323: Tackling Perfection with Nicole Severson

Hey movers, it's Sally Z with Be Moved. Let's go create some talks that will move this world. We're going to talk with amazing speakers, share tips, tricks, resources, and we are going to be moved so that our audience can be moved.

This moved me.

What is moving you? You know what we're talking about tonight? We are talking about perfection. Perfection kills connection. You've heard me say it before. You've heard me say it a million times, a million times. And yet I need the reminder. I need to be constantly nudged to just show up as I am. And today what we're going to be doing is talking about my amazing speakers, Nicole Severson. So Nicole's going to join us here in a moment. I'm just—

we're good.

Yay, you're here.

I'm so excited. How are you?

I'm great. It's a gloomy, rainy day here in Minnesota, but that's Fine.

Yeah, I'm in Wisconsin, the same family, it's the same thing. Really?

You're in Wisconsin, so I thought you're not normally a Midwest gal, but—

No, East Coast, East Coast. Although I did live in Minnesota for a year and a half, so I've experienced Midwest living.

Okay.

Okay.

And we pronounce your name correctly.

You do all the time without fail. Yeah, it's not Severson. We're not severing anything. Nope.

There's nothing severing with Nicole. Oh, well, really excited to have you just join in this conversation and talk a little bit about perfection. And I'm gonna sneeze, so just bear with me here for a minute. Perfect sneeze.

Perfect.

I was like, I definitely do not sneeze perfectly. I don't know what that looked like. My husband says I'm the loudest sneezer. Like I vocalize my sneezes.

It's the atchoo. Atchoo!

I don't know. I don't know. I can't not do it.

I've tried.

I've tried not to anyway.

It hurts to not sometimes, I think. Yeah.

I also, I had friends and this is connected. I'm going to connect this to this idea of perfection. Actually, I had a friend, she's this amazing performer, so talented, and she sneezed like this. And I was like, you need to let that out. Doesn't it hurt to not? Me though, I don't want to make other people feel uncomfortable. And I did like, it was a, in some ways, sort of like a don't notice me. No, judge me. Sneezing is, it's a very human thing.

It is. We all do it. We all do it. Everybody sneezes.

Everybody sneezes. So sneeze how you sneeze. I mean, I probably shouldn't have, you know, criticized my friend for how she was sneezing. It wasn't criticizing. I was really concerned. That's even just your demonstration of it looked like it would be painful to hold that all in and like, yeah, but you know, To me, the connection that I make with that is even like me in the middle of a live, I'm like, I have to sneeze. There's nothing I can do to stop. I'm just gonna sneeze here. As we are showing up out front, that is a big fear that a lot of people have. It's like, what, what if I don't show up perfectly? What if I don't show up having it all figured out? And you have been super honest about your journey with that. And you were in the Be Visible Challenge when we did it in January, and we talked a lot about it. And so because we are starting to get ready for the next session of it, we're changing it up a little bit. But as we're shifting into this next session, I was like, I want Nicole to come in and talk about your experience with it because my guess is I know, well, there are a lot of people who struggle with perfection. So let's start with this, Nicole. Tell— tell everybody who you are and who you serve. What do you do?

Yeah, so I help working moms have it all without doing it all by teaming up with their partner to share the workload and the mental load. Not just the workload, but the mental load of kids and running the home.

Love it.

Thank you. Thank you.

So important. And you are in the midst, you just joined Signature Talks Studio not that long ago.

Yes, I did. It's been fantastic so far.

Ah, I'm so glad to hear that.

Yeah.

Uh, it's been really fun to watch you start to put articulation and words around these ideas and what you have been already out in the world sharing and doing and just really leaning into Your visibility and how you're showing up out front.

You're doing it.

I thank you for just owning that and putting that out there.

Yeah. Well, it's the truth, right? It's a scary thing. It's a scary thing. Yep.

It's, yeah, it just is. And it, I'd be a little worried if we, if we had no fear about it. It's like, maybe we're not digging deep enough here. We're not dreaming big enough.

Right, right. That's such a really good point too, 'cause it's like every step through the process of going through that. Like, I mean, for me it even started with something like social media and putting posts out there, right? So, oh my gosh, that's the first step and you move along and each step it just, it gets scarier, but that's why I just do it. If you wanna be there and do it and get your voice out and— Right. Thankfully you are there being a resource and you've got You know, you're there for support and I know for myself, I need external accountability. So I try to build those supports too. And even this, when you invited me on this, I was like, oh my God, we're going to be traveling. I'm not going to be in my office. I don't have my brand colors on. I don't have my lighting. Like it was a big thing. And I just was like, you know what? This opportunity is there. I'm going to do it. And if it's horrible, it's horrible, but at least I did it.

Exactly. Yeah. In fact, I'm, I'm working on this keynote that I'm doing next week and I'm taking a slightly different approach to it than I have before. And one of the things that I'm leaning into more and more, partly because of the conversations you and I have had and that I've had with so many of my speakers, is the realization that we learn speaking by doing. And that we literally, like, we, we have to sort of be our growing messy selves out front. That is part of the process. So if we let perfection hold us back from doing anything, we're, we're never gonna grow and improve. Like literally there's, you can't learn speaking by scripting. And, but reading about it and thinking about it.

