World Expert On Why Perfectionism Is Your Enemy And How To Overcome It - Professor Thomas Curran
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Imposter phenomenon is quite strong among perfectionists. You look around and see people are doing so much better than you or how you think are doing so much better than you and you think inside, I have to prove every day I'm good enough. Now,

Now, for some people, perfection or perfectionism is a trait to strive for. For most of us, if you listen to this podcast, you're probably vaguely familiar with the personal development world and you probably know that perfectionism is actually not a very good thing and tends to hold us back in life more than it actually helps us. And so today's episode is very exciting because I'm joined by Thomas Curran, who's actually an assistant professor at the London School of Economics. And Thomas has recently written a book called The Perfection Trap: The Power of Good Enough in a World That Always Wants More. Success is a bottomless pit.

It depletes us in its pursuit and just like the horizon, it keeps slipping away the further we get to it. This is how perfectionism operates within the mindset of people. And so, of course, you know, when things don't go well, we're going to turn on ourselves because

We weren't perfect in that moment. He has written for the Harvard Business Review. He was featured in New Scientist and his work has been covered in all sorts of publications, including The Guardian and The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal. He kind of talks about what we as individuals can do once we know that perfectionism is kind of bad to resist the trappings of society that encourages us to

constantly strive for more and strive to constantly be perfect. You are a human being, you exist, so you are enough. And I think that's the most important lesson to take through life. Something to remember all the time when things go well, when things don't go quite so well. It's okay, you're human, you fail, you are enough.

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In this episode, I thought we'd talk about all things perfectionism. I wonder if we can get started with a definition. What is perfectionism? Perfectionism is really a worldview, I suppose, the way we see and interpret the world and our interactions with other people. A lot of people think that it's a very active, optimistic, high-striving, excessively high goals and standards that we hold for ourselves.

But actually that's only part of the story because perfectionists do have excessive standards.

But it comes from a place of deficit. So it comes from this place where I'm not good enough, I'm not perfect enough, and therefore I must have these high standards for myself to prove to other people that I'm worth something, that I'm perfect, that I'm flawless. And so really, for me, if you want to get at the nub of perfectionism, it's really about that deficit thinking. Oh, interesting. And one of the things you say in the book is about how

We've misunderstood the root cause of perfectionism. I wonder if you can talk a little about that. What have we misunderstood about what causes perfectionism? I think the main thing is around where it comes from. And I think a lot of us think that this is kind of a hardwired personality trait that we're kind of born with or that we just possess and that there's very little that we could do about it. It's kind of part of our psychology.

And what I tried to do in the book is kind of probe that a little bit and look at the data. And we know that about 30 to 40% of perfectionism is genetics, that's to say heritage. So very little we can do about it. We're kind of just born of it. But 30 to 40 certainly is a lot for the environment to explain.

And my, I guess, exploration of perfectionism as a cultural trait and something that's kind of socially learned has taught me that there are many factors outside of us that kind of weigh on our need to be perfect, weigh on that deficit thinking. The world around us radiates perfection. The world around us tells us that there's always more to do. There's always bigger, better. We can be fitter, stronger, more attractive.

And as a consequence, it isn't only a genetic psychology, psychological personality trait, but it also has a very strong cultural influence. And that's why in the book I've described it as a cultural phenomenon. So how do we measure perfectionism? And I guess I'm kind of asking in two senses. Firstly...

in the studies how is perfectionism measured and secondly how would someone listening or watching this like how how might I identify whether I'm struggling with perfectionism for example so as academics to measure things and what we've done over many decades is listen to perfectionistic people tell us what perfectionism is what are the main characteristics what are the main thought process what are the main behaviors

And we kind of condensed all that information into a set of items that we can measure perfectionism on a scale. So you can say, I strive to be perfect, for instance. And how much do you agree with that statement? Some people might agree a lot. Some people might disagree. Some people are kind of in the middle. And so in order to take a metric or a measure of perfectionism, we kind of ask a string of these kind of questions. We aggregate them and we see where people sit on that spectrum.

