756: Perfectionism: Solutions for all Five Types with Stephen Guise

Pete Mockaitis
Stephen, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Stephen Guise
Thanks, Pete. It’s good to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom, and I’m also curious to learn about your Chipotle habit. How bad is it? And what’s the story?

Stephen Guise
Well, I’m currently seeing someone for that. No, I eat there probably five plus times a week. It’s pretty decent food as far as fast food goes. Like, they use good ingredients. They do put oil in the rice. I’m a bit of a health nut but it’s good enough for me and it’s delicious.

Pete Mockaitis
It is. It is. I get the salad, and with the double meat, and I feel pretty darn good about it in terms of the health profile, what it’s delivering and no tortilla, no rice.

Stephen Guise
Yeah, that sounds like a healthy choice. I don’t always get the salad but it depends on if I’m bulking, trying to put on bulk muscle width.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, when you’re encoding.

Stephen Guise
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you, bro.

Stephen Guise
Yeah, bud.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I’m excited to talk to you about perfectionism, and your book is called How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism. All those sound like great things. Could you tell us maybe a particularly surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made along the way when it comes to researching perfectionism?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, I found out that everybody has it, because when people talk about perfectionism, it’s generally in a pretty narrow way. I think people talk about it in terms of performance quality but it’s actually a massive topic with different subsets and there are different forms of perfectionism. For example, one that I thought of that I don’t even think is in other literature is the idea of a perfect goal, like, in terms of exercise, you might only accept 30 minutes or else it’s not good enough. That’s perfectionism.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you want to have a perfect goal in that, it’s like, “Well, if I can’t do 30 minutes of exercise, just forget it. I’m not even going to bother doing anything.” Like that?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. I have been guilty of that. My newfound belief is that one minute is infinitely more than zero minutes per simple division, and that encourages me sometimes to do a little bit which is better than nothing. So, okay. Well, then I’d love to hear some wisdom there in terms of, fundamentally, okay, perfectionism, we’ve all got at least a little bit inside of us. Your book How to Be an Imperfectionist, what’s kind of the big idea or main thesis here?

Stephen Guise
The main idea is not to be perfectly imperfectionist. That’s kind of a tricky area. You can try to be perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn’t. So, the idea of being an imperfectionist is not to do it perfectly. It’s to be happier, healthier, and more productive with less stress because perfectionism is misattributed as excellence, quite often, when they’re actually separate concepts. You can strive for excellence. You can be awesome at your job without trying to do it perfectly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s expand upon this benefit here, being happier, healthier, more productive with less stress. That sounds lovely. Can you give us a perspective on just how much unhappiness, unhealthiness, unproductivity does perfectionism bring to us? Any stories or research or studies or anecdotes along these lines?

Stephen Guise
Quite a few of them, actually. We could start with the really dark stuff if you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, you have me intrigued. Let’s do it.

Stephen Guise
Sure, let’s start with death. So, there’s a study on 450 elderly people, and they found that those with perfectionistic tendencies were 51% more likely to die in the course of the six and a half years study, so that’s just like a general thing. And then there are numerous studies linking perfectionism to both depression and suicide, and even more studies finding that that risk has been underestimated.

If anyone is interested, they can look up Kurt Cobain. As many people know, he committed suicide. His quotes are just full of perfectionism. I think one of his quotes is, “I’m sorry that it was never enough,” or something to that extent. I found it really interesting in my research for the book. So, yeah, depression, suicide, death. Anorexia, I would say, is the poster child of perfectionism. One of the most difficult mental disorders to treat and, obviously, people die from that as well.

And then you have lighter things like just performance. There’s a study on 51 undergraduate women found that those who tested high in perfectionism, it was like a writing test where they were asked to re-word a passage as concisely as possible without losing the meaning. Those with perfectionism wrote passages that were “judged significantly poorer in quality” than subjects low in perfectionism. So, that speaks to the whole idea of perfectionism, “Well, at least you get excellence.” Not exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I’m curious, with that particular task, it might be, I don’t know, the stress of knowing, like, “Oh, but I really got to nail this,” or, “Remember that sense. Remember those words. Remember those words,” and these sort of missed the broader idea. I’m speculating here. So, yeah, at times, perfectionism reduces your performance.

We had Tom Curran, a researcher on perfectionism on the show, talking about how, in a number of studies, they just can’t find a correlation between perfectionism and performance. Like, sometimes it helps you a little bit but it hurts you such that it all kind of shakes out to be like, “No.” It’s a very different thing than striving for excellence, indeed.