Yeah.

It's so good.

You really have to do it. It's so good. And like, like that's one thing I've learned with so far in SBS and even a little bit in the Be Visible Challenge too is kind of that piece of like, you can, you can write as much as you want and you could rehearse as much as you want and have the perfect lighting and there's always gonna be some blip, right? It doesn't have to be something that your audience sees. It could just be something that you're aware of, like, you know, your dog barking in the background, right? Something as simple as that. And if you're gonna hold out to make it perfect, which I still, I still have, I fight that every day, right?

With you today.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, yeah.

And you're just not gonna get anywhere.

Yeah. So it's so true. It's so true. So let's talk about kind of your journey with perfection and, you know, not that it's like, done, I figured it out, right? Because this is a constant battle for all of us, truly. But when we started the Be Visible Challenge, this, this was a theme, a consistent theme that came up in, in our lives and, and as we were going through some trainings together. And so tell me about what that fear looks and sounds and feels like for you. What, how does perfection rear its head for you when you're trying to show up and be visible?

Yeah, that's great. I think for me it's, oh, that cuts. I'm trying, I remember specifically the, um, We did the, we were doing the introduction video in the challenge where we kind of introduced ourselves, right? And it's just this feeling of like, oh my gosh, if I don't use the right words in the right way, they're not gonna know what I'm talking about or they're gonna question what I'm talking about. They're not gonna understand it. They're not gonna get it. They're gonna judge it. Like I'm gonna get all the bad horrible comments. Like, and then, so it's kind of that, internal dialogue where it's like, okay, recognizing it, taking that pause and being like, okay, so what? Right? So what? And then I know for me, the piece that I'm still working on, and I'm sure you're aware of from our coaching session yesterday with SDS, is that I tend to dive into the figuring out and writing and being like, okay, what am I gonna say? And I could get stuck in that process. Forever. It's a safe place to hide, right? Because you feel like you're making progress, you feel like you're doing the work, but it's still just on paper. And so then it's just doing it. It's just doing it. I think that's where I love your coaching and where you come from in that you have to do to grow, right? You have to just get out there to learn and make it happen. But then I think there's also the after effect that I've become aware of as well. And I think this is kind of ingrained in a lot of us. I mean, we start from childhood in schools, we get graded, right? And what's the point? You wanna get an A, an A+. You wanna be perfect cuz that's what we're taught. And so to undo that is really hard. And then at the tail end of it, when you come out of doing the thing, whatever the thing is, in this case being visible and getting out there, I do have a tendency still to watch my stuff a few times and, and You know, I think there's some benefit to doing that, but I also think you— I'm trying to find that balance of where it's a benefit versus a detriment. Yeah.

I have to tell you, I'm just going to like hop in here and give my two cents on the watching yourself piece. There is perhaps some benefit if you were sitting there with a coach who could help you see it with an accurate lens because we do not see ourselves accurately. We just don't. We are very poor mirrors of ourselves. We tend to be overly critical. We notice things about ourselves that other people have long ago accepted and loved about us, and we're like, what the heck? Like, what sounds like that? And I'm like, I never knew why I had such a crooked smile until I started seeing myself on Zoom all day, all the time. And I was like, what? It's like other people have been seeing my face for a really long time. I haven't. So I think there's, you know, there's a million examples for all of us where we, we, instead of it helping in the process, it gets in the way and we start to want to change some things about ourselves that actually don't need changing.

That's a really, that's a great way of looking at it.

Now there's, there are some things that it's good to have some self-awareness around, but it's just like, it's, it's such dangerous territory. Most humans cannot see themselves objectively. That's our, that's our body. That's our self. This is the machine that we're walking through the world with, you know?

So my suggestion for you, So as long as I'm not picking my nose on a live video, I'm good. And I should go back and watch this like, yeah, I mean, what I would listen for is feedback from other people.

And not that every feedback means something, but if you're getting consistent feedback around something like, I noticed this, or this was distracting, or whatever, then then that's something to pay attention to.

Right, right.

But most of the time, you know, we, we give so much power and energy to random people's thoughts and ideas and the worst critic in ourselves. Like, that's what gets to rule the day.

Right, right. And it's, it's so true. It's power and energy. I like those words because it's not just time. Right. It's not just that time of going through, but it's, there's energy that's, oh, to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think for a lot of people, this, the need for perfection comes from like some history where it was like, it did not go well. There was some danger associated with screwing up. And so, and not that that deserves like time and energy in this conversation right now, but it's just important to acknowledge. And we all carry some of that around. It's not like, oh, huge wounds from our childhood, but one, you know, somebody said something once.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sticks in your brain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a process. It's one of the things that I love. I love this work is because the process of stepping out front is truly a process, learning to love yourself in a lot of ways.