And that's kind of typical to most personality traits. So it isn't just perfectionist measure like that, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, all of these big personality traits are all measured in the same way. And that's one of the reasons, again, why I talk about in the book, perfectionism is not kind of a black or white. It's not, I am a perfectionist or you aren't a perfectionist.

But it's really, you know, where we sit on the perfectionism spectrum. And some of us will be more perfectionistic on that spectrum. Some will be a little less. Most will be in the middle. And the big contribution, I think, of my work, and also I've updated this data for the book, is showing that that middle bit of the perfectionism spectrum, where most of us sit, is slowly creeping upwards. And we're seeing growing levels of perfectionism over time, particularly among young people. So that's how we measure it. Oh, okay. Okay.

Why is perfectionism bad or potentially bad? Perfectionism is bad because of this idea that it's rooted in deficit.

And a lot of the traits that it's confused with, things like meticulousness, conscientiousness, diligence, perseverance, all of these are great things, but they're not perfectionism. These things include high standards and they include striving for really good results in what we do.

but then don't come from a place of deficit. And that's what differentiates those things from perfectionism. Perfectionism very much comes from, I'm not good enough, I'm not perfect enough, and I have to prove to myself and other people that I am. And when you start there, you can begin to unpack why perfectionism can be really damaging. So think about it. It comes from a place of deficit. It's a sense that I must move through the world proving to other people that I'm good enough.

So in order to do that, I must excel. I must be perfect. I must have high standards. Okay. But what we're doing is we're setting ourselves up for failure because those excessive standards are too high. So we find ourselves in situations where we're not meeting those standards. We feel like we're failing. We feel like we're looking like a failure to other people. So we feel anxious. Our self-esteem plummets.

And in order to overcome those feelings and sort of overcompensate, we strive for even higher standards, which means we fail more, which means we feel more anxious, more lower self-esteem. And you can begin to see how perfectionism really starts to

become a negative downward spiral that gets entrenched and accelerates the more we overcompensate and the more we encounter setbacks and failures. So that's why perfectionism is particularly damaging because it triggers this spiral of self-defeat that can be really difficult for people.

Okay. So would I be right in saying that the difference between healthy striving and unhealthy perfectionism is what the root cause is? And we're saying the root cause is a sense of deficit, a sense of

I am not enough, therefore I must strive for more in the unhealthy category. Absolutely. And that's the difference between perfection and these other traits, right? Because these other traits come from a very active, optimistic sense of I want to improve, I want to get better, I want to do the best I can do.

But importantly, I can let things go. So if I don't quite make that high standard, I'm able to take what's there to be learned and move forward. Unfortunately, perfectionists have a real difficulty in accepting that sometimes perfectionism

we just don't improve or sometimes we go sideways or sometimes we even regress and those things are really catastrophic for the perfectionist because it's really difficult for them to reconcile those feelings without over generalizing them to the self right there must be something wrong with me i haven't succeeded in this case so therefore i'm flawed and i'm irredeemable you know i'm i'm kind of

There's kind of a very self-critical, self-loathing mindset that's the creep in for the perfectionist. So that's the core difference. Yeah, it reminds me of a few friends I had at university who, the way they would approach studying for exams is a constant striving to avoid failure.

because in medical school, the whole like, "Oh, if I fail, I was right about myself. I knew I didn't belong in Cambridge Medical School. I knew I wasn't good enough to be a doctor and this is proof. Therefore, I must strive to not fail." And then other of my friends, including me, we'd kind of treat it as a bit of a game, a bit of a competition. It's like playing a board game with friends. "Oh, what'd you get on that exam?" But for those people who were like the anti-failure mode,

asking that question of what did you get on that exam was like, oh my God, like, you know, let's not talk about it. It's the worst thing ever. Like, does that vibe with your experience of perfectionism? Absolutely. And I see it all the time in universities as,

So many students have a lot of trouble these days accepting that they might not get as good a grade as they thought they were going to get. And they're really averse to even the slightest bit of critical feedback. So we have to be really careful. And I think that's really the indicative of this kind of perfectionism that's beginning to take over among young people where they're really fearing the consequences of failures because they're told failure is good.

can be catastrophic, particularly like for your future life chances. So of course they kind of develop this need to excel at all times. And even like, even an objectively high grade can feel disappointing to the perfectionist. Because as I say, it's this kind of idea that it's never quite enough. The better I'm do, the better I do, the better I'm expected to do. And there's always this kind of churning of high and excessive expectations that is really difficult to reconcile with reality. Yeah.

