Let go of Pursuing Perfection & Decide That Your Best Is Good Enough
In Episode 9 of The Business Mamas Podcast, I introduced a Framework for Enhanced Well-Being - Focus on Beliefs, Relationships & Making Heart-Guided Decisions. By using this framework, I have been able to unlock the incredible peace that comes with being present in my work, with my kids, and in other aspects of my life. I know you're ready to welcome that peace into your life as well. When you have empowering beliefs, and empowering relationships with yourself and others, you are setting yourself up to value yourself, to know your truth, and then to honor yourself and your truth by making heart-guided decisions.
Today, I want to talk with you about making the heart-guided decision to know that your best is good enough rather than only being satisfied with perfection.
If I'm struggling with a decision that I need to make, I can always come back to Don Miguel Ruiz’ book, The Four Agreements, for the support that I need to make the decision. Reading this book was life-giving for me. And my hope is that with this podcast, the ideas, stories and tools that I share, are also life-giving for you. One of the Four Agreements that Ruiz discusses is always do your best.
How does Ruiz describe doing your best? He says: “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next.”
To fully examine what it means to do your best, first, I think it's helpful to consider: What is perfectionism?
Brené Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection, describes it in this way: “Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgement, and shame. It’s a shield. It’s a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from flight.”
I want to tell you the top four reasons why I choose to do my best, rather than striving to be perfect.
1) Perfect is unattainable. Thinking that perfect is my goal keeps me playing small to protect my ego. I don't want to play small; I want to play all-out. So, by reminding myself that perfect is not my goal, I give myself permission to play bigger.
2) My best is always attainable. As Don Miguel Ruiz explains, your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. So, as long as I'm doing my best in that moment, I am setting myself up to succeed and to feel proud of myself.
3) When I'm striving to do my best, I think creatively. When I know that my best is the goal, I give myself permission to think outside of the box. In my lawyering work, this could be coming up with a case theory or presenting the evidence with a new angle that I wouldn't have seen if I had been so focused on perfectionism. Or it could be allowing myself to talk about something or write about something that I may or may not be right about, like using my voice to contribute what my opinion might be in the moment that I otherwise would hold myself back on.
4) Making mistakes allows me to redirect. Here's a quote from author Cara Alwill that explains this: “For some reason, most of us women are serious perfectionists. We are so damn afraid to look silly, that we hold ourselves back from so much. Here's a little secret. Nobody is perfect. Some of the most fabulous women that I admire have made mistakes, some that I've witnessed, some that they've told me about. Do I think any less of them? Of course not. If there is one glaring quality that all fearless and fabulous women possess, it is that they are not afraid to look silly. I truly can't stress that enough.”
Now, it's time to shed the disempowering belief that your best isn't good enough, and develop the empowering belief that your best is good enough.
The first time I remember feeling as a child that my best wasn't good enough, was when I was in fourth grade and we were taking standardized multiple choice tests at school. I remember that the teacher told us to put our pencils down and stop taking the test. When the teacher said that we had to stop taking the test, I had not finished the test. I still had questions that I had not even read yet, let alone tried to answer. I was devastated. My conclusion was that my best was not good enough. I had been doing my best but I hadn't even answered all of the questions, so of course, I wasn't going to get all the answers right. The reality of the situation was that my best was not perfect. However, at the time, I believed that my best was not good enough, and accordingly, that I was not good enough. I was expecting perfection, and the fact that I fell short of achieving a perfect outcome led to my suffering.
Now, let's talk about the empowering belief that my best is good enough.
In 2008, I graduated from law school and when I received the good news that I had passed the California Bar Exam, I was hired to be a Deputy Public Defender at the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office. One of my first assignments in the office was to be a deputy public defender in Compton, California. There was a courtroom where I was the assigned public defender for the courtroom. One morning, I had issued subpoenas for witnesses to appear for a trial that I was scheduled to start that morning. I checked in with my client and the witnesses whom I had subpoenaed and I let them know that a colleague of mine in another courtroom was ill, and that I would be assisting briefly this morning in that other courtroom. I went to the other courtroom and I started helping out. When I returned to my home court about 10 minutes later, I was met by the judge in my home court verbally attacking me for being late to court. Although I don't remember the exact words he used, he spoke loudly in open court for everyone in the courtroom to hear and his words were something to the effect of: “You are late. It's very disrespectful to be late to court and to leave witnesses that you have subpoenaed in court, not knowing what's going on.”
