#3 The case of The Perfectionist
*This post is intended for your own self-reflection and yes, as a coach in training, I've reflected on them too - anything I recommend here as a task/tool/exercise it's first tested and tried by yours truly
As a child, my mum always encouraged me and pushed me to be the best, to always be top of the class, and to get high marks all the time. That led me to put a lot of pressure on myself, fearing that I will disappoint her and my teachers. And so, without knowing it, I've become a perfectionist. And for a good while, I was a maladaptive one - failure was unacceptable, it was the end of the world! I always felt that others expect more from me and I was afraid of letting them down by not being perfect all the time. And there was a lot of drama and tears and frustration and exhaustion and being annoyed and even annoying my loved ones.
Luckily, I've developed to be an adaptive perfectionist with the help of the people around me who always reminded me of all the amazing things I've done and everything else I'm capable of if I let go of the fear of being perfect all the time. Thank you all of you for still being my friends all this time 🙂
Perfectionism is shown as having high standards for yourself and expecting the same from others, sometimes unrealistic ones, fear of not reaching the set goals, fear of failure, highly critical of themselves, and most of the time focused on the mistakes and imperfections.
And don't get me wrong, my inner me still puts a lot of pressure on being perfect and leaving no space for mistakes. So, recently, with my coach, we did some reflective work, hoping that I'll be able to see and accept this part of me easily and move on instead of being stuck.
Today I'm offering you two exercises that you can do in hope that they will show you a few of your blind spots.
Let's get started!
What is it that others see in you that you can't see for yourself?*
*It can be traits, skills, way of being and doing things.
You can grab some people around you and ask them this question OR you can do an imagination exercise and think what they would answer.
This exercise will require a bit of role-playing as well, so here we go: if you're sitting on a chair or couch, get up and take the seat next to you. Now, imagine that your friends will be in that seat too and what would your close friends say about you ("My friends will say about me that I am ..."). Moving on, imagine your work colleagues and what they will say about you ("My work colleagues will say that I am ..."). Next, what would your manager say about you ("My manager will say that I am ..."). And lastly, what you would say about yourself ("I say about me that I am ...").
Now get up and sit back in your own place, maybe even do a quick stretch and observe what is the outcome. What is emerging? How are you feeling at the end of this exercise? How will you like to proceed next with this insight?
You can do this exercise by writing everything down or you can do it by speaking out loud with yourself.
Also, this is just one piece of the puzzle! Working with a coach will help you dig deeper or set some strategies in place to help you in your day-to-day.
Stay curious,
Flo
(And some news: excited to share with you all that I just finished the 1st part of my journey with CTI in becoming a certified coach - I’ll be talking about the co-active model in a future post! Also, will start offering pro-bono coaching sessions so stay tuned! )
PS: Don’t forget to share this with anyone into self-development to get posts on coaching (tools & techniques) & becoming a better human being!