions, right? And everybody immediately laughed and she was like, no, I'm serious. I don't, I don't know the answer. Does anyone else know the answer? Right? And everybody, she was saying how like this disarmed everyone you know, immediately and kind of made her so much more likable and relatable and it kind of deflected the need for her to be able to answer this question. I bring both of these examples up because I want you to understand that we all want to relate to other people as real humans.
Nobody wants to be around somebody that's perfect or trying to be perfect, right? The reason that that was so disarming, or the reason that when my client opened up and said, instead of saying like, oh, I get really nervous about talking in front of people, but said like, my heart is beating so hard right now, I am sweating, right? The fact that she just put it out there immediately, like there was a sigh of relief from everybody on the call because everybody else was trying to maybe hold it together when they were asking their question, right? And it was immediately like, oh my God, me too. I feel exactly the same way, which is by the way, why I always say I love group coaching because I think that the biggest trick our brain plays on us is to make us feel as if it's just us that feels a certain way and we all literally recycle the same like five fears that we all have.
But once you start seeing that other people have it, it is so much more empowering to realize that you are a normal human being with normal responses, right? But I want you to think about the people that you follow on social media, okay? When Instagram came out, sure, it was a lot of like curated content and it was a lot of like perfect influencers because we didn't have a thing called influencers. And so there was kind of this magazine ideal life that was perpetrated and is still perpetrated. Not that it's not, but we, you know, looked at people who had like the amazing clothes and whatever, the vacations and stuff. But then something else has happened, right in the last couple of years is a rise of a different type of influencers. People that are on the app showing off their bodies without filters and Photoshop and they don't have what our society considers the ideal body type, right?
They're showing off their cellulite and their fat and all this other stuff that we are told to like hate about ourselves. There are people that show off their acne and their skin problems and the fact that they don't wanna cover it up with tons of makeup or filters or all this other Photoshop to try to pretend as though they don't have skin problems. They are the influencers that came about and started talking about the fact that they're not perfect mothers, that they're failing all the time, that they yelled at their kids that day that they lost it, and they don't know what to do that they, there's times where they just feel like they're not cut out for that job, right? There was the influencers that talked about their depression, that talked about how dark it gets and how they don't know how to like pull themselves out and what are the techniques that they use and the fact that some days they just feel sad and they don't even know why they feel sad.
And I want you to think about why that has gained so much in popularity. Why so many people felt this collective sigh of relief because we instantly felt connected, right? It instantly felt like, oh my God, somebody gets me. Somebody is stopping this charade of pretending like our body is perfect or our skin is perfect, or that we're the perfect mother or the perfect worker or whatever, right? That there's this term that has been floated around and is kind of watered down at this point and it's like talking about being authentic or being vulnerable, right? And it's sort of become a fad. And now people are like trying to fake vulnerability. And so, you know, there's a whole nother problem. 'cause I think people are trying to use it as a way of overdoing it. And people are always asking like, how can I be more vulnerable?
How can I be more authentic? And it's hilarious and sad, right? That we have to ask, how do I be my authentic self? How do I just show the real me? Because most of us don't know how to stop portraying ourselves in a certain light, right? Most of us want so desperately to be able to show that, but then as soon as we come like time to put it on Instagram, all of the fears start rushing in. Like, what is my mother-in-law gonna think? Or what is my husband gonna say? Or what is that friend from high school gonna think? Or I can't really actually post this out there, or people are gonna judge my skin for this, or whatever the thing is. But it's such a heavy burden to bear to try to be put together all the time. So many of us are terrified of other people finding out something like, not in the sense of like finding out a secret, but try to pretend as though we have it together at work.
We have it together at home, you know, we have a great family life and marriage and kids and what whatever else we're trying to portray as if we know everything. And you know, we have it all under control. And there's times that we do. And I think it's really important. I should just pause and say that a lot of women in general tend to discount themselves. And so that is a different problem, okay? That we can talk about with self-confidence later. I think a lot of us, if you have a problem accepting a compliment, it's like we discount anything good that we do. We tend to not see all of our accomplishments. We tend to not see how great we are at all this stuff, right? And I will say that like for instance, in the realm of motherhood, like I've seen this a lot on Instagram is like, you know, we had the rise of like the unbelievable amounts of pressure to be a perfect mother and you know, not be too helicoptery, but be involved in everything and make the organic food and you know, do all whatever.