So you said earlier that perfectionism is about 30 to 40% genetic. What does that mean? And how do we know?

Okay, so about 30 to 40% of perfectionism is genetic. And we know that because classic twin studies where we compare identical, non-identical twins against adopted siblings, and we look at the similarities in their traits, about 30 to 40% of personality and self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, these are aspects of perfectionism measured in these studies, are genetically herited. That's to say that they come from factors to do with genes.

But as I mentioned earlier, that still leaves a lot for the environment to explain. So perfectionism is very much a nature, but it's also there's a lot of nurture in there too. And what other personality traits does perfectionism tend to correlate with?

So it correlates very strongly with neuroticism. So perfectionists tend to be highly neurotic. There is a correlation. Sorry, what is neuroticism for people who might not be familiar with it? Neuroticism is a personality trait which essentially is rooted in anxiety. It's a sense of worry and rumination about how we...

or how we're doing or how we're appearing relative to other people and people who are neurotic tend to be very unsettled irritable anxious so we see very high correlation between perfectionism and neuroticism but there's also interestingly a correlation between perfectionism and conscientiousness which is a which is a sort of rooted in very hard work diligence perseverance to tasks and

So there's this kind of really yin and yang, I suppose, with perfectionism when it comes out of a personality trait. There's some really good things that it correlates with, but it can also correlate with really negative things. And so this is why perfection is such a fascinating personality trait because it has these kind of two sides, which make it really interesting. And are there any group differences like gender or sex differences, race differences, even between how perfectionism plays out amongst large groups of people? Yeah, it's a really good question.

And it's one I find really challenging to answer because the research that I've done has looked at over 40,000 young people

And let's take gender differences first because a lot of people would think, you know, this is something that's perhaps a little bit higher in women than it is in men. But the data doesn't seem to bear that out. And that's really surprising for us and surprising for other people that I talk to. So when we take these 40,000 people and we try to explain levels of perfectionism based on the number of females in a sample, we don't find anything. There's no difference.

And so that's really fascinating that men and women tend to score relatively similar on aspects of perfectionism. Now, that's not to say that women aren't exposed to environments that trigger perfectionism into a greater degree. That's not to say that the society we live in still has perfectionism.

impossible or expectations or puts high and excessive expectations on women more so than it does in men. I think we can have that discussion and I think that there would be a lot of validity to that claim. However, in terms of levels, we don't see a great deal of difference.

To your ethnicity question, we just don't have the data, sadly. But we do have some data that shows some interesting cross-cultural differences for perfectionism. So in individualistic cultures, we tend to see perfectionism and this kind of self-perfectionism that comes from within, this kind of sense that I need to be perfect.

Tends to be quite high, very dominant aspects of perfectionism. Where in more collectivistic cultures, we tend to see perfectionism, this kind of social element of perfection, a kind of sense that everybody around me expects me to be perfect, tends to be quite dominant and quite high. So there's some interesting cultural differences in how perfectionism expresses perfectionism.

But gender is the one that we were surprised by and we don't really find anything there. Okay, interesting. So two points on that. Firstly, on the gender one, that surprises me because, again, I could be wrong about this, but I thought that neuroticism and conscientiousness are both slightly skewed towards female. And therefore, if perfectionism correlates with those

Also anecdotally, most of the people I know who would identify as perfectionists tend to be girls. But I guess you guys have looked at 40,000 people worth of data. Do you know what? It surprised us too. It's one of those things where our dataset is probably the biggest perfectionism dataset that we have. And when we threw that variable into our regression model,

We were expecting to see something and it's really striking that we didn't. You know, these aren't perfect correlations. They probably share about 25 to 30% of variance, which is quite strong for, you know, psychological variables, but certainly by no means is there complete overlap between his personality traits.

