Let me ask you this. Are you someone who enjoys the process or do you tend to be solely focused on hitting your end goal? Exactly. If you\’re all about the end goal and not so much into the process, you may want to tune in a little bit extra to this week\’s episode.
When you focus on getting things perfect on hitting that goal, rather than focus on simply making progress, you actually sabotage yourself. You might have heard that perfection really is an illusion. It\’s something our ego mind uses to stop you from getting you where you want to be by giving you a story that feels like you were doing the important work when in actuality it\’s kind of like doing busywork.
So how do you avoid getting stuck in this trap? Well, there are five common traits for people who tend to be a little bit perfectionist. Listen and see if any of these sound like something you\’ve seen yourself too. I know I found a couple that I\’m definitely guilty of.
The first one is fear of failure. When you\’re afraid to fail, you tend not to take action.
This can be seen in overthinking, always planning heavily and then not taking action. The lack of movement means that you will never actually know if your idea works or not. Now, you don\’t want to confuse this with having fear which is totally normal. You want to work on feeling the fear and then taking action in spite of what you feel.
The next trait is procrastination. When I was a kid, I had a poster in my room that said, I\’ll procrastinate tomorrow. My parents gave it to me or not, or something that I picked up on my own. But kind of an odd poster to have as a kid. But similar to fear of failure, procrastination means you get to put off the doing and this can be motivated sometimes by fear, could be motivated by worry or simply a subconscious belief that everything has to be just right before you do it to get around procrastination, create clear, measurable goals. It\’s a great way to ensure that you are moving forward something like 30 minutes every day, working on whatever project you\’re trying to move forward on or completing one thing that you can check off the list. The goal is to create movement in the direction where you want to be heading each and every day.
The next trait is that you tend to be focused on results over the process. Achieving a goal is really a short lived moment.
There\’s the excitement of having it completed and then it\’s kind of over and on to what\’s next. It\’s being present and experiencing the process along the way that actually creates the growth, the joy, the pleasure. When you are 100 percent focused just on the result, you miss out on all the goodness and all the lessons that are actually there for you along the way. Setting smaller process goals can give you added motivation and help you tune into the present moment.
The next trait is being highly critical. Are you critical of yourself? Do you end up seeing all the mistakes and imperfections and feel a need to fix them right away? One of the funny things about stuff like copywriting is that mistakes will often get left in because it makes the writing seem more authentic. If there\’s a typo or two, having something less polished actually makes it easier for people to relate to seeing yourself being a little rough on yourself or feeling a need to have everything just right. Give yourself a set time to do what you need to do and then commit to releasing it or moving on to the next step. This push will give you more structure and not allow you to waste time on things that won\’t actually really matter in the long run. Gets that momentum moving for you.
The final trait is having unrealistic standards, along with being super focused on a goal over the process. The goals that get set, they\’re done in such a way that they\’re not achievable, they\’re not reachable.
In essence, doing this sets up all of the other things to happen when the goal is unreachable or standards cannot be met. You can procrastinate easily due to the fear of failure or being super critical of yourself, because deep down, you know, there\’s no way that you can succeed. It becomes completely self-defeating. Setting measurable process goals will help ease the tendency to have unrealistic standards and create a clear path to accomplish your goals.
If you see yourself in any of these traits, it\’s OK. You\’re in good company. And the really good thing is that you\’ve just created awareness for yourself, which is the first step in choosing to change.
Shift your goal to progress over procrastination and watch your productivity and your sales soar.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, please share it on social media so others can benefit from it, too. I would be incredibly grateful.
Now go out there and make great things happen today.
Be blessed, everybody. Thank you for listening. I love connecting with people and helping them elevate both in life and business, and this is just one of the ways I get to do that. Now, it\’s up to you to take what you heard, synthesize anything that resonated with you and choose to add it into your life. Because when we do that, we create a life that is better by design.
Show Notes
Shift your goal to progress over procrastination and watch your productivity and your sales sore.
Are you a perfectionist? Telling yourself you need to have all the details worked out before you release, launch or publish is a sure fire way to never do any of those things.
Are you a solopreneur or entrepreneur looking to grow your business? Join me in The Informed Entrepreneur(s) to be more profitable, efficient and impactful!
https://sharpteamdesign.com/the-informed-entrepreneurs
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