Stephen Guise
It’s a very difficult thing to study as well because you’re relying on people’s impression of themselves, saying, like their perfectionistic tendencies. I think there’s a lot of difficulty in studying something like it. But I do have a good quote that I wish I had put in my book, and that is, “The more you worry about performance, the less you can focus on performing.” And I think that gets to the heart of what I’m saying. It doesn’t, generally speaking, help you to worry about how you’re performing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is true.

Stephen Guise
Because it only distracts you from the process.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. I think, as I reflect on my own experiences, sometimes that worry can be a bit useful in terms of, “Ooh, I better prepare now so it motivates me to stop procrastinating or goofing around and get down to business.” But, yeah, if I’m worrying about how I’m doing while I’m doing the thing, that’s really bad news.

Stephen Guise
Yeah. A good example of that is basketball. If you think about a hot shooter versus a cold shooter, the cold shooter is much more worried about his next shot because he doesn’t want to let the team down. He’s thinking about how he’s missed all of his previous shots. The hot shooter is much more relaxed and confident that he thinks he’s going to make his next shot. So, you have a big difference in them worrying about their performance, and the one who’s less worried is going to perform better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. Well, so let’s talk about how does one become not perfectionistic, how does one become an imperfectionist. And I don’t know, you’ve got five subsets of perfectionism. Is it helpful to take that as a route to the anecdote? Or, how would you like to proceed?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, we could do that. You want to start with like unrealistic expectations?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, what’s that all about?

Stephen Guise
So, expectations are a really interesting thing in life. I like to say that we should have generally high expectations for our lives, be an optimist, but it can become very problematic when you have specific high expectations, in which case, like perfectionists, they have unrealistic expectations, and that’s why it’s correlated with depression because they’re always underneath where they expect and hope to be. That’s depressing.

So, someone who struggles with this will have the mindset of like, “I will never have bad days and everything will come easy to me,” so that when struggle inevitably comes, as it does for us all, it throws them off balance, and it can affect them emotionally, which can spiral from there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess the prescription there is, I don’t know, stop having unrealistic expectations. And, maybe, in practice, how does one do that?

Stephen Guise
Yeah. So, we touched on the perfect goals, that’s a big one. I wrote a book called Mini Habits, which is about setting very low goals, which is a low expectation, such as one push-up a day. That’s the one that changed my life. For example, I tried ten years the other way of like getting motivated and doing the minimum 30-minute workout. It was only when I lowered my expectations to “I’m only going to do one push-up or more a day but I am going to show up every day.”

That’s what changed my life. And it’s crazy but that’s what happens when you lower your expectations and allow yourself to shatter them and develop positive associations with whatever you’re trying to change, whether it’s exercise or your relationship with your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. And you’ve got quite the story with The One Push-up Challenge. We’ll definitely link to that on your website, so inspiring stuff. Okay. So, swap out the unrealistic expectations for a tiny expectation, and you may, surprisingly, end up with fantastic results. So, how about the rumination?

Stephen Guise
Rumination is focusing on past events, namely negative past events, and it’s often defined by self-talk, how you think about your past. A ruminator will say things like, “Oh, I should have done this. Oh, I should have done that,” and that is just loaded with guilt and shame. A solution for that is you can change that “should have” to “could have” which is a lot less heavy and it focuses more on opportunity than the guilt and weight of what you think is a poor decision.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, could have. And it’s funny, that’s literally two letters of shift there, and yet should is like “Aargh, I failed, I screwed up,” I don’t know, even depending on your language or your operating, you’d be like, “I have done wrong. I have sinned. I have made a grievous error and mistake,” versus, “Oh, hey, that’s another way things could’ve gone, and I prefer it that way, so, okay, noted. That feels a lot better.”

Stephen Guise
Yeah, it’s a lot better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about the subset, the need for approval?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, this is a pretty common one people have. A lot of people care about what others think of them, and I think that’s somewhat normal, but it can get to a point where it’s problematic. And the solution I give for this one is a little strange, I call it rebellion practice. And it boils down to just embarrassing yourself a little bit in public, so like singing in public. You could just lie down in a public space for 30 seconds. People are going to judge you, they’re going to say, “What’s wrong with that person?”

Pete Mockaitis
Or, be worried, “Are you okay? Do you need a paramedic?”