I do that. And accept yourself, right? Love and accept. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, here I am.

Yeah. I was gonna say, I think you can love yourself, but there's still pieces you don't accept. It's like, it's getting to unconditional loving of yourself.

Very astute. I think you're absolutely right. So Nicole, for you, as you, cuz you've talked really openly about what it feels like and what perfection has— the kind of the role it's played for you as you step out front. So what are some things that have helped you manage this? Because that's what we're doing. We're all just managing these fears that bounce around in our heads all the time. They're not going away. So what helps you manage it so that you can step out front.

Yeah, I think, I think it's a lot becoming aware of it, right? And then, and then it's becoming aware of it and then recognizing it for what it is. I kind of feel like, for me, I, I think about like when I go to do reels, let's say, right? Or an Instagram video. And it's, I, I see myself getting caught up in that, like, okay, is the lighting okay? Okay. And it's knowing that that is my way of managing the fear and that I need to— okay, I'm gonna switch that around. That is where I'm at when I'm futzing around with those things. That's the fear managing me. And that's the kind of like, I find myself on those days being like, okay, stop. Just hit, just hit record. Just hit record. Just do it. Just hit record. And I don't know, I don't know. It's, it's literally, it's like, Taking somebody up on a dare, I guess, but I'm taking myself up on a dare. It's like, just do it. Just do it. Because I know me. I know if I don't just do it, I could be there all day.

I love that. Take yourself up on the dare.

Take yourself up on the dare.

Yes. Because what happens, and I don't know if— let me know if this resonates for you, Nicole, but the more you do it, the more you prove to yourself survive. I'm okay. Actually, me showing up without being, you know, without having my lighting or my typical setup or whatever, like, I'm okay.

Yep. I'm still here. I had a little— you're back.

You're back.

Sorry.

I'm like, whoops. That's a little good. Okay. One more thing before I let you go, which is if there was one little aha that you've taken either, like, that, that helps you with the perfection piece, whether that was through the Be Visible Challenge or through STS or just your own development as a coach? Like, what is, what is one of those ahas that you're like, here's a little nugget that helps me out? Yeah.

I, and, and I think I hear there's a little bit of this through my own personal growth, but I, I can't remember if it was the Be Visible Challenge. Or STS, but it was one of the two where it was articulated, where it, and it was from you, where that fear doesn't stop. Like every person out there who's visible, they still have that fear. Like even the most, even the most trained and professional and, you know, adored speaker still has that fear getting out there. And for me, that was such a huge thing to hear because one, it validated and made me feel okay about my fears, but then also knowing that I shouldn't set an expectation or a goal to erase that fear. Yeah. Right? Because I think, I think coming into this space where I was like, okay, I am ready to get out there and be visible and be a speaker and say like, this is a core part of my business. I think in my mind, I figured once I had done it enough and been out front enough, that fear would go away and then it'd become easy peasy lemon squeezy. Like, you know, just get out there and do my thing. So, um, I think it helped to set expectations. So there was that aha, like, ah, and then there was that like, it's okay. Just because I'm feeling the fear doesn't mean that I'm not meant to be here and that I'm not meant to do it. Because I think that's part of it too. You feel that fear and you're like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Immediate. So that was a huge, huge, huge unlock for me.

Good. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that because it's true. You belong up front and you have this really important message. And I feel this way about all of my speakers. Like you have this message in you, enough of a, enough of a message in you that you're like, I am willing to take this risk. I'm taking the risk of building my business. I'm taking the risk of putting myself up front. I'm taking the risk of being judged. Like all of the fears that we have that we bring with us as we do this. And, you know, your, your acceptance of like fear is just a part of this journey. It's gonna help you take the necessary risks. And the truth is it's not always gonna feel the same. Your relationship with fear changes. You become just more friendly with your fear instead of this thing of like, oh, I'm afraid. And that like, it becomes this battle with fear. Instead it's like, okay, we're about to go do something big. Come with me. And the fear becomes excitement rather than this thing that can be really crippling. For you.

A friend of mine once said, like, F.E.A.R. stands for Feeling Excited and Ready. And I was like, I love that. I love that because it totally takes that negative feeling and makes it such a positive and exciting thing and okay to have.

Yes.

Right?

I love it. I remember when you said that during one of the lives. What?

Yeah.

So good. It's great. Well, Nicole, thank you for taking some time today. You're on vacation with your family. I really we appreciate you.

Oh, thank you for having me, and I love chatting with you, so thank you, thank you.

Of course, of course. Nicole, where can people— obviously they're here and they can check out your account, but where else can people connect with you?

So I do my website, it's Nicole M. like Mariah, Deaverson, not Severson, spelled like Severson, dot com. So you can find me there as well. And on Facebook, Nicole M. Deaverson, my handle's the same over on Facebook.

Okay, wonderful. Well, grateful for you. Thank you for being here, and I can't wait to see where you keep going and growing.

Thank you. I'm excited too. I'm excited to have you guys supporting me. So yeah, all right, have a good one. Bye.