The Killer Antidote to Perfectionism
Elizabeth Gilbert once said that perfectionism is fear in high heels. Beneath the sexiness and shine of being a ‘high achiever’, it’s just plain old fear dressing itself up to look pretty.
When I started coaching in 2017, I was painfully aware of being brand new at all of this. I had just trained under some of the best coaches in the world. They’d shown me what mastery looked and felt like. And now here I was, fresh out of the gate, hanging up my shingle as a certified coach — all the while feeling like an utter fraud.
I longed for excellence.
I created a template that I filled out after each coaching session. One side listed the core competencies of my training school, which I’d grade myself on out of ten, looking back over the session. I imagined my instructors hovering over my shoulder, tutting and shaking their heads at this poor imitation of coaching. Flip over, and there was a grid with four boxes: what had gone well, what hadn’t gone so well, what I’d learned, and my takeaway actions to improve. (Of course, I tended to focus on what hadn’t gone so well.)
This drive to keep improving came from a good place: a deep respect for the art of coaching, a commitment to my clients, and a desire to make their investment transformative. But before too long, this drive began to get in my way.
Ironically, my desire for perfection in coaching began to undermine my ability as a coach.
When I was focusing on my own performance, the coaching became all about me. When I was groping for the next powerful question, I wasn’t listening on a deep level. When I was busy batting away my inner critic, I wasn’t fully present to what was unfolding between my client and me: this human, vulnerable, creative conversation that neither one of us could predict, and that would never happen again.
It was then that I read something that genuinely revolutionised my approach to my performance.
I found it in Rob Bell’s book, How To Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living. A central focus of the book is the idea of craft. Bell argues that craft is inherent to each of us, and that we can cultivate it in how we live and work.
Here’s the passage that changed everything for me:
“There is a difference between craft and success.
Craft is when you have a profound sense of gratitude that you even get to do this.
Craft is when you relish the details.
Craft is your awareness that all the hours you’re putting in are adding up to something, that they’re producing in you skill and character and substance.
Craft is when you meet up with someone else who’s serious about her craft and you can talk for hours about the subtle nuances and acquired wisdom of the work.
Craft is when you realize that you’re building muscles and habits that are helping you do better what you do.
Craft is when you have a deep respect for the form and shape and content of what you’re doing.
Craft is when you see yourself part of a line of people who have done this particular work.
Craft is when you’re humbled because you know that no matter how many years you get to do this, there will always be room to learn and grow.
Success says, What more can I get?
Craft says, Can you believe I get to do this?”
— ROB BELL, HOW TO BE HERE: A GUIDE TO CREATING A LIFE WORTH LIVING
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Seeing our work as craft is, in my mind, all about how we approach learning.
As leaders or entrepreneurs, we’re always needing to learn new things. We’re constantly challenged to grow, adapt, stretch, and expand our comfort zones, for the sake of the ideas and the people that we are responsible for. And so we’re always going to be exposing ourselves to getting it wrong. This can bring out the perfectionist big guns like nothing else: it feels like such an exposed way to risk failing.
And aside from our careers — as regular humans, we’re always learning and growing. Building a long-term relationship with someone. Raising children or caring for parents. Figuring out how to manage our finances. Looking after our mental health and physical fitness. Trying to live in accordance with our beliefs. Making changes that matter. There’s always the temptation to become fixated on achieving perfection.
A craft mindset can speak to all of these areas.
For me, three mantras have emerged out of this way of seeing:
“I’m not doing this alone.”
Self-doubt is deeply isolating. When we’re in the grip of perfectionism, we analyse our own abilities, critique our performance, and feel like we’re imposters just waiting to be found out. It’s all about us: focusing inwards. A craft mindset helps us remember that whatever our vocation — coaching, marketing, parenting, writing, consulting, data analysing, caring — we’re doing it within a community of other humans who are also learning, growing, making mistakes, doubting themselves, picking themselves up, and also making it up as they go, just like we are. The more we talk about our struggles and our questions, the more we realise that it’s not just us.
2. “We’re always apprentices.”
For me, the idea of craft reminds me of traditional trades — carpentry, ironmongery, masonry, sculpture — where skill progression would always begin with a multi-year apprenticeship: someone learning under the master, watching how they worked, letting themselves be taught. There was no shame in being an apprentice.
It’s much better to own that we don’t know it all than to pretend that we do — and so free up all that emotional energy to actually keep learning. There’s a freedom that comes from acknowledging we are still figuring stuff out — and to ask for help.
3. “Keep the bigger picture”.
It might feel like what just happened — whatever triggered our self-doubt and perfectionism — permanently defines our ability. But of course, it doesn’t. Conscious incompetence is one of the key stages of adult learning.
Let’s remember that none of us is a finished piece of work, and nor is our craft. What are we doing better now than we were twelve, six months ago? What’s going really well? Where do we already feel confident? And how much more skilled will we be twelve months from now? Five years from now? Ten? Twenty? How is what we’re going through now helping us hone our craft long-term?
Like an ironmonger hammering out a tool, or a sculpture chipping away at a bust, the ultimate shape of our craft is made slowly, through tiny and deliberate movements again and again and again. There’s no shortcut.
This trying and failing and trying and failing? This is the work.
Something to chew on: Where does perfectionism currently get out of hand for you? How might craft change that?