Stephen Guise
“Send an ambulance, yeah.” But these things don’t hurt anyone, and you can wear a fanny pack.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s hilarious. It is.

Stephen Guise
I know, it’s a funny-looking thing, walk in slow motion.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, power walk with gusto as though you had hiking sticks but you don’t, or maybe bring the hiking sticks.

Stephen Guise
Or, maybe a more reasonable one, just talk to strangers, which is uncomfortable but anything that exposes you to the judgment of others is good because the things we’re exposed to, we get used to. So, someone who needs approval, they’re constantly worrying and thinking, “Oh, what if this, this, this?” When they just kind of put themselves out there and find that they can be embarrassed and that it’s actually okay, and maybe it doesn’t need to be embarrassing. The more they can practice that, the better they’re going to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And we had a guest talk about just putting…there’s an exercise where you just put a big dot on your face somewhere with like a permanent marker, and so it’s just there, and you know it’s there and other people can see it’s there, and so then you just have that practice. It’s also interesting to see who lets you know versus who doesn’t. Boy, this brings me back to high school. I don’t know why, but I recall we competed in the Future Problem-Solvers World Championship. It’s mostly the US plus Canada and a few folks from Korea, but three countries make it the world championship.

And I think we were surprised, we didn’t realize we had to prepare like a sketch of our solution, so like, “Oh, what are we doing? We have no good ideas.” We sort of spent all of our good creative energy doing the actual problem-solving and now we have to present it. And so, I remember we just did something so dumb. I think one of us was barking out orders like a drill sergeant or something in front of the judges and the other students who were competing, and we got a number of looks, like, “What is your deal? What is going on with you?”

And, afterwards, I couldn’t explain it. Wow, Stephen, you’re really taking me back. It takes 20 years to explain that moment. But part of me thought, “You know, somehow, I think, the fact that we totally humiliated ourselves is healthy and good, and we ought to do this from time to time. I don’t know why but it just seems like this is nourishing something inside of me.” And now I know, it’s helping turn down the volume on the need for approval and, thus, making me all the more free and at peace.

Stephen Guise
Because, prior to that, you were maybe walking in this perfectionistic sort of image.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe.

Stephen Guise
I don’t know the context but a lot of people kind of walk around in these very light perfectionistic shells that they’re scared to break the shells so they play it safe.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s true. And it’s sort of like the self-fulfilling prophecy associated with which opportunities you take on, and because you don’t take them on, you cannot be enriched and expanded and stretched from it. And maybe you’re right, I think we got eighth in the world was wherever we placed, and I felt pretty great about that even though the perfectionist might demand number one.

Stephen Guise
They might.

Pete Mockaitis
But eighth in the world is like, “That’s pretty sweet. I’ll take it.” Oh, it’s really just three countries but…Okay, so we’ve got a couple subsets left. The concern over mistakes, let’s hear it.

Stephen Guise
That is, basically, “If I messed this up, my life will be ruined.” That’s kind of the thought behind this subset. There’s really, one of my favorite stories is related to this, it’s Heather Dorniden. It’s a very popular YouTube video, you can look it up. But basically, Heather was in a 600-meter race, and she was favored to win. So, the race begins and she’s doing great, she’s in the lead, not by much but she’s in the lead.

And this 600-meter race is three laps, it’s basically a sprint. But Heather trips and falls down into last place. And at this point, you hear the announcer is saying, like, “Oh, well, at least her teammate is doing well.” But Heather gets up pretty quickly, she’s still behind a ton because this is a sprint, this is a race, and she starts catching up. And long story short, Heather actually wins the race, which is ridiculous and obviously inspiring.

But I think I took something different from it than most people would. To me, I’m looking at the fact that, “Wow, the person who made the biggest mistake in this race still won the race.” And, to me, that is a big solution for concern over mistakes. The fact that you can make mistakes and still win because everyone does make mistakes whether or not they’re concerned about it, but you can still win despite making mistakes. Meaning, you don’t have to fear them as much as you might think.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, I like that a lot, indeed, because I think most people say, “Oh, yeah, that’s inspiring. So, pick yourself up and be resilient and never give up.” But to truly highlight the notion specifically that when the mistake-maker is the victor, and I think that’s like…isn’t there a famous Michael Jordan commercial with like, “I’ve missed so many shots…” and he’s like, “And I succeed because I failed over and over again”?

