Interview - How to Be an Imperfectionist with Stephen Guise

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Steven Geise. Steven and I connected on his first book. First one I read anyway, Mini Habits, which was awesome. So check that out. And today we're going to talk about how to be an imperfectionist. Subtitle the New Way to Self Acceptance, Fearless Living and Freedom from Perfectionism. Now, I'm a recovering perfectionist and so I got a ton out of this. If you have perfectionist tendencies and if you're listening to this and passionate about optimizing your life, then my hunch is you do. So I think you're going to get a lot out of it. Stephen has a really cool style of integrating well researched science, but applying it in a really practical way. He's totally quotable and his style lends itself really well to my work. Work makes it really easy for me to pull out the big ideas and apply them to our lives right now. So again, big fan of both Mini Habits, how to Be an Imperfectionist. Excited to chat. Steven, thanks for taking the time.

It's great to be back.

Thanks for writing another great book. At the end of our last chat I said, ah, yeah, I can't wait to read that one. So here we are. Let's start by. In the way you start the book is by defining perfectionism. So give us a sense of how you view perfectionism and why we should be thinking about it, etc.

So perfectionism is basically an expectation for things to be without flaw and smooth and precise and, well, perfect. It's taking a good thing. Perfection is perfect, you can't argue against that, but it's trying to integrate that into an imperfect person living in an imperfect world, which is where the problem comes in.

Awesome. And you talk about kind of, you looked at all the research on it, right? And boiled it down to some of the specific things that you see as kind of behavioral habits and thought patterns, et cetera, that you felt were most identifiable and then also most treatable, which is of course what the book is about. So can you share with us a little bit on that? And I'm sure we're going to go into it and the ideas we explore. But can you give us a really high level look at that?

Yeah. So perfectionism, I think is a lot more involved than people think. Like there's the simple definition I just gave, but beneath that there are. I chose five subsets of perfectionism that I think are the key aspects of it. And they're all individually treatable. So they are unrealistic expectations, rumination, which is thinking negatively about something that you did in the past and thinking repeatedly on it instead of moving on. Need for approval, concern over mistakes, and doubts about actions. So all of these are issues that. That stem from the core tree of perfectionism.

Yeah. That's awesome. And then the book again is basically about addressing those and systematically creating essentially their antidotes. Right. And how we can look at that and say, look, if you got this issue, this is how you can address that. We'll get into the details on that in a moment. The gestalt juxtaposed alternative to perfectionism as being a perfectionist is being an imperfectionist. Tell us a little bit about the imperfectionist.

Sure. The imperfectionist mindset in a nutshell is aiming for progress over perfection and accepting it despite any flaws. And of course, there are a lot of different strategies to actually do that in action instead of just saying, oh, just don't try to be perfect.

Good luck with that. Cool. Let's talk about some of my favorite ones. And again, you've got a ton. This one's one of my favorite ones. Again, not just in your book, but in general floors and ceilings. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so we all have floors and ceilings in our lives, and we decide what those are. The floor of your life is what you require in order to be happy or satisfied. And that's on a micro and macro level. You can apply that to an individual session of work, and you can apply that to your entire life. So this is an area where perfectionism is really problematic. And I'll just mention the ceiling is your wildest dreams. It's the highest you can imagine, the best possible result or the best possible life. So a perfectionist does something really peculiar about this setup. They actually make the floor into the ceiling because they want perfection. They're setting perfection as the floor. And so you're supposed to live in between these two. Just like in any building, you're between the floor and the ceiling. But when the floor is also the ceiling, it's pretty cramped, you know, reasonably cramped.

And you jokingly say, look, I'm a minimalist. I like living in a 500 square foot micro studio. But that's pretty tight.

Yeah.

That'S amazing. So again, the floor is the basic minimal, acceptable standard. Life is okay as long as you're meeting this. We need to have minimum standards. And then the ceiling is the wildest dreams, everything goes perfectly. Bam. How you doing? Ideal. In living in between, there's where it's about what it's about. And too often the perfectionist just slams them together. I know I've done that and it's been so liberating to see the tendency. And then I use this frame. Now I look at it, I'm like, look, I'm making the floor and the ceiling the same. We all have ambitious goals, but it's like, no, I'm stoked this has happened. I've passed the floor. Let's not forget that as we continue to stretch into the ideal. And it's been really, really empowering.

