PNTV: How to Be an Imperfectionist by Stephen Guise (#236)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes. TV Today, another great book, how to Be an Imperfectionist. How to Be an Imperfectionist by Stephen Guise. Stephen wrote the great book Mini Habits. I really enjoyed that. Did an episode on that recently and interviewed him recently as well. We're going to share that soon.

And.

And when I saw you had a new book, picked it up, loved the title, loved the book. Really down to earth, grounded, practical. If you've ever struggled with perfectionism, I.

Think you'll dig it. I used to be a ridiculous perfectionist.

I talk in the note about the fact that when I first started my career at Arthur Andersen Over 20 years ago, I remember stressing myself out, trying to get a staple perfectly parallel to the top of the page. That's how bad I was. So I've learned a lot since then. And a lot of the stuff that.

I do, he talks about.

And I'm excited to talk about five of my favorite big ideas now. So let's jump in. First one, floors and ceilings. So he talks in the book about what a perfectionist is, goes through some of the research and some of the issues and how they're going to. How he's going to tackle it and help you become an imperfectionist. First idea I want to chat about is floors versus ceilings. So here's the basic idea.

Imperfect there, huh?

We have a floor and we have a ceiling. Now, an imperfectionist comfortably lives between the floor and the ceiling. The floor is basically the bare minimum standard of what it takes for their life to be awesome, to be okay for them to be happy, right? Doesn't need to be nuts. Perfect. But it's good enough, right? That's their floor. The ceiling is kind of the wildest dreams coming true scenario. You got, the angel with the magic wand waves it. Every single thing you want to see come to fruition comes to fruition. That's your floor and your ceiling. Imperfectionist, again, lives comfortably in between those two points. Now, the perfectionist has got some issues because the perfectionist takes the ceiling, which was the wildest dream scenario, and makes that the floor. They won't be happy unless every single thing that they want to see happen happens. Until then, they're not going to be happy. And Steven makes a great point. He says, look, if your floor equals your ceiling and you can't go much higher than perfect, last time I checked, that's pretty much the upper threshold. So if your floor is your ceiling, you're going to be really cramped. There's not A whole lot of space to live in in that zone. That's how a perfectionist shows up, which is why perfectionism is one of the greatest predictors and underlying causes of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc. And why it's so important for us to get comfortable with having a floor. We don't need things to be perfect, right?

Chalk can break once in a while.

And you can still be okay. That's good enough. We talked about this in the Paradox of Choice. Barry Schwartz talks about the fact that the maximizer is very similar to a perfectionist needs to be perfect all the time. The satisficer is okay with good enough. They have high standards, they want to be excellent, but they don't need things to be perfect. So check in and see if you're living in some cramped quarters and if you can establish a floor for yourself that might help you increase your happiness. That's our first big idea. Second big idea. Are you a poser? Are you a poser? Steven talks about research done by a social psychologist. I think it was Amy Cuddy who has done fascinating research. You can take people and for two minutes have them hold different poses. One is what she calls a power pose, right? Which is basically you with your hands on your waist or with your arms stretched out where you're taking up more space. Those are what she calls power poses, right? You can do that for two minutes or you can do a less than powerful pose, which is you kind of curling up and getting depressed and taking up less space. What's fascinating is that if you do that for just two minutes, if you do the power pose and you're just really feeling strong, right? Assuming the posture of someone who's strong and confident, your testosterone will go up by something like 20% and your cortisol will decrease by 25%. Testosterone is related to risk taking in confidence and assertiveness. And of course, cortisol is related to stress. So your testosterone is going up by 20%. When you have this power pose and your cortisol is going down by 25%, that's like. That's just crazy to me. And then in the not so powerful pose, where you're not taking up space and you're kind of assuming a limp flower kind of posture, the opposite happens. Your testosterone goes down and your cortisol goes up not by quite as much, but like 10% and 15 or 20% or something. That's amazing. The idea here is that feelings follow behavior. Too often we think that we need to feel a certain way before we do something. But the reality is that oftentimes if we just do something as simple as assume a strong posture, we change the way we feel, we change the underlying biochemistry of our being, which obviously directly changes the way that we feel. So remember, feelings follow behavior, powerful ways. That's our second big idea. I can't even wrap my brain around that. So big and so simple. Third one is thinking versus doing. So if I asked you, let's say that you're not feeling motivated, right? You're just not feeling up for doing whatever, alright? We all get there at times. Now if I said, what do you.

