How to Get Out of your Own Way and Move Towards your Goals!
Perfection paralysis is the idea that you want something to be so perfect that you don’t even try. I’m sure you’ve been there before, whether it’s wanting to remodel the bathroom or submitting a proposal at work. There are times when we are so fearful that the thing we want to do will get criticized or won’t be perfect, so we don’t even attempt to do it. This can apply to things like writing a book, launching a podcast, or starting your own business. If you want to do something great but something else is holding you back, chances are part of that is perfection paralysis.
- Mute the past
A big part of perfection paralysis is the fear of judgment. I know you don’t want to be told something you did isn’t good enough, you don’t want to get a bad review or hear a bad comment about something you’re proud of. Because you don’t want to be judged, you may not even attempt that goal. Fear of judgment, being told we aren’t good enough, usually stems from childhood. If you had a parent tell you that you weren’t good enough or you could have done that better, that criticism stayed with you all the way to adulthood. When you were told those things you were robbed of your courage, and courage is what gets us through fear and failure.
Now that we know where fear of judgment comes from we can recognize that how we were treated in the past doesn’t have to be how we see ourselves now and in the future. Hearing those comments repeated in your head from your past has to stop now. The first step to overcoming this paralysis is to mute those voices. They are the echoing of your past and they are no longer nor were they ever true.
- Set a new goal
The other part of this perfection paralysis is that your goal was always to obtain perfection. We know that we can’t really be perfect at anything or everything, so why are we still trying? That goal of perfection was set for you in childhood because you were judged whenever you messed up. Now that you’re an adult it’s time to set a new goal for yourself. This goal will be objective, and may feel strange at first. Your new goal is: “I just need to get it out there, so I can fix it later.” The key here is that you’ve spent way too much time worrying about something not being perfect which led you to not even attempt anything. Now you just need to pick a place and start there. You may stumble, it will not be perfect, but it’s a start, and once you start you can correct and fix it to get to where you want to be.
No matter what your objective is, you need to start somewhere. You won’t learn anything about how to make it better if you don’t start. It may seem very overwhelming to start a business, write a book, or produce a podcast, but you won’t know where you need to make changes if you don’t have a first attempt. Getting over your fear of judgment and trying to obtain perfection will come quickly if you allow yourself to start and stumble, and maybe even fail. You’ve got to pick yourself back up, learn from it, and keep going.
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