Personal Development Archives - Page 17 of 23

Can You Be Too Perfect?

Having looked at fear of failure and success I want to now look at how being a perfectionist can stop you from achieving what you want.

Let’s start by understanding what perfectionism is not. Perfectionism is not the admirable quality of holding yourself to high standards. Rather, perfectionism is the fusion of high standards with your self-worth. A less-than-perfect performance damages a perfectionist’s self-worth in their opinion. The possibility that their performance will not be flawless is debilitating to them, and they can become paralyzed by the idea of doing something.

A perfectionist believes that they can never be good enough. They consider any mistake they make to be an indication of their value as a person and therefore no mistake is permissible. They seek to avoid shame and judgment by being perfect.

Successful professionals are typically not perfectionists, although they may be people who hold themselves and others to high standards. The hesitation and over-analysis that is common to perfectionists does not help them to advance in a profession.

What Perfectionism Looks Like

Perfectionists are often chronic procrastinators. They spend so much time preparing for a task that they never get to the task. The anxiety surrounding their fear of making a mistake is disempowering, so they often feel unable to proceed with their work.

Perfectionists may be aware that their perfectionism is a disadvantage to them, but they consider it the price they have to pay to be successful. Perfectionists hold others to high standards, too, and can be very critical of them. But even though they are quick to criticize, they have a hard time accepting criticism, which can stop them from moving on with their work.

Perfectionism is a big de-motivator. Perfectionists can be reluctant to try new things because they are afraid that they won’t be able to live up to their own standards when they do it. And, if they do try something new, they will often abandon it quickly. The mistakes that anyone is bound to make when learning a skill are so painful to perfectionists that they will quit before they gain mastery. As a consequence, they never enjoy practicing the skill, be it speaking a language, playing an instrument, or participating in a sport.

Because perfectionists are so risk-averse, they rarely are able to innovate or be creative. They have all-or-nothing thinking, and won’t do anything if they can’t devote themselves to it totally. They are often hiding the fact that they are imposters.

How to Overcome Perfectionism

Many of the ways of overcoming perfectionism have to do with recognizing that it is a hindrance, not a help, in achieving your goals. If your goal is to do an excellent job in a presentation for work, being obsessed with every little detail stands in your way rather than helping you.

If you are overwrought over things that are out of your control, you aren’t completing things that are in your control. If you are focused on past errors, you aren’t working on tasks that can actually move you toward your goals. So step back, look at the big picture, and put perfectionism in its place.

Another approach to overcoming perfectionism is to heal the parts of you that causes it. Perfectionists are weak on self-acceptance and self-compassion. To overcome perfectionism, learn to love yourself in all your imperfect glory. Honor the work that you do, even if it is less than perfect.

Honour your commitment to high standards, but don’t let your failure to meet them make you feel unworthy. Treat mistakes as lessons you can learn from. Let go of the personal hurt you feel over them. Be analytical about them, freeing yourself from the impact they have over your feelings of self-worth. Enjoy your successes and victories. Celebrate them. Let your successes, not your errors, define you to yourself.

Are You Scared Of Failure?

Fear of failure is an irrational fear that you will not succeed that has so much power over you that it can stop you from moving forward to achieve your goals. Since it paralyzes you from taking action to achieve your goals, it pretty much guarantees that you won’t meet them. So anyone who has a goal to meet or a dream to make come true needs to conquer any fear of failure that may be burdening them.

Inevitably if you are looking for a new job having been made redundant the question “what happens if I don’t find a new job?” is going to surface. So in this quite long post I want to look at what fear of failure looks like but also how to overcome that fear.

What Fear of Failure Looks Like

Fear of failure can stem from negative associations with failure that go back as far as childhood or it can arise after experiencing a harsh episode in which someone felt like a failure.

