Welcome to the mind set then to our podcast, I am your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button. Since you never miss another podcast episode today, we're going to be talking about how to get over this bullshit thing that we call perfectionism.

And what's interesting is I'm actually going to be going back five years, almost five years in five days will be five years since I originally did this podcast episode. And so I went back and I looked at my notes and I was like, I'm going to redo this and I'm going to do it in a different way. And I'm going to put some stuff in there that I've learned over the past five years. Because when I look at where my life was five years ago, it wasn't bad, but it was nowhere near as good as it is now.

And I've noticed some things about myself that have shifted in this time. And today we're going to be talking about how to focus on progress over perfectionism. And I've dealt with perfectionism hard core. And the reason why is because I demand greatness for myself. Like I demand that I do well in everything that I do in anything less than holy crap, this is amazing for me a lot of times is fully unacceptable.

But to live a life that way is pretty hard.

And the reason why is because if you start to build that, like I want to say, that's first off, it's OK to have really high standards, but it's not OK to not start and do things that you want to do or not release the things that you want to or the craft that you want to do and bring your light to the world because of this fear of perfectionism.

And yes, I said fear of perfectionism. And I'm going to talk today about how fear is. Actually, every fear that you have is actually masked in your perfectionism.

And we'll dive into that. And here's the thing that I'll know. I'll tell you that I notice I've worked with tens of thousands of people, every single person thinks are perfectionists. It seems in some sort of way they feel like a perfectionist.

So if you feel like you're a perfectionist and certain things join the club, we all feel like we're perfectionists. And I'm going to tell you why that is first off. And I'm going to tell you why that is all B.S. And I'm going to give you the three things that I've learned about perfectionism, how to get past it. But ultimately, the first thing that I've learned is that a lot of life is viewed as two steps forward or three steps forward, one step back.

It's really, really hard to be perfect in every single thing that you do. It's really hard to be perfect in your workouts. It's really hard to be perfect in your diet. It's really hard to be perfect in making sure that you do your daily routines every single day. Now, I'm not saying it makes it OK to fail and to and to start to give up. What I'm saying, though, is that you have to realize, as you are a human, there are certain times where you will fuck up and that's OK.

But you have to what really matters is when you do mess up, how you respond to that messing up.

So let me give an example.

Let's say that you're trying to get on a brand new diet and you crushed the diet for six days. And then one day you succumb to the the almighty Snickers, the craving and you have a Snickers. You can look at that in two different ways. You can go, oh, my gosh, I had a Snickers. Now I'm going to judge myself and feel that about myself. I'm going to talk shit about myself. I'm going to say really negative things in my own head.

Rob, why did you do this? You're always screwing up, you screw up and everything that you do and that can literally take eating a frickin Snickers and make it into a downward spiral that I actually demotivate myself from doing what it is I need to do that's not constructive, any sort of way.

Or I can look at and say, all right, Rob, let's have a real quick meeting. You and I, me, myself and I are going to have a meeting. You messed up. All right, here's the thing. You're going to mess up sometimes I still love you, but this is unacceptable. We're not going to do this again. But give yourself some grace. We're going to get past this because sometimes we have a little bit of weakness that's still inside of us.

And that's not something that's all that bad. What I'm saying to you is if you have six and a half really good days and then you have one messed up, look at the six and a half really good days and don't look at the mess of as much. Now, I'm not saying ignore the mess up in mess up once a week, but what I'm saying is when you do mess up and you're not perfect, it's OK.

You're not to be perfect every single day, and when you think of it that way, you're like, OK, I know some people are listening to this and your shoulders just like went down a little bit because you're like, oh, my God, that makes me feel so much better, because now I realize it's about progress, not perfection. If I'm doing really good for six and a half days and I mess up once, I'm still six and a half days of progress.

And so it is six and a half steps forward, maybe one step back. But if you do the math, that's still five and a half steps forward. Right.

And if I can just continue to do that every single week, I'm going to see a lot of results. And what happens is when you're at the beginning of trying to make massive shifts in your life, it is natural for you to mess up a little bit. So you're not going to be perfect. But I want you to focus on the progress that you are making, not the perfection that you're trying to achieve.

Because here's the thing.

You can mess up and you can either focus on the progress that you've had in the six and half days that you've done really well, or you can focus on the one frickin Snicker's and you can either go down a downward spiral or you can start to rebuild yourself and build yourself back up by looking at the progress that you've made.

That's the thing that's interesting about a lot of life is a couple steps forward, two steps forward, three steps forward and maybe a half a step back.

But as long as you're going in the right direction, you will get better.