Yeah, I love it too.

Right on. Give us an example. Is there an example in your life in terms of how you've applied that?

There are numerous examples. So yeah. I mean, my first book, Mini Habits, is essentially this concept in a nutshell. My life changed when I made my exercise floor into one pushup a day. That's the lowest my floor had ever been. Prior to that, my floor was about like a 20 or 30 minute workout per day. And I couldn't always meet that floor. I often didn't meet that floor. And of course, the more you don't meet your floor, the less momentum you have, the less motivated you're going to feel because you're just failing repeatedly and you're in a bad spot. So I made one push up my floor and today, two and a half years later, I go to the gym five to six days a week for like one hour workouts. And that's just because I built from a place that I can succeed.

That's awesome. Yeah, that is a great example. And you're obviously the connection is there now as you say that, but that is exactly. Mini Habits is, look, let's just get a minimum basic standard. You can always exceed that. But let's win. You have a great quote which I was going to share later, but I'm going to find this. You say, make success easier than failure and you'll succeed. Yeah, let's do that more often. Oh, so good. Well, let's move into the next idea. I want to hear your thoughts on. You talk about the power of poses. Tell us about the science behind power poses.

This is fascinating research. It's by Lisa Cuddy and she gave a really popular TED talk on it. And the basic idea of the research is that what we do with our bodies affects our mind and our brains on a chemical level. So they tested this hypothesis by having people stand or sit in Various poses, yeah, Whether they can't see the video.

I guess, but busting out a power pose right now.

Yeah, but what Brian just did is he did like he's about to give someone a big hug, just arms wide spread. And that's a confidence power pose. Now the opposite of that is to be slouched over with your arms folded and making yourself smaller. So making yourself smaller is a low confidence pose. And taking up more space, like hands on your hips with your elbows out is another example. That's a confidence power pose. So they had people do both of these poses for two minutes, not one after another. But some people did the confidence pose, some people did the low confidence pose. And after two minutes they tested their. I believe they tested their saliva for like their cortisol levels. And they also tested testosterone. So cortisol is the stress hormone and testosterone is obviously the male. Well, it's in men and women, but it's generally considered the aggression hormone. So what happened is their cortisol, the people with the confidence poses, their cortisol went down and their testosterone increased. And I think it was like 20% and 15%, respectively. And if you were to name this and put it in a drink, it would be called a confidence cocktail because the cortisol makes you. The decreased cortisol makes you more relaxed. The increased testosterone boosts your risk taking ability and willingness to do things. And they found the exact opposite effect of the low confidence poses. Cortisol increase and testosterone decreased. And that was after only two minutes. So that really says significant things about what our body language does to our minds.

Amazing. And well captured. That's amazing. I'm sitting here approaching my two minutes in my little power pose here. Hands on hips. Let's do this.

They also tested it in an interview setting, and the interviewers didn't know which was which, but they found that the confidence posed people were more effective in the interview.

That's so cool. And that ties into the next idea really, really well, which is thinking versus doing. And the fact that thoughts often follow behaviors a lot more than we think. Too often we think we need to get our minds right and then our behaviors will change. But if we just. Because standing in a power pose is a behavior, we have very, very direct control over that. Right. Which is amazing when we think that for two minutes standing in a power pose, which no matter how you're thinking or feeling you can do, will have dramatic effects in your physiology. Talk to us about that. You referenced some studies out of Duke and other places I think about the power of doing vis a vis just thinking and trying to get your mind right.

Yeah, that's a huge part of every person's life, is just your basic strategy for how you're going to get yourself to do things. Because we all have things we want to do that we don't always feel like doing. So the typical mainstream strategy is to try to get motivated. And I might be the world's first unmotivational speaker, but I'm not against motivation. I'm just against a certain strategy that's associated with it, which is trying to think yourself into doing things. So you'll be sitting on the couch, you're feeling lazy and tired, and a lot of people will try to think their selves into being motivated to exercise. But it's a lot easier to just, like, get on the floor and do one push up, for example, and let your body catch up. Let how you feel catch up to what you really want to do, instead of the other way around. And there was a Duke University, Duke University Journal study that tracked people's behavior. And people reported emotional change, which is the basis of motivation, because motivation is based on how you feel about doing something. So they reported emotional change, 66% for actions they took versus 33% for, or 34% for thoughts. So one third of the time they would think something and have an emotional reaction. Two thirds of the time it would be an action that changed their emotion. So that, I mean, that's a pretty compelling study. It was a small study, maybe 250 people. But considering that we have many more thoughts than actions in a given day and yet actions were 2 to 1, that's pretty compelling to me. And it definitely matches my experience.