In the first case, where the fear of failure arises from a long time of feeling inadequate, people with a fear of failure feel a sense of shame at being inadequate or incompetent. Maybe a harsh parent or care-giver magnified small failures they had when they were growing up. Now, they are afraid to try new things or to challenge themselves to achieve success. They give up easily when they encounter a difficulty. They settle for ordinary, mediocre lives instead of reaching for higher opportunities.

In the second case, the fear of failure arises from an important negative experience. Someone may be fired, say, and that causes such trauma that they lack confidence to get another job or to try to pursue a challenging career. Or someone else may have a relationship end in a cruel and hurtful way, so that the result is a fear of moving forward to meet someone else and find love again. The reluctance to act is due to a fear that the painful event will be repeated.

In either case, people with fear of failure shy away from situations in which they don’t think they will be entirely successful. For them, failure isn’t a learning experience. Failure is a shameful experience that feels like the end of the world. As a consequence, they fail at something simply because they never try it. In that way, failure is inevitable; the fear has won.

Fear of failure can lead to other self-sabotaging efforts, such as procrastination and low self-esteem. People with fear of failure may avoid starting new projects, or may start them but then fail to follow through on them. Or sometimes they set out on a project but then subconsciously cause themselves to fail, as though they want to prove to themselves and others that they were right all along – that they would fail at their attempt.

Fear of failure can cause feelings of shame, disappointment, anger, frustration and confusion. And it can lead to physical symptoms, some of which can be pretty scary. You can experience breathing problems like shortness of breath or rapid breathing, stomach problems like nausea or diarrhea, as well as faintness, tremulousness, flushing and excessive perspiration. People experiencing fear of failure may feel an overwhelming, general sense of dread.

How to Overcome Fear of Failure

If you are experiencing serious, debilitating fear of failure, the kind that is destroying your life, you should seek the help of a mental health professional. For more manageable cases, there are some self-help steps that you can take to get your fear of failure under control.

A small group of loving, supportive friends or family members is very helpful when it comes to overcoming fear of failure. They can help you heal your wounds. They can point out the successful qualities that you have but ignore. And they can give you practical advice that helps you to succeed in more challenging environments than you are used to being in.

If you don’t already have people like that in your life, you can look out for support groups in your community. Another self-help step is to do something that you can be pretty sure that you will succeed at, and then build on that, starting with low-stress steps forward. A good singer can join a choir, and even volunteer to do solos. A good dressmaker can make some items for sale at a community or crafts sale, attaching a card with contact information in case the purchaser wants more. By doing something that you are good at, and putting yourself in the position to get some recognition for it, you start to build up your experiences of being a success.

Another way of attacking fear of failure is to analyze it. Discover what it is that you are actually afraid of. Are you afraid that if you ask your boss for a promotion, she will turn you down? Then prepare for the promotion. Document the contributions that you have made to the company. Compare your achievements to others in your role and in the role you seek. Do special projects or take on more responsibilities in anticipation of your request. Make yourself highly promotable. It increases your chances of getting promoted. If, after all that, you still don’t get the promotion, ask for an honest assessment why. Take the response seriously but not personally. The feedback may be what you need to go on to more success.

Finally, the most important means of self-help that you can engage in is the one that takes the most persistent work. That is, to change your relationship to failure. Instead of thinking of failure as a personal flaw that you should be ashamed of, think of it as a learning experience that can help you grow.
Learn to treat failure is a step along the path to success. Do what you are afraid of. You might, after all, succeed. If you succeed, use your success to change your mind about yourself. And if you do fail, examine what happens. Do you die? Do people you love die? In other words, so what if you fail?

Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Finally, to overcome fear of failure, think of what would happen if you didn’t do the thing you are afraid of. First, the thing wouldn’t get done. Second, the personal growth that you would experience by overcoming your fear of failure wouldn’t take place. And, third, the future as it would exist afterwards won’t exist. The world won’t have been changed in that direction. Are you willing to give your fear that much power? The world will be that much poorer for your contribution. You will be that much poorer for yielding to your fear. If that’s not what you want, don’t let it happen.