And so, okay, that’s kind of inspiring for whatever you’re selling. But I think it’s also true when people say, “Oh, you know, failure is a learning opportunity,” and I go, “Okay.” Sometimes that feels like a cheap consolation prize that’s insincere, sometimes it could feel like that in the moment even though it’s true. It’s intriguing to note that your mistakes truly can provide you with unique wisdom that gives you an edge. So, falling down and recovering, or just learning some painful lessons that have you on guard effectively for next time. Yeah, that’s cool, we can still win with mistakes.

Stephen Guise
Yeah, I think the perfectionistic path is this notion that there’s one path. It’s blowing out the other runners in the race and winning, that’s the only good thing. But real life is full of many different paths, some of which are quite painful, but even those painful ones have value, even those mistakes have value. As you said, you can learn from them and you can win despite them.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And then the final fifth subset, doubts about actions. Can you tell us about this?

Stephen Guise
Yeah. So, this one has to do with projecting, which we all do all the time. It’s thinking about an action and what the results of it might be, what it might entail. So, doubts about action generally involves negative projections. So, for someone about to make a cold call, they’re likely going to think, “I’m going to call this person, they’re going to cuss me out, and they’re going to hang up.” That’s probably what they deal with quite a bit. It’s a reasonable doubt to have.

However, it’s best to test these because they’re very often not accurate. So, one thing you can do if you struggle with doubts about actions is write down what you’re projecting will happen, force yourself to do it anyway, and then write down what actually happened, and compare your projection with what happened. And I think you’re going to notice a lot of interesting differences between your projection and the reality.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Yeah, and to see that happen over and over and over again is going to make a real impression on that. Well, these are some great tools. I’d love it if you could share with us one of your favorite stories. Maybe readers have written them to you and have told you some cool tales with regard to, “Hey, I was struggling with perfectionism and was harmful in these ways, but I did X, Y, Z, and I have seen great results over here.”

Stephen Guise
Sure. So, one email I received, I couldn’t find the email so I can’t be super specific, but I promise I did receive the email. A guy was struggling with his sales job, and then he started a mini habit of one cold call a day, one sales call a day, and he reported back to me that he went over a million dollars in sales, and was one of the top salesmen at the company now because he committed to that imperfect little daily goal, and that’s pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool.

Stephen Guise
I’ve actually done the same in my professional career. I’ve written four books now which have done very well. A lot of people might not know that I did them by writing 50 words a day. That’s about one paragraph which, like any serious writer, that’s embarrassing, but, hey, four books. That seemed to work.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool.

Stephen Guise
And then a really cool story, just something that I saw. I was on a cruise and I went to the gym, and I saw this woman working out, and she had a full cast on her leg, and I was like, “Wow, here’s this woman working out harder than I am, and her leg is broken.” That’s just really cool. Obviously, so many people would not even think about working out with a broken leg but she still has her upper body.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good. That’s good. And you’ve got a piece about how we look at our floors versus ceilings in terms of sort of high-performing moments and low-performing moments. Can you expand upon that?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, that relates to perfectionistic goals too. A ceiling is the type of goal a lot of people will set where they’re…

Pete Mockaitis
As good as it could possibly be.

Stephen Guise
Yeah, right. Perfect. So, for someone exercising for an hour, or selling ten units in a day, that might be their ceiling. Whereas, a floor is a starting point, and that’s the key difference. A ceiling, you hit the ceiling and you’re happy. But if you don’t hit the ceiling, you’re not happy if you’re a perfectionist. If, instead, you take an imperfectionist look at it, you’re going to be looking at your floor more closely than the ceiling. You’re going to say, “I’m going to at least do this much, this small amount, and then who knows where my ceiling is. I’m going to take it from here.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, Stephen, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Stephen Guise
Yes, the binary mindset. So, I’ll use giving a speech for this example because it’s something a lot of people fear. When you’re about to give a speech, you’re going to generally think of it as a one-to-ten situation. A one being you stumble over your words before passing out on stage. That would not be a very good speech. A ten being you actually…your skin begins to glow a little bit as you’re speaking, and you deliver the best sentences anyone’s ever heard, and then you get a standing ovation and snow falls or something.

So, you have this whole spectrum of disaster to perfect. That’s generally how people think going into a speech, and they’re obviously trying to be more towards the perfect end of that spectrum. So, the binary mindset changes that dynamic. It changes the one to a zero and the ten to a one. So, a zero is failure and a one is success. It’s like digital versus analog. If anyone knows about TV reception, a digital signal on a TV, it’s either going to come through perfectly or it’s not going to come through. Analog, you can get those slight fuzzies.