That's awesome. So then translate that into us, into how we would approach it as an imperfectionist.

So the basic approach is to always be thinking of how you can make things actionable. There are a number of different mental shifts I recommend because perfectionism is a mindset. So it's generally difficult to change a mindset, but you can turn it into an action by saying something like, choose to think about this for a minute every day. Reflect on this a minute every day. That way you're making it into an action and you're practicing.

Yeah, that's awesome. And then, you know you'd want to exercise. You can sit there and psych yourself up, or you can just go do your one push up. Once you've done one push up, you got some momentum. As we talked about in the Mini Habits chat, you know, Newton's first law that it's tough to get into motion, but once you get into motion, it stays in motion. If you simply just do it, you have power there. And even like we're going to talk a little bit more about procrastination a bit, but just starting it right. We don't need to want, we don't need to feel like doing it to start doing it. Right. So the same thing with a work project of just get going and you'll notice that that has a much stronger impact on how you feel about doing it than just trying to psych yourself up. Right.

For sure.

Good stuff. Okay, so talk to us about rumination was one of the core aspects and its antidote.

Yeah. So rumination is just ruminating about a previous event or activity, whether you're doubting what you should have done or you're just thinking about a negative event that happened that you're not happy about. And it's quite unproductive. It, it doesn't really benefit us to think about what we should have done. Now there is a small learning benefit in briefly considering what else you could have done. And that's actually one of the solutions I suggest is changing your self talk. Just a simple change of should to could. Because should is a suggestive idea. It says I should have done this. And it comes with some guilt and just some negativity in general. But could is a word of possibility. It's saying, oh, I could have possibly done this. And my philosophy behind this is that there is not actually a golden path. You don't actually know that doing that other thing would have turned out better, even if it seemed like it did. Okay, so I. The worst period of my Life was in 2011-2012. It was essentially a mental breakdown and it was really bad. I was miserable. However, that experience changed me in a really positive way. I'm a much stronger person because I went through that. So at the time I was probably thinking, oh, I shouldn't have let this get to me, or any number of rumination thoughts. I had plenty to choose from, but in hindsight it was really good for me. So that's the basic gist of that. And there's another concept I really like that's helped me and that's understanding chance versus failure. I think we mislabel things as failure when we shouldn't. Anytime something is not up to you, it's a chance based outcome. So if you want to write a book, you type it out, you send your manuscript off and you get rejected, you might think of that as failure, but it's really not because you had no control over the result of it. It's just a chance outcome. If you get it, you're lucky. If you don't, you're unlucky. Of course, there's some middle ground where, I mean, obviously if it's a terrible manuscript, you're going to get rejected, but there are just a lot of situations where we can see the chance in life and not be so devastated when it doesn't, when the dice don't roll in our favor.

Yeah, that's awesome. And you talk about this too. Just the process. Forget where you. Oh, yeah, yeah. This actually the next idea I want to talk about, which is a good segue. So let's recap rumination a little bit because I love. Just to make it explicit, you talked about it, but I want to use the word you used in your book as the antidote to rumination is acceptance. So just accepting whatever it is that we wish didn't happen and saying it happened that as an antidote to the rumination is so huge because we obviously can't change anything in the past. And to allow that acceptance to be present, then we can choose the most constructive action going forward, right?

Yeah, exactly. I didn't really touch on that in my little speech, but that is certainly the first step of getting over rumination. It's just to accept it. Whether it's something you can control or not. The answer is the same. Accept it so that you can move on.

It just is what it is. I got it from you.

Yeah, I did write that.

It's a good idea. Well, then, okay, so then we got the chance vis a vis failure. And obviously there's a spectrum of how that maps out and what things we have control over. And you make the point really strongly in the book that we need to have result apathy. Right. And focus on the process. So talk to us about that.