Your goals and dreams are as big and as powerful as your fear. Give your goals and dreams the upper hand. Let them conquer your fear.

Improving Your Relationships Online and Offline

We ALL do it. We are so busy and pressured to get everything done that we dash off an email without reading it through, checking the spelling, and so on. Or we make a comment, or what we think is a joke, in an email or on one of the social networks – only to find at the end of our plane flight that our boss has fired us. The young lady who made a racist tweet discovered to her cost that anything you say can and WILL be repeated or passed around online.

In this article, we will discuss some of the major trouble spots in online and offline communication, and how a few simple changes can lead to big results.

Email Relationships

One of the main issues with email is the lack of “tone” of voice that you would get from speaking to someone in person or on the phone. Email lacks the human touch. If you are working in a cubicle-based office where the people on your team are sitting right next to you but you always email, it might be time to get a bit chattier with them in the real world.

If what you need to discuss is something important that includes other people, by all means use email. Or, speak to them and then confirm via email what you understood to be the most important points and action steps.

Before hitting the SEND button, take the time to check over your email to be sure you are as clear as possible and that it is error-free. A good rule of thumb in any corporate communication is to never send an email you would be embarrassed to see posted online.

This is especially true of customer service replies. Customers are the lifeblood of most businesses. Unskillful replies can and do filter to the top of social networks all the time, perhaps tarnishing your reputation or that of your company forever.
One CEO made the mistake of emailing one employee he trusted that he would be offline for a couple of days to deal with some personal problems. When he returned, it was to his worst nightmare. Some of his “trusted employees” had stolen valuable assets, and a larger company was going after him in a hostile takeover bid.

Social Media Strategies

In terms of social media and online discussions, only contribute the bare minimum and never venture any personal information that might be used against you in some way.

If you feel you have something really helpful to say to others, join in. But don’t use the network as a soapbox to spout your own views. Every post or tweet should be about your customers, not you.

If you want to advance your career as an expert in your industry, don’t try to prove it by boasting about your skills and accomplishments. Your expertise will speak for itself when you give intelligent response to a person’s most pressing problems.

Finally, never “flame” anyone on a social network or discussion board, and do not respond in kind if you are. That would lower you to their level. The best thing is to ignore it. If you feel you can’t ignore the flame, simply say that everyone has their own perceptions. Remember, our relationships are as much about what we do as what we don’t do. Be courteous and polite to others and see what a difference it can make to all your business and online relationships.

How Authentic Are You Being? A Series of Reflective Exercises

In my last post here and in a series of posts on LindkedIn I have looked at the issue of “Being Authentic” and living more of the life that we want to.

You can read the posts here: (please note they will open in new windows so that you can come back to the exercises below when you have read them)

There are many benefits to living more authentically, including:

Creating a closer connection between your public face and your inner truths
Regaining your integrity, wholeness
Strengthening relationships
Building connections based on honest communication
Making you more sociable because you will be a lot less self-conscious or hiding behind a facade

This sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? So how can you start discovering your authentic self, either all over again, or perhaps for the first time ever?

We’ve included the following in a separate worksheet or you can answer these on a piece of paper directly from this report.

Here are three sets of exercises that can help:

Authenticity Exercise Set #1: Self-Assessment
Authenticity Exercise Set #2: Success Strategies
Authenticity Exercise Set #3: Learning to Say No and Mean It

Work your way through them in as honest a manner as possible. Use the three plain text files we have created for these exercises to type up you answers, or print out blank ones and use as the basis for a journal to help you work on being more authentic in all areas of your life.

Authenticity Exercise Set #1: Self-Assessment

In what areas of your life do you experience the most disconnect from your true feelings? At work, in your marriage, etc.
What stops you from being authentic in these particular areas of your life?
What will help you make changes in these areas?
What gets in the way of you making changes in these areas?
What is one aspect of your personality that you would like to develop in order to become more authentic?
What is one step you can take today to move forward with your goal in Question 5 that will help you develop your authenticity?