You have to learn to forgive yourself and you have to learn to focus on the progress that you've made versus beating yourself up and talking about how weak you are in judging that moment of weakness.

When you make mistakes, make adjustments.

That's the thing that you have to realize about that and here's a tip, don't use perfectionism as a reason not to start right or a reason not to finish.

So if you're going OK, you know, I did six and a half days really good. You know, those six and a half days were great. Then I screwed up. Don't allow that screw up to make you not work out tomorrow or make you eat another Snickers tomorrow or, you know, have something that holds you back tomorrow. Look at it and go, OK, I messed up. Now I've got to make adjustments. Don't use perfectionism as a reason.

No one not to start and no to a reason not to finish. Always look at your growth instead of your small failures. So just realize that No. Two second things I've learned about perfectionism is achievement of your goals. And you've heard me say this achievement of your goals is never some big, massive event in your life. Achievement of your goals is just a bunch of baby steps getting one percent better every single day.

And here's the thing that's interesting. I did the math on this because I realized that everybody's wrong when everybody says, hey, be one percent better every single day. And I've said this before, but I started I kind of had a moment of awakening and I did the math. If I say, OK, I'm going to get one percent better today and then tomorrow in the next day, in the next day, that means in a year I'm going to be three hundred and sixty five percent better.

Right. Three point six, five times better than I was at the beginning of the year.

That's actually completely false. And the reason why is because that one percent better will compound on itself. And so when I did the math of what, one percent better is over a year, it's not three hundred and sixty five percent because if I'm one percent better than was yesterday, you've got to put that one percent better in today than I was yesterday and then the next day and put one percent better on top of that one percent better on top of that.

So it compounds the same way that if you compound interest, your money is going to compound on top of each other. It's the exact same when you're growth. You're not three hundred and sixty five percent better. You don't know what you actually are.

And if I do the math correctly, you are actually with the compounding of percentage three thousand seven hundred and seventy eight percent better. You are thirty seven point seven eight times better next year, 365 days from today than you are right now.

If you are just one percent better every single day.

If you're if I realize if you're not like a big math person on the big math person. So if you're not a big math person, you might be like, I don't know if he's talking about, OK, just realize if you just focus on getting one percent better every single day in a year, you're going to be way better. That's all that matters. So what I want you to focus on is just the achievement of small, little, teeny, tiny goals to get better.

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Don't worry about knocking out of the park every single day. Don't worry about being perfect every single day. Just just worry about when I go to bed today. I want to be one percent better. When I put my head on the pillow, I'm going to ask myself every single day, did I get one percent better today?

And if I did, it's pretty damn good day, because I know that if I get one percent better every single day in a year, I'm going to be way better in two years.

I may be way, way, way better. In five years. I won't even be recognizable to my current self.

And that's a beautiful thing. So number two is to focus on the baby steps.

And number three is this. And this is going to be surprising for a lot of people. Perfectionism does not exist. Perfectionism is a fear that you are trying to cover up. Perfectionism is not real.

Let me tell you why. Because most people see, oh, I'm a I'm a perfectionist, so I need to make sure I put I haven't let's say you're a painter, for instance, right. You're a painter and you've never had your art show, but you've been painting for a while and you're like, I really want to have an art show, but my paintings aren't perfect yet. They're close, but they're not perfect yet. Once they're perfect, then I'm going to have my art show.

If you take a step back from that, what you actually realize is that it's not that your paintings aren't perfect yet is that you're using perfectionism as a mask to cover up a fear that's actually below that. And that fear could be a lot of different things.

But maybe you're actually truly afraid that if I have an art show, what if I went and had an art show and nobody bought?

What how I feel about myself, and so instead of going in actually, quote unquote, failing, which you might see it as a failure, I'm not even going to do it because that would scare the shit out of me to to quote unquote fail at what I truly want to do in the world would scare the crap out of me.

I can't even think about what that would be like for me. So I'm going to take a step back and I'm not even going to do it, not even going to worry about it, because it's not perfect yet. That's why I'm not doing because it's not perfect yet.

Or maybe you want to have an art show, but it's not quote unquote perfect yet. But in reality, you are just afraid that if you had an art show, your mom would show up and be like, yeah, this is just a waste of your time.

You should have spent your time doing something different. Or maybe you're afraid that your friends will like your stuff or maybe just afraid that everybody won't like your stuff.

And so it's easier to just create in silence and solitude where no one else can see your stuff than it is to show your stuff and hear other people's opinions.

So you say, oh, I'm a perfectionist, though, when the perfectionism is complete bullshit. And what really it is, is it's a fear of other people's opinions. It's a fear of failing at the one thing that you truly want to do. It's a fear of rejection.