Yeah. Result apathy is such a powerful thing. And it's exactly what it sounds like, not caring about results. Because the thing about results is that they are made by going through a process. Any result is the result of a process. So by ignoring results and focusing all of that energy and focus on the process, you're actually giving yourself a much better chance at a better result, and you're worrying less about the result, which obviously has psychological benefits.

That's awesome. So tell us more practically, like, how would one go about doing that? How do we focus on the process? What does that mean?

It generally means taking it One step at a time. And in the moment, thinking about the next step. I give an example in the book, one of my favorite stories. It's a true story about Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL who was stuck in Afghanistan, and he was with three or four of his comrades, and all of his comrades were killed around him, and they lost communication with the US Navy, and he got shrapnel in his leg, and he was dehydrated in enemy territory. So he just had the worst circumstance, and he was trained to focus on the process. That's what makes a Navy SEAL such a powerful and effective combat individual, is no matter what is going on or no matter what is going on, they're going to focus on the process. What's next? So when he was in the worst situation of his life, he was just thinking about, okay, how can I get water.

Now? What needs to get done is a question that David Reynolds poses in his great book Constructive Living. And a lot of the peak performance guys use the phrase task orientation. So you're not thinking about outcome or result. You're thinking about what needs to get done. So task orientation, I need to fill in the blank. And that's what's exciting in how you frame it in the book is the perfectionist wants the perfect outcome and then complains about anything that isn't consistent with that outcome. Right. So the Navy SEAL hero in that scenario, why in the world is this not going the way I want to go? I mean, it's just funny to even think about saying that out loud, because they would never do that. Whatever situation exists is the one they're dealing with. And then it's simply a question of now what needs to get done. Now what needs to get done. And we all have the power to ask that question and to answer it in our behaviors in the next moment. Right.

Yeah. Just imagine what if Marcus Luttrell was thinking about his outcome? Like, if he looked at what the situation was and thought about his outcome, he very well may have given up and just talked. Died out there.

Yeah. So result, apathy. And of course we care, but we realize we care so much that we don't care. Right. That we're willing to invest in the next step required to get to the. To give ourselves the best shot at having that ultimate outcome turn out the way we want. Another really cool idea that you talk about that I didn't capture in the note and you and I were chatting about before our interview today. Binary. I was sharing with you that I shared this idea with Alexandra, the other day. And it's such a cool idea. Binary. Don't measure yourself by the quality, measure yourself by whether you did it or not. Tell us about that.

Yeah, this has been a life changing idea for me. And the main application that I used it for first was with women. I'm a single guy, so it's. If I want to find a woman, I realize I need to talk to them.

That strange creature species.

Yeah, that's step one. So I've been historically shy and I think a lot of guys can relate with that. And a big reason for that is perfectionism. It's because I'll see a pretty girl and, and I'll think, oh man, she's pretty. But oh shoot, I'd have to act like James Bond in order to even talk to her. So obviously that's a non starter. I'm not even gonna try because while I'm close to James Bond, I'm not quite there yet. So one day I was in a grocery store and I saw a 10 out of 10 woman. She was just beautiful. And. And I went through the same frustrating mindset and I thought, okay, I knew about the power of many habits. And I was thinking, how can I simplify this? And I realized that it's because I'm aiming for such a complex, polished presentation of myself to her that I just didn't have a chance. So I decided to simplify my idea of success and I simplified it into a binary situation. And binary, as some probably know, is 0 and ones. It's the language of computers. It's like a light switch. It's either on or off, nothing in between. So I decided to make saying hi to this girl a one. And not saying hi would be a zero. So high is win, not high is lose. And that was really simple and it was doable. And it meant that I could just walk by her, force myself to say the word high and then leave if I wanted to. And there was something very freeing about that, that if anyone listening to this decides to try it, they will get immediately how freeing this is. So anyway, to finish the story, I said hi and then I just kept walking. She said hi and she was a little bit confused, but then she actually came over to where I was and we had a little discussion. So it was good. I got, I got practice talking to a beautiful woman. And of course the applications are numerous. Anytime you're doubting yourself or you're worried you can't measure up to some standard, just simplify it. Choose the very specific area that you can Win in and make that your one.