Authenticity Exercise Set #2: Success Strategies

There are six main areas you can concentrate on which can help you become a more authentic person.
1. Express Yourself – Consider different responses and choose the one that is healthiest for you.
2. Accept Imperfection – Realize everyone makes mistakes and it is not the end of the world.
3. Share a Burden – Write a letter; make a call; see a friend so you do not feel so alone.
4. Look Forward, Not Back – Don’t beat yourself up over the past, but take steps for a better future.
5. Face Your Inner Truth – Identify areas where you feel a disconnect and try to make positive changes.
6. Ask for Help – Talk to friends, family, or a health professional.
In looking over this list of six strategies, which area would be the easiest for you to start working on?
What is one step you can take in this area to make a change?
Identify which area would be the hardest for you to work on. Why?
What is one step you can take today in this area to make a change for the better that will lead to you living a more authentic life?

Authenticity Exercise Set #3: Learning to Say No and Mean It

Here are some of the best ways to learn to say no, and mean it, without damaging relationships or feeling bad about your response:

Make eye contact
Use a firm tone of voice
Keep your no simple and brief
Don’t apologize
Don’t make excuses
Don’t worry about being disliked

Keep a journal of your progress in saying no and meaning it, and without feeling guilty about it.

Take the time to complete these sets of exercises, and you should soon see real progress in your ability to connect or re-connect with your authentic self.

Are You Living A Lie?

Here’s a quick quiz for you. Answer honestly. Do you feel:

Like you are constantly hiding behind a mask?
Worried that others will not like you?
That if you say no, you are a bad person and will be letting everyone down?
Trapped in a life that does not seem to be your own?
Like you are always comparing yourself to others, with them on top and you on the bottom?
As if you’re finding yourself not good enough, no matter how hard you try?
Afraid that if your boss, co-workers, spouse or children found out “X” about you, they would never look at you in the same way again?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions, then the likely truth is that you are living a lie.

You are not the only one. It is an easy trap to fall into and can be a deep and difficult one to climb out of. But the effort can be well worth it if the result is a happier, healthier you.

Reasons Why We Could Be Living a Lie

It seems as if almost from the moment we are born, we have a certain role in the family with a certain set of expectations, both spoken and unspoken. Our family and the wider world is telling us who we are supposed to be rather than allow us to express who we really are. Our parents want us to be happy, of course, but we just might not have within us what it takes to be a doctor or lawyer, get accepted to their prestigious alma mater, or follow in their career footsteps.

On the other hand, our parents might have low expectations for us; maybe there’s never been a college graduate in the family, or they did just fine working in a hardware store all their lives and that should be enough for you too.

We get a range of messages about how we are supposed to do, think, and be. Children should be seen and not heard; we must never waste food; we should always clean our plates. Over time, these habits become second nature to us. However, they are not necessarily healthy or helpful if they lead to, for example, being terrified of speaking in public or being vastly overweight.

When we go to school, we might have a teacher who is never satisfied no matter how hard we try. Or we might be told we are not good at X and so we should not even bother to try. We might be bullied over the way we look, dress, speak, or even for being too smart or too stupid at school. Rather than get encouragement or support from the adults who influence our lives, we are told to ‘man up’ or be more ‘ladylike.’

There are now more opportunities for both men and women to defy traditional expectations, but the truth is that we often internalize various unhelpful attitudes and actions as normal and therefore judge ourselves as abnormal or less than perfect if we wish to live our lives differently.

The peer pressure and parental pressure can soon result in us constructing a mask of the ‘perfect’ child, sibling, spouse and so on. As the pressure builds from outside to conform, your own authentic self begins to feel trapped and miserable, like a caged tiger the zoo pacing back and forth, longing to be free.

If you have been living a lie in order to please others, you owe it to yourself to start taking action to live a more authentic life in which your true self can shine through.

Here and on LinkedIn I will be taking a closer look at how we can be more authentic and true to ourselves.