So, the reason the binary mindset is so effective is it changes your idea of victory. The one-to-ten person, they’re going to think of victory as maybe, if they’re a perfectionist, maybe only ten is good enough, or maybe nine or above is good enough. There’s a lot of opportunities to fail in there which can affect their performance while they’re giving the speech because maybe they do slip up, and then they’re like, “Oh, crap, I’m at a five,” and then they’re not thinking about what they’re trying to say, what they’re trying to deliver to the audience. But a one or a zero is like, “Well, I showed up, I’m giving the speech, this is a win. If it does go poorly, I’m going to learn from it. If it does go well, that’s great.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Zero to one, with the one being realistic, like, “The speech happened. I said the words. People heard the words. All right, speech accomplished.”

Stephen Guise
And it’s really useful for a perfectionist because it kind of gives them that idea of perfect victory with the one being the “perfect victory.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, I came across this quote yesterday. I don’t know that it’s my favorite but it’s my favorite right now. There’s a singer named Jane Marczewski known as Nightbirde, she recently passed away from cancer at 31 years old. Tragic. She was on America’s Got Talent. And she’s really talented. She blew the judges away. And Simon Cowell was getting choked up as he was talking about her performance, and he paused. And as he paused, she delivered this bomb to him. She said, “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” That just blew me away, like, with her situation. And obviously it connects very well with the idea of being an imperfectionist.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, powerful. Thank you. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Stephen Guise
Yeah, there’s a journal study, and they studied actions versus thoughts in terms of how it affects our emotions because we all struggle with emotions at times, and sometimes we would like to change our emotions from sad to happy. They found that…oh, by the way, a journal study is just a study where people self-report, like, “I did this today and this is how it made me feel,” that sort of thing.

So, they found that actions were responsible for emotional change 66% of the time versus only 33% for thoughts. So, that’s meaningful to me because I’m very much an action first kind of person instead of trying to think your way too much through problems. It’s often better just to get going in the direction you want to hit.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And so, when we’re talking about emotions, feeling happy versus sad and making a shift, well, now, I’m thinking about Tony Robbins’ power moves, beat your chest, say, “Yes! Yes! Yes! And I’ve changed my state.” So, I guess that’s one form of action. But it sounds like you’re talking about, specifically, how you feel about a situation or a problem. Is that fair to say?

Stephen Guise
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
So, taking an action toward resolving it will be better than thinking about, “Oh, what am I going to do?”

Stephen Guise
Yeah, like if you struggle with anxiety, this is a really big one. A lot of people will try to think themselves through it, like try to think through their anxious thoughts and feelings. It’s often better just to go work out, or go for a walk, or go to a sensory deprivation float tank.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah? I thought you’ll probably do a lot of thinking in there.

Stephen Guise
Oh, yeah. It’s the most relaxing experience I’ve ever had. Highly recommended.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’ve been intrigued. I haven’t actually signed up for an appointment but I’ve been to the website like three times, like, “Oh, that might be interesting,” or terrifying. Not sure.

Stephen Guise
It’s pretty awesome. It’s very different. You might fall asleep, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Stephen Guise
Your Brain at Work by David Rock. He just talks about the brain and how it works.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Stephen Guise
Scrivener. It’s a writing tool. I write my books in it. It just helps you to organize all your thoughts. The hardest thing about writing a book is organizing it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Stephen Guise
Exercise. Like, the benefits are crazy.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers; they Kindle-highlight it a bunch or quote it back to you frequently?

Stephen Guise
Well, I can give you the top highlight from my Imperfectionist book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it. Let’s bring it on.

Stephen Guise
That is, “Never forget this; it’s easier to change your mind and emotions by taking action than it is to change your actions by trying to think and feel differently.” Kind of relates to that study I talked about.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Stephen Guise
StephenGuise.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Stephen Guise
I do. It is, “Don’t care about results. Care about putting in the work. Don’t care about problems. Care about making progress despite them. Or, if you must fix something, focus on the solution. Don’t care about what other people think. Care about who you want to be and what you want to do. Care less about doing it right. Care more about doing it at all. Don’t care about failure. Care about success. Don’t care about timing. Care about the task.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Stephen, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you all the best with your books and adventures and imperfectionism.

Stephen Guise
Thank you, Pete. This is fun.