No, I love it. And then again, we're focused on process and performance, right? And that's our measure of success, not whether we achieved whatever outcome we might want. So you getting a date or whatever it is is a result orientation, you going through the process, albeit in a rudimentary. Let's just get going stage. Right. It's just saying hi is the win. And I've applied this to my life. And I was talking to Alexander about it in this context of. For me, if I had to do every single thing I did to my standards, which are my ceilings, right. Of my high ideal standards, right. I wouldn't do anything. I would never ship anything. Literally, I would never ship anything. But what I've done is I forced myself to get good at shipping. So I produce something basically every day that I'm sharing, and every single time I do it, I feel a wow. You know, it's not quite where I want it to be, but it's binary. I did it. I'm measuring myself on the fact that I did it, not that it was perfect. And that's been a really cool frame to apply to my creativity. And we were talking, Alexander and I, about her doing that with her work, where her blog post doesn't need to be perfect, her video doesn't need to be perfect. It's doing it in the act of simply doing that and then rewarding yourself for it and create these successions of wins that creates the momentum that allows you to actually get good at it. Right, through the repetition and the nonjudgmental perfectionistic tendencies to overly judge. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Very cool. And I appreciate you sharing your story. If you're listening, think about this and frame it this way, where you have your outcome. You want to write a book that achieves a certain level of success or gets published or whatever, or you want to create a business that does whatever, or you want to create a relationship that does whatever, that's fine. Then think about the things you need to do that would enable and make that outcome more likely. And this is where the compliment to your last book, Mini Habits, is huge. If you want to write a book, don't stare at your vision board that has you as the cutout number one bestseller on the New York Times list. And that's what you think is going to do it. That's going to freak you out. Write one line a day or 100 words or for one minute or whatever the mini habit is that allows you to check the binary box and say I did it today. And you do that enough days and you're going to give yourself a shot at those big outcomes. Does that sound about right?

Yeah. And it's beyond habits too. Any situation you find yourself in where you're doubting yourself, you can always find a way to move forward by simplifying your objective and making it into a binary task, which puts a little bit of pressure on you because none of us like to lose. And I mean, that was enough to get me to say hi. Is. It's like, oh, all I have to do is say hi and I get this easy win. Okay, I'll do it.

So you said hi, then all of a sudden you turn the corner, you're all fist pumping.

She's looking at you like, yeah, I was fine. I had already won. So forget her now.

Yeah, right on. This is good. Well, we covered a ton. Is there anything that we didn't discuss that you think that you'd like to chat about?

One more thing from the book that I like personally is rebellion practice. A big part of perfectionism is the need for approval and that just plays into trying to measure up to other people's expectations for you. Most of what we've talked about is all internal, like just trying to meet your own standards. But we are greatly influenced by those around us. So rebellion practice is just kind of a fun, quirky thing. And it can be anything from walking very slowly in public. It doesn't hurt anyone. It's just for some reason socially unacceptable because. Because it's not normal. People just look at you and be like, what's wrong with him? But it's good for you because it teaches you not to depend on the approval of others. It's just there are a number of safe things you can do that don't harm anyone, but benefit you psychologically by training you not to care so much about what others think of you.

That's awesome. Just building that non conformity muscle in a healthy way so you can actually trust yourself and yeah, I love it.

Yeah.

Right on. Well, this has been fun. Again, appreciate many habits. Appreciate this. We wrapped up our last chat in a similar way. If you were going to give one piece of advice to someone passionate about optimizing their lives, what would that one piece of advice be?

In the context of what we've talked about today, it would be to care less about results, care more about putting in the work, care less about doing it right, care more about doing it at all. Care less about failure, care more about success, care less about timing, care More about the task.

Love it. Well, there we go. Thanks again for another fun chat.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

All right, where do people learn more about you?

My website. My blog is deepexistence.com my books are on Amazon. Many Habits and How to Be an Imperfectionist.

Awesome. We've got the Philosopher's Notes on both the PNTVs and then links directly to both your website and the Amazon page where they can pick up the books. Again, super fun, simple, no pretense. Really practical books that are both fun and easy to read and highly applicable. Look forward to the next one, Stephen, and thanks again.

Thanks, Brian.

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