At this point, I was 28 years old and I had been a lawyer for less than a year. Being publicly shamed was not something that I thought was appropriate under the circumstances, and I was not going to stand for it. So, I spoke loudly to him in open court, as he had spoken to me. I told the judge: “First, I was here on time. I checked in not only with my client, but also with the witness I had subpoenaed. Had you taken the time to ask anyone in the courtroom, I'm sure they would have told you that they saw me working diligently in the courtroom this morning before you were on the bench. Second, another department had an emergent need for my assistance, as the public defender who normally works in that court had called in sick. I was assisting them get their calendar moving, so that I could come back here as soon as possible.”
He apologized to me in front of the entire courtroom, and he never spoke to me in that disrespectful manner again. I was doing my best. And even if he didn't think it was good enough, I was proud of myself, and I was happy to tell him that I was doing my best, and that it was good enough for me! We started my client’s jury trial later that day, and the witness who I clearly had treated appropriately, was the key witness in my trial. The jury’s unanimous not guilty verdict was a welcome result as well. However, the jury's decision was out of my hands. I did the best that I could in presenting the evidence at trial, and then I had to leave it in the jury's hands to decide. I'll always remember the courage it took for me to speak up for myself to the judge, and to voice that I was doing my best.
Now, I want to talk with you about the disempowering belief that I should dream small, so that I won't disappoint myself or others, versus the empowering belief of dreaming big, knowing that even if I don't reach my goals, my best is good enough. So let's start with the disempowering belief that I should dream small, so that I won't disappoint myself or others.
As a child, I remember that when I tried something, and I felt like I wasn't good at it, oftentimes, I didn't want to try again. In eighth grade, I tried out for the girls’ basketball team, and I made the B-Team. Even though I'd never played basketball before in my life, and even though most of the girls on the A-Team had been playing since they were little kids, I was embarrassed to play on the B-Team. I didn't try out again in high school. Even though there were aspects of playing a team sport that I was drawn to, I didn't want to face the possibility that I would try my best and not even make the high school team, or that if I made it, I would be sitting on the bench the entire time. So, I decided not to try.
The empowering belief of dreaming big, knowing that even if I don't reach my goal, my best is good enough, this is the place where I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface. In the past, I have let my fear of failure stop me from dreaming really big. I only allowed myself to dream of things that I was pretty confident I could achieve.
Starting a podcast was never on that list. Where would I find the time given all the other responsibilities I had in my life?
But when I started practicing allowing my dreams to have a little space to grow, I realized that starting a podcast was very much a big dream of mine. So, here I am, practicing dreaming bigger, and trying something I've never done before and being okay if it doesn't resonate with a broad audience. I'm doing my best to create a tool that will bring value to others, and that's good enough. Don Miguel Ruiz explains: “Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”
My interpretation of this is, you are enough and your best is always good enough. “Do your best” are powerful words to me. I find that by verbalizing my beliefs, I internalize them. I oftentimes repeat to myself, I am not trying to be perfect. In just saying this to myself, I feel a huge weight lifted off my chest. It's like I'm reminding myself of something that I know is true but that needed to be verbalized, so that I can really know that truth.
Here are some tools for how you can practice this. The words “I am not trying to be perfect” are words that are really powerful for me. When you say them, do you feel that weight lifting off of your chest too? If so, use these words in the morning time, when you have that rush of thoughts swirling around in your head.
If saying these words doesn’t bring you the relief that I'm talking about, what words remind you that perfect is not the goal, and that your best is good enough? I encourage you to practice different phrases and see how they feel to you. Another way that you can practice letting go of perfectionism is to do something each week that you think you're bad at. For me, I grew up thinking that I was bad at creating art. I'm still pretty confident that my art is not something that anyone would want to pay money to have hanging in their homes, but I allow myself to paint and to draw with my children now. Allowing myself to do this is one way that I remind myself that I'm not even trying to be perfect. I have learned to allow myself to enjoy painting and drawing, and I have no expectation that it will be viewed as perfect or even as having any value at all for other people.
Do you have something that you think you're bad at that you could allow yourself to do as a reminder that you're not even trying to be perfect?
If you enjoyed Episode 24 and this blog post, I would love it if you shared the blog or the podcast with someone you think could benefit from them. I would also be incredibly grateful if you could leave an honest rating and review of The Business Mamas Podcast on Apple Podcasts as that helps more people find the show and it helps me in sharing this message of practicing self-love and self-care with more people whose lives I know could be enriched by hearing it. Sign up to download my Morning Routine Guide and receive my email newsletter at The Business Mamas Podcast. Until next time and with gratitude, Kara Stein-Conaway, @karasteinconaway on Instagram.
