One way to overcome perfectionism in yourself and your coaching clients
Hello there! Today, we will be discussing micro experiments that we can do to lower our perfectionism when running a business.
As business owners, we want to give our clients and audience the best transformation possible, the best workshops and products possible. And this desire to do well can translate into perfectionism.
I am a victim of this myself. When I create my done-for-you workshops, I tend to pay too much attention to the images I use in the slides, the fonts and the colour schemes.
I do this because I want the workshops to be transformational mentally and emotionally.
However, I am aware that this slows down my process. I take a longer time to finish my coaching content, I take too long to launch products and in the end, these small details do not matter as much as I think.
So, I fall victim to perfectionism because I am a stickler for quality. You may be the same too. You are so committed and dedicated to offering the best to your clients that you take too long to finish projects, you overthink a simple Instagram caption, you take too long to make decisions and all this cost you your energy and your time.
So what can you do if you are a perfectionist in your work and it is giving you stress and is holding you back from levelling up in your business?
Well, you can do micro experiments to handle this.
These micro experiments will test your comfort levels and make you feel a little uncomfortable in exchange for less stress.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you are someone who obsesses with finding the right pictures to use when you are creating your workshops. And I get it. The right pictures will evoke emotions such as inspiration, hope and joy. So using the right images matter at times. But if being overly detailed is causing you stress and exhaustion, it’s ok to loosen your perfectionism a little.
What can you do with this situation?
Well, you can perform a micro experiment where you choose not to obsess over the pictures you use in your slides.
For the next workshop or workbook that you are creating, select pictures which convey the right vibe without overthinking it. It sounds so common-sensical, but trust me, to a perfectionist, this small experiment is a big change.
After doing this, you can take note of how you feel.
What are the results? Do you feel less stressed about your work? Do you feel more free? Do you feel more energised? Or on the opposite side of the coin, do you feel panicked at letting go of control? Do you feel like you ‘slacked off’ or did not put 100% effort?
It is my hope that you will associate these micro experiments with feelings of more freedom, less stress and more flexibility.
You may have clients who struggle with perfectionism.
Let’s say you have a client who is a perfectionist when it comes to her appearance. She does not step out of the house- even running errands - without a full face of makeup.
She is insecure about her looks and this routine of looking ‘perfect’ before she steps out of the house is causing her stress.
You can suggest to her to do a micro experiment which allows her to be 80% made up instead of 100% made up.
So if she puts a full face of makeup on before going to a nearby mall, you can suggest that she puts just 3 essential makeup items on the next time she is going to the mall. Your clients or audience have to feel comfortable with these micro expriments. I won’t recommend you suggesting them to go from 100% down to 10%. Baby steps is what I would recommend.
After the micro experiment, you can ask your clients how they feel after it.
Does it bring them any benefits?
What are the benefits they experienced?
What are the fears that they had when going through the experiment?
Is this something they are willing to try again?
These are questions your clients can brainstorm when performing these micro experiments.
If you want to one step forward and coach your clients on baby steps to overcome perfectionism, you can use the exercises in my done-for-you overcome perfectionism workbook.
My favourite exercise in there is to encourage them to let go of their ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking pattern.
Perfectionists usually have this thinking pattern. They believe that they should either give their 100% in a project or not do it at all. This is a very high-pressure habit or principle to live by. And it is humanly impossible for us to give our 100% in every single thing that we do. We will be fatigued, burn out, stressed out.
There is an exercise in the Overcome Perfectionism workbook that can help with that.
If this has helped you, please leave a comment because I appreciate your comments very much.
See you!
Shikah
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