Think you should do?

Should you try to psych yourself up by thinking differently or should you just take action?

Right?

Should you try to psych yourself up, change your thinkings to try to change your feelings, or should you just take action to change your feelings? Research done at Duke University showed that just taking action, jumping in and doing what needs to get done, just starting, is twice as effective as trying to change your feelings via your thoughts. That's amazing. When you take action, more action is likely to occur and you're going to feel more motivated than not taking the action or by trying to get yourself to feel psyched up by changing your thoughts. Again, feelings follow behavior. Tal Ben Shahar I reference in this note, he talks about the fact that the best way to deal with procrastination is what he calls a five minute takeoff. Just get going, take the action Again. Twice as effective as trying to psych yourself up. Just do what needs to get done. Jump in if you're stalled on something in your life or what's the tiniest, smallest step you can take? Just get in the game and watch your motivation build more than if you just sat there thinking about it. Fourth big idea is rumination. Rumination. So we've talked about this before, but remember, the root of the word rumination, from the Latin, is to chew again. So to ruminate is to chew again. A cow ruminates by eating grass, partially digesting it in its stomach, spitting it back up and chewing again. That's rumination.

Again and again and again.

Now, of course, we do that in our minds at times. We ruminate about things that happened in the past that we can do nothing about. With the false idea that we can somehow change the past if we just.

Think about it enough.

That's rumination. It happened, we chewed it. But rather than fully digesting it, we spit it back up, we regurgitate it.

And we chew it again and again and again.

That's one of the best ways to get yourself super stressed and depressed. So Steven talks about the fact that we just need to accept it. The antidote to rumination is acceptance. Whatever happened in your life happened. Period. Thinking is not going to change it. We need to accept it. We need to capitalize on the lessons learned, and then we need to go forward and take action and do what needs to get done now. So if you have a challenge with rumination, discipline yourself to quit doing that.

It's over.

You can't do anything about it. You need to accept, learn, integrate, move on. It's a big idea. Imperfectionists do that. Perfectionists don't. Perfectionists think they need to be perfect. And anything that was imperfect in the past needs to be brought up again, regurgitated, and thought about again. Not helpful, not healthy. Let's just let it go as imperfectionists do. The fifth big idea is result apathy. I love this phrase, result apathy. Not talking about general apathy. General apathy is not caring about anything. We want to decrease how much you care about results and realize as we talk about all the time, if you want results, you have to go through a certain process. So if you really, really care about your results, you'd focus obsessively on the process. Not the outcomes, but the process of getting to them. And as we talk about all the time, that those results are the byproducts of you taking action. So you might as well obsess about the action rather than stress yourself out about the results. Again, the perfectionist is looking at the ideal outcome and they're constantly checking in. Have I got it yet? Have I got it yet? Have I got it yet? Then they don't do the things that need to get done in order to actually see those results. So flip it around. Have apathy toward your results. Just show up. Measure yourself on progress. Measure yourself on consistently showing up and. And putting in great effort day in and day out. That's what we want to be paying attention to and be critical about. Did we show up? Can we show up with a little bit more effort? Let go of the results and the outcomes we talk about other great teachers who talk about that in the note, but it's a huge idea. Steven jokes and says, perhaps a perfect idea. The perfect mindset to have no attachment to our results. Stop the ruminating. Remember, thinking versus doing. Doing is twice as effective in eliciting a change in motivational state than thinking. Jump in. Are you a poser? Gosh. You want to increase your confidence in your biochemistry and the levels of testosterone and cortisol that are going through your body. Assume a power pose, Take up more space. Breathe in deeply. Feel that confidence via your physical posture and you'll see that translate into change in feelings. Just nuts and then floors and ceilings. Don't live in a super cramped your floor equals your ideal. Give yourself some space. Have a basic floor of look, I need to see this in my life in order to be happy. Then focus on all the things that you do have in your life that are awesome while you go for things you're excited about. That's a nice comfortable place to live. If you need to create some more space, go ahead and do that. And that's a quick look at five of my favorite big ideas on how to be an imperfectionist. Hope you enjoyed.

I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day.

See you.

Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that PNTV episode.

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