So it doesn't necessarily, uh, it doesn't necessarily correlate, suggest if one correlate with the other, that there would also have higher, higher mean levels in the aggregate. But yeah, we were surprised by that. And it's one of those findings that we're still, we're still looking at trying to figure out, you know, what's happening there. But as I say, I think there are contextual factors that, that make, uh, women a little more vulnerable to the impacts of perfectionism, but mean levels, not so much. Hmm.

I want to put a quick bookmark in that contextual factors. I think it would be definitely good to talk about that. On the cultural front, so you said kind of individualistic versus collectivist cultures, which generally means sort of like West versus East in a sort of broad brushstroke. So would it be fair to say that, for example, I know a lot of people who are perfectionistic who are from like India, Pakistan, kind of I'm from Pakistan, or my mates from like whose families are Chinese. There's this whole vibe of like,

kind of the Asian parent kind of phenotype of Asian parent, Asian families expects the child to be very, very good at the thing. But then if I think of like my white friends,

They tend not to have the family expectation and yet they still struggle with perfectionism. So is that what you're kind of what you're getting at with this sort of collectivist versus individualistic kind of vibe? That's exactly what we're getting at there. There's a kind of an interdependency in collectivistic cultures whereby a lot of the community and people around individuals support that.

push maybe and that can impact on people's psychology that's not quite strong in individualistic cultures but what is a bit stronger is this kind of sense that it's up to you and only you to make something of yourself yeah anything of yourself right so there's this kind of this kind of self-perfectionism really comes through a lot stronger in that kind of culture because it's really on the individual and i think that's what's happening here with those differences got it

So we mentioned, you know, when it comes to the gender differences, there are cultural or societal factors that maybe affect some groups differently to others. Do you have a sense of what those are? Okay, that's a really big question to unpack. In the book, I try to pinpoint several different areas of life where perfectionism is really dominant or where perfectionism is accentuated, lionized, kind of amplified.

And those core factors are within consumer culture and this kind of idea that we're held perpetually in a sense of deficit because, you know, that's what helps us consume and work and keeps the economy spinning on its axis. Social media, which kind of takes that kind of model and puts it into a social platform where we're the content creators that create this kind of aura of discontent where targeted ads can thrive.

I talk about schools and colleges and how it's really, really tough right now for young people to excel in school and college because competition is so fierce and they need to be so much better than their contemporaries just to get into the elite colleges, which allow them access to the elite jobs. And then of course the workplace itself. It's a really insecure workplace right now for young people. It's completely changed from when our parents were at work. It's all about the hustle, all about the grind. It's all about the individual.

And that can also perpetuate a sense of perfectionism. Now, within those key things, of course, there's going to be certain subgroups that are much more exposed than others. That's not to say that, you know, that they have it easier because I think everybody in this world is exposed to a lot of pressure these days. So I have to be clear there.

But certainly, I would say that there is a lot of expectation on young women, particularly when we look at things like social media and the world of advertising to kind of look and appear a certain way, to hold a certain personality, speak and behave in certain ways, which I think men sometimes get a bit of a pass on. So I think there is definitely expectations of women that are greater than in many certain areas, particularly when it comes to image and appearance.

And that still is the case. And also some subgroups of people, you know, people from lower down the social class hierarchy, you know, they have to lift themselves much further than other people. And they start from way back. And that can create a sense of a need to excel and overachieve in order to clear those structural hurdles.

And of course, there's also still racial prejudices, discrimination that we see in society and people from marginalized backgrounds and underrepresented backgrounds also have a really tough time kind of pushing through those structural boundaries. So it's not just about class, but it's also about ethnic background.

Where, you know, that can also weigh on their sense that they need to do so much better than other people just to stay in the same place. And so those are, you know, it was a big question to unpack, but I hope I was able to kind of give you a good roadmap. Yeah, no, that's a good roadmap. And we'll put a link to the book and your website and everything else down in the show notes and the video description, wherever people happen to be watching or listening to this, if they want to explore those areas more.

Is there any data around sort of adverse childhood experiences? When you mentioned the perfectionism stuff, it reminded me of some stuff that I've read around kids who feel sort of abandoned by their parents when they were younger and can often end up becoming perfectionist-y and like they're, oh, okay, cool. I guess mommy doesn't love me unless I do well in my exam. Therefore, let me continue to do well in my exams. Is that a thing that the data shows as well?

