Perfectionism, Goal Setting, & Ownership

So, my students and I are coming up on our quarterly goal setting check-in and planning session where we’ll be taking a look at what we want to do and achieve for the 2nd half of the year.

Which makes today the perfect time to talk about a few things:

Perfectionism

Goal setting

&

Ownership

Wha? Ownership? You had me right up to that Stac 😀

(don’t worry, we’ll get there)

First: perfectionism.

I’mma gonna hit you with some facts you’ve heard me talk about before:

People are less likely to take even the small actions needed to accomplish a thing when they hold themselves to a standard of perfection.

Perfection makes it extremely unlikely that a person is even willing to consider adjusting their goal — even knowing it is unachievable based on the standard of perfection.

If a person is less likely to adjust their goal, and less likely to even take the steps needed to achieve the goal because they intrinsically know they’ll never achieve the perfection they seek… then they have an instant excuse.

And… beyond that instant excuse is a reason to start beating ourselves up  – mercilessly.  Feeling like a failure, blah blah blah… I’ve been there, I’m sure some of you have too.

I want to introduce you to perfectionism’s stealthy, evil twin.

Self-sabotage.

OOOH… yeah, self-sabotage is a nasty one.  And most of us do it, or have done it  – even if we weren’t aware of it at the time.

And self-sabotage is the perfect “flip side of the coin” to perfectionism.

See… most self-sabotage shows up as there was “SOME REASON” why we weren’t able to hit the mark… right?

What it really does though is it works hand-in-hand with perfectionism.

We set goals that are so unrealistic and rooted in perfectionism that we have self-sabotaged before we ever got started.

Let me say that again for the people in the back…

When you set goals based on a misguided set of perfectionism standards that you have set for yourself…  you have self-sabotaged before you ever got off the starting line.

No passing go.

No collecting $200.

It is already done and over… before it ever got started.

So… I’m going to give you an EASY FIX for this.

Your friends, your tribe, me as your coach… pick one.

If you know you suffer from perfectionism… which almost by default can lead to self-sabotage…

… then talk over your goal with a trusted friend, someone here in your tribe, or me as your coach.

Look at the REAL logistics of it with their help:

– how does this look compared to my other life obligations?

– can any of those other “obligations” be lessened, delegated, or removed completely, even if just for a while?

And… here is a biggie… and it’s also an awesome segue into the last part of our talk today…which is ownership.

You ready?

 – is it even YOUR goal?

OOOOOH!!!

Wait… what the heck, Stac… that doesn’t make sense… how could it not be MY goal? I’m the one who set it!

But did you? Did you reeeeeally? 

Stick with me here  –  because this is a question you’ll have to wrestle with in your own heart, because NO ONE ELSE CAN ANSWER THIS FOR YOU.

Is your goal something that you truly, deeply, right down to your bones, WANT FOR YOURSELF…

Or… is it something that someone, somewhere along the way, (maybe even yourself at some point in your history)… said… ooh, you should do that, you’d be great at it!

Even if it isn’t something that you’d thought of to want for yourself?

I went to beauty school many (MANY) years ago.

I enjoyed it… mostly.

I LOVED chemical treatments… dying hair was my specialty and I could wrap a perm like nobody’s business…. But I truly DETESTED cutting hair. Nope, did not like it one bit.  Didn’t really enjoy styling it much either.  😀

So… why did I spend thousands of dollars to go to beauty school?

Because someone in my life before then said I should.  They said I’d be great at it. They said it would be good for me. They said it was the thing to do… and I took that on as one of my “SHOULDS”.

I internalized that “goal”. 

Yeah, I should go to beauty school. That sounds like a great thing to do. Practical, always a job somewhere for that. I had friends that were beauticians and I really liked them, they were fun, mostly happy people.  Yeah, I should go to beauty school.

Did I WANT to go to beauty school?  No, not really. It wasn’t something that I had ever thought about spending MY WHOLE LIFE DOING.

This is also why you’ll hear me say sometimes that I really don’t like the word “SHOULD”.

“You should become a hairdresser”.

It’s a good job. Practical. You’d be good at it.

At no point did what I wanted have ANY part of that conversation.

Its a super-common thing between parents and kids  –  we see it all the time, right? But we can do it to ourselves, too.

You should go to school to become an electrician.

Um, yep, I did that one too, but I didn’t finish it because one, I hated it, and two, I am a complete KLUTZ and would probably have ended up frying myself.

Another goal, that was not mine, that I SHOULD do.

So, in one of our my student’s Weekly Live Office Hours call we talked about how you should run all your decisions through the filter of:

DOES THIS GET ME CLOSER TO MY GOAL, OR FURTHER AWAY FROM IT?

Do the same thing when you are SETTING goals:

Is this something that I really want for MYSELF?  Or it is really someone else’s goal / dream / idea / suggestion?

If it is YOUR GOAL…

THEN OWN YOUR GOAL.

OWN IT.

You are taking ownership of that goal…

You are taking ownership (responsibility) for the actions needed to achieve that goal.

You are owning your goal, and the outcome.

It is yours.

All the rest?  All those other things that maybe aren’t actually YOUR goal? Drop em. Kick them to the curb. Flip them the bird. Tell ‘em to take a hike, you have better things to do.

Then the goals that are left?  The REAL ones?

OWN THOSE DAMNED THINGS AND SHOW ‘EM WHO’S IN CHARGE.