Perfectionism – A Habit Worth Breaking
Posted on March 23, 2011 by Suzanne Ferguson, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Perfectionism, like any habit can be broken. Breaking the habit takes awareness, aligning your unconscious conscious beliefs and action.
Perfection is about proving.
Proving is about need.
Need is about lack.
Lack is about imbalance.
Imbalance is about fear.
There is no such thing as a perfect human being and yet perfectionism is an affliction that drives many of us. Perfectionism keeps productivity low; unwilling to make mistakes you play it safe. Hesitating, indecisive, and afraid of other people’s opinions, you second guess your self and are inconsistent in your actions. How can you be an effective leader when you are stuck in the minutiae of having to perfect it? The answer is you cannot.
Breaking the habit of perfectionism takes awareness, aligning your unconscious with your conscious beliefs and action.
Awareness
Develop awareness by taking a look (without judgment) within you.
How does perfectionism show up for you? Perfectionism will show up as proving; proving to your self that you are worthy, smart, capable, loveable, etc, as well as needing approval from others.
When you want to prove your self what “automatic” behaviors do you engage in? Perfectionism will show up as control. Often you believe you need to control one area of your life because you are experiencing lack and feeling out of control in another area of your life. Instead of being with the feeling of lack you avoid it by turning your attention toward control – you try to control your experience, your environment, or other people.
When you feel out of control – what “automatic” behaviors do you engage in? Perfectionism will show up as imbalance. Fear that you might not get it right has you over working, over achieving, over thinking, over doing, etc.
When you are out of balance – what “automatic” behaviors do you engage in? Aligning unconscious with conscious beliefs.
Perfectionism is an outward display of an internal imbalance between your unconscious and conscious mind. One method of alignment can be achieved using PSYCH-K. Following alignment, action must be taken to complete the change.
Action
Once you possess an awareness of your automatic behaviors and an internal re-alignment is made, you must ground, consolidate, and integrate new behaviors and actions in your day-to-day life; otherwise your old habits of perfectionism will return. How do you do this? You create your own individual plan of action and you follow it consistently. In fact, following it consistently means every time you feel compelled to be perfect you choose – consciously – whether to follow the need for perfectionism, or instead to choose to follow your new plan of action.
By the way, this article triggered my old habits of perfectionism. As I struggled to write the “perfect” leadership tip I got lost in the minutiae of having to perfect it!
What are you willing to do to move forward on your evolutionary path as a leader?