It's a fear of what if nobody bought the stuff that I feel is literally a piece of my soul, how would I feel while I'd feel like shit? So I'd rather just say I'm not done yet.

They're not perfect yet. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Perfectionism doesn't exist. Perfectionism is a mask for some fear.

So if you feel like you're a perfectionist, when I ask if you're a perfectionist in the beginning of this episode and you said yes, what are you actually disguising?

What fear are you trying to cover?

Is it the fear of rejection? Is it the fear of failure? Is it the fear of other people's opinions?

Is it the fear of failing, quote unquote, failing? I don't see anything as a failure until you give up. That's why I keep saying, quote unquote, is it the fear of, quote unquote, failing at the one thing that you truly want to do? And so instead of stepping out into the unknown. You stay back and you say, I'm just not ready yet, when in reality you're just lying to yourself and you've been lying to yourself, you're not a perfectionist.

Everybody thinks you're a perfectionist. Sorry to have to to let the secret out. Everybody thinks you're perfectionists. You're not. I'm not. We're not.

I didn't start this idea idea for this podcast in January of twenty fifteen in my podcast. My very first podcast come out until August. So we have January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, August. Twenty fifth is the very first episode, eight months.

I called myself a perfectionist in the podcast episodes. We're not good enough yet. I had to keep working on them to keep crafting them. They weren't perfect and I kept telling myself all this bullshit excuses and none of them were actually true. I was just terrified of what my friends and family would say if they saw that I decided to be a speaker. Right. I have friends that have seen me party and do drugs and black out and do some crazy shit.

What would they think of me knowing me from high school and from college now I want to be a motivational speaker.

That doesn't make any sense. So I was worried about those. And so what I said was it's not perfect yet. So for eight months, I didn't put it out. For eight months, I stalled, installed, installed. And then one day I was just like, you know what?

I don't care what other people say, because this is ultimately what I want to do. And if people want to judge me, people can judge me. And if people want to not love what I'm doing, they can follow what I'm doing. And that's OK.

And what's interesting about it, if you go back and listen, like if you can go back and listen to my first episodes, they were fucking terrible in my opinion. Like, I still keep them up because I want people to be able to hear them. So I don't know what what podcasting platform you're listening to, but some of them, you can't go all the way back. Some of them you can go all the way back. I keep them up even though I can't listen to them.

I hate the way they sound because it doesn't sound like my true voice, but I can't find my true voice until I've put up 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, almost 900 episodes now.

Now I feel like I found my voice, but I would have never found my voice.

Photos said, Oh, but it's not perfect yet, right?

I had one of the most life changing things for me in my podcast is my very first negative review.

And I remember it made me so pissed off because I had so many amazing, great reviews on iTunes and all these people said all these great things that I got one negative review of my very first negative review. I was so mad.

But then I read it and I went, maybe she's right. Maybe this is actually my issue. And what she said was for someone who's a motivational speaker, he has the most unmotivated voice I've ever heard. Something along those lines in the first thought thing that I thought was fuck her like, fuck that lady. But then I went, huh? Does she have a point? And I went back and listen to I was like me. And my voice inflection is not what it should be.

I was way more monotone than I should be. I wasn't as on point as I should be. And I she took that opinion that I was so afraid of getting in, became better from it. And you could hear my voice change. You can hear the way I've done this change as time has gone on.

But that would have never happened had I never put myself out there. And so what I want you to realize is this perfectionism that you think that you have is not real. It's all just a fear.

What the fear is, I don't know, that's what you need to start to come and soul search and figure out what it is, start to figure out what that what that thing is for you start to work through it and then just put it out there, put your art out there, put your music out there, put your your YouTube channel out there, put whatever it is that you're afraid of doing.

Put it out there. It could be art. It could be just, you know, creating a podcast. It could be anything, whatever it is for you put it out there because it will never be perfect. Perfection doesn't exist. There's absolutely no way that perfection of perfection will ever exist. So why even waste your time with it?

What I want you to get from it is this. Don't focus on being perfect, focus on progressing and everything that you do.

And once again, if you just get one percent better at your craft or whatever it is you want to do, being a parent, being happier, meditating, if you get one percent better every single day in a year, you're going to be light years ahead of where you are now. In five years, you're going to be a completely different person with a completely different life.

Don't worry about being perfect, just worry about progressing. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

If you love this episode, please show someone that you know love. Please go ahead and share it on Instagram stories and tag minut rubbed out jr rbd alj.

Ah, and I'm going to leave you the same way. I leave you every single episode, make it your mission, make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.