Do you know the millions of things that women are now kind of pressured to do that have never been done in the history of motherhood, but now we have to do it all? And there was the opposite backlash, right? We go to the opposite extremes where it's like the hot mess mom, right? And it becomes this self-deprecating humor of, I can't live into this perfect persona, so I'm just gonna make fun of myself and I'm gonna talk about what a hot mess I am and I'm going to, you know, talk about how I'm failing and I'm drinking all the time and I'm doing all this other stuff because like, ugh, I'm not perfect. And that's another problem because so many of us are really trying very hard. We just can't live up to these impossible standards that we've put for ourselves. And that doesn't mean that we are a hot mess.
And I think there's a real danger in adopting that self-deprecating humor because while it can be fun, and I used to do it all the time too, I started realizing I really am discounting what I'm trying. And there's a happy medium in that where you can be vulnerable and authentic without putting yourself down where you can say like, I try really hard and I fail all the time, and that's okay. I still love myself. I still know I'm a good mother, right? I still know I'm a good worker or an employee or whatever. I'm not gonna get it right all the time, right? It's saying I'm still gonna raise my hand and ask the question, but my heart is gonna beat out of my chest and I'm gonna sweat. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I just want you to know, I feel super uncomfortable doing this right now, and I'm still like, look at me putting myself in these uncomfortable situations.
I just want you to realize that the way to connect with people, the way to show up in your life as fully as possible, is to just be you with all of your faults, with all of your weaknesses, with all of the things that you don't know how to do. It's not waiting until you have figured out how to cover up everything that you don't know or learn every skill or to make yourself into some to know perfect version of yourself. None of us want that. What a boring world that would be. And the more we can really sit with the fact that like we all just want to connect with other real human beings, that as soon as I say, oh my God, I have trouble with all of this. There's a million other hands that say Me too. And just that instant validation and connection with other human beings that like, yeah, we all suffer from the same things, how powerful that is.
And so I want you to think about your perfectionism in this light as well, and how it's holding you back from not only living the life that you want to live, not only you know, creating the job or whatever, going after the dreams that you have because of the failure, but how much is holding you back from having authentic relationships in your life, from having friendships and relationships where you can fully show up and talk about where you're failing and be okay with that, where you don't have to try to keep you know up with what everybody else thinks you should be doing. It's just such an important reminder that none of us are that and none of us want that. We just want other people that are on this path of life learning and failing and continuing just like us. And that's the way to be authentic.
That's the way to be vulnerable, right? There's no reason to ask how to do it. Just figure out what your truth is right now. And I know that's also another cliche, and I hate saying like, what is your truth? But just like, what are you feeling today? Exactly in this moment? How would it feel to just voice it instead of trying to cover up the beating heart and you know, the sweating and the feeling nervous? What if you just said it like, Hey, I feel really nervous asking this question, so sorry if my voice shakes a little bit. This is uncomfortable for me, but I still wanna ask this question. How quickly will you disarm everybody else in that room? And how much more will you allow yourself to show up in your life if you do that right? If you realize that you don't have to have the steady voice and the, you know, steady hand, it can shake and you can still ask the question because you don't have to know the answer to go on and be on a panel and have people ask you questions because you can just say, I don't know.
Great question. That's a hard one. I don't know that one. How much more are you willing to try when you know that you have that like escape route, right? Like you have that kind of, I don't know, the, the word fails me now where you have that out, where you don't have to look like you have it together. Now I'm not saying there isn't a place for expertise. I'm just saying that none of us are looking for perfect, none of us, none of us expect you to be that. So how would it feel to take off that burden and allow yourself to show a bully? I promise that's available to you as long as you are willing to be okay with all of yourself laws and all weaknesses and all right, as long as you are willing to accept that you are a full human and you will always be, and it will always be both good and bad, and you are allowed to bring all of yourself, the more you can get to a place of self-acceptance and understanding that you don't have to hide any part of you.
It wasn't a mistake. The opposite of that weakness is some strength that you hold and all of you is what makes it beautiful, right? All of you is what makes this world different and exciting and unique and amazing. And the more you can accept that and the more you can show up fully without trying to live up to some absurd standard, the more you will experience, the more you will let yourself reach for, the more you will go after. Because you don't have to wait to be perfect to go after it. I hope that you show up fully as yourself as you are now and let everybody else see the beauty in all of it. I hope this was helpful and I will see you on the next episode.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working. Like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome… and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching, tools, and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitter club and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.