Yeah. So Ali, I've got to be a bit careful here because I'm not a clinical psychologist. So going into areas of sort of trauma and early life experiences is not my area. However, what I will say is I studied a lot of clinical work in perfectionism and we know that there is a strong correlation between early life trauma and later life perfectionism. And one of the

big things there is this kind of sense of abandonment, this kind of sense that I wasn't, I wasn't enough to be approved of, to, to, to be loved essentially. And as a consequence, that's carried through into older, older adulthood where we never really feel like, um, we, uh,

are good enough we never really feel like we deserve other people's love and approval and as a consequence we overcompensate we tend to be very anxious and this is why there can be some significant you know mental health problems that are associated perfectionism that's rooted in that early life distress

But I would say that that's probably a discussion for a clinical psychologist rather than me as a social psychologist. But the point is definitely valid and there is a definite role for early life experiences in later life perfectionism. Nice. We talked earlier about how perfectionism is kind of on a spectrum or like a scale and it's not black or white.

And in the book, you talk about your grandfather as an example of potentially like healthy striving rather than perfectionism. I wonder if you can tell that story because I think it's quite illustrative. Yes. So my grandfather of another era, and I think this also is an important factor in this conversation because I...

I think my grandfather would have a little bit of perfectionism if he came through today, but he came through in an era where there wasn't such demands. There wasn't five-star reviews and everybody's providing feedback on your work. He was a carpenter, by the way. So now he would, of course, have a MyBuilder profile and everybody would be reviewing his work and it would be really a

a lot more pressurized than I guess it was in his day. However, I used to love going to watch my grandfather build things. He was a master craftsman. He really had an eye for detail and he created some just, you know, from the vantage point of a child, some amazing things. And I think what's really what I remember most about my grandfather is that

He didn't have this kind of hang up that I have about, well, is it good enough? Can I send it out into the world? He just made everyday things that people needed. And he delivered those things to their new homes. Didn't loiter for validation or a five-star review or a fire emoji. He just kind of left them there. And it was his vocation, right? That was his role. He just wanted to leave everyday things in the world for other people to use.

And that is an extremely different way to move about life, to go about your working and professional life than the way that perfectionists like me go about it, which is essentially

Oh goodness. I hope people like it. I hope they give it a good review. I hope they're not going to criticize me or find what I'm saying. Um, you know, uh, upsetting or whatever, you know, because these are the doubts that us perfectionists have all the time. My grandfather had no such hangups. He wanted to do well and he wanted to prove to other people, of course, that he was a good craftsman, but if he didn't do things perfectly, if he left a bit of varnish,

or you know left a little screw just jutting imperceptibly above the wood he'd let those mistakes wash through him as sure a sign of his fallibility is his wrinkles are sciatica and i think that's for me that's what differentiates a conscientious a cheater a striver or a conscientious person from a perfectionistic person

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Worry about what other people think. Worry about whether I'm doing enough. Worry about my place and whether I belong. Imposter phenomenon is quite strong among perfectionists, particularly perfectionists that have come from, you know,

I've come from a working class background into a middle class world. And you often doubt yourself. You wonder if you deserve to be there. You wonder if your works of a certain standard, you look around and see people are doing so much better than you or how you think are doing so much better than you. And you, and you think inside, I have to prove every day that I'm good enough that I deserve to be here. And that I'm trying to disguise this kind of flawed and inadequate person that I think I am inside and,

Now I'm doing so much better now. This was something that consumed me in my twenties and led to quite significant mental health problems, which is what prompted me to really take an interest in this topic.

I'm able to let things go now. I'm able to try to strive a bit more like my grandfather did his striving and kind of let things go and accept that not everybody's going to be happy with what you say and not everybody's going to think that your work is amazing and that's okay. That, you know, sometimes you're going to slip up and do a really bad lecture or answer a question in a way that was suboptimal and also that's okay. So I'm learning, I'm learning to get on top of my perfectionism. But

But nevertheless, it's sadly something that I definitely suffer with. So what strategies have you used to get better at this over the last, I'd say, 10 years? The biggest one for me is to just let life happen. And I think there's a real impulse in this culture to happen in the world as if everything and all around us can be mastered, can be perfected.

Can it in some way be overcome? Sometimes for no good reason we fail. Sometimes things happen to us that we have no control over. And accepting that fact is really the first big step in breaking through perfectionism. Because then you are ready and prepared to have a sort of goal in your mind of where you want to go. That you're kind of aware that this is where I want to be.

But you know that the journey to get there is not going to be straightforward. It's going to have lots of headwinds, lots of stumbling blocks, lots of setbacks, things that you can't control, that you have to be very agile in navigating, that you have to accept that

Sometimes you're going to stand still and go nowhere for a few months. Sometimes you're even going to regress. You know, you're going to think you've mastered something and suddenly something comes along that teaches you. Actually, you didn't know what you were doing in the first place. You have to relearn these things. And so life is really a jagged path. And instead of kind of trying to meet every setback by trying to force yourself forward and avoid encountering those difficulties, putting things off, procrastinating, worrying about what other people think.

Just allowing it, allowing the anxiety in, allowing the worry in, just sitting comfortably next to situations when things aren't quite going to plan and keeping on going, keeping on towards that ultimate goal. I think that for me is the biggest, the biggest difference between how I used to think and how I think now, because it's so much more psychologically liberating when you can understand that things aren't going to always go to plan and that's okay. We can sit with that.

Yeah, that seems to be a thing that, I mean, almost every spiritual teaching also goes towards that. Even if we think of the ancient philosophies like Stoicism, it seems like all of these different ways of tackling life end up on the conclusion of allow things to happen as they are, live in the present moment, don't live in the past or in the future, which causes essentially sadness and anxiety, worrying about the future. But if we can just

focus on what's within our control and just keep going put one foot in front of the other all of those cliches but they i think those cliches are cliche for a reason because there's like universal truth behind them but also i think they're almost too easy to dismiss in the sense that if someone is struggling with perfectionism they're

They might hear about, I don't know, Epictetus' dichotomy of control or whatever and be like, oh yeah, of course I should just do the, you know, God grant me the serenity to accept that which I can't control. But it's a lot easier said than done. Absolutely. And it's easier for some people than it is for others. And let's be honest about this. A lot of self-help is predicated on this notion that, you know,

being more meditative, positive thinking, caring for herself when things haven't gone well. These are all very noble things to advise, but some people are in situations where doing those things, being authentic, letting things happen,

is a really difficult thing to do because if you're poor and you let things happen and things don't go well, the impact of that can be catastrophic. It can mean losing your tenancy. It could mean surviving on minimum wage. So, you know, I think this is why I try to impress in the book that this idea of kind of letting things go isn't created equally. For some people, the consequences of that are far more severe than other people. And I think we have to be really

cognizant as a society that yes there are individual things that we can do that are important but we also as a collective have a responsibility to help people become more serene in the way that they live allow things to happen and the consequences of when things go wrong be not as catastrophic as sometimes they can be in today's society so yes it's an individual's uh

issue that I think, you know, that we need to work on, but also as a collective, I think there's things we can do as a society too. So I just, I think one of the things I'm really keen to caveat in this book is not just go all in on this kind of authenticity, be vulnerable, show yourself, allow things to happen without also acknowledging that that's easier for some people to do than it is for others. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point. There's that classic thing that people say around, you know, anxiety and things that like, oh, you know, it's, you know, fundamentally rooted in fear. The amygdala was designed to, you know, save us from getting mauled by a saber tooth tiger, and was also in caveman era is designed to help us combat social threats. And now it's gone haywire, because actually, those same survival mechanisms are no longer serving us. Yeah.

But I guess what we're saying is that actually, for some people, they are genuinely survival mechanisms. If you can't make rent and you end up on the streets, that is a survival mechanism compared to if your book does not hit the New York Times bestseller list and only hits the Sunday Times, whatever the hell, whatever the hell the list is. There's like, there are different levels of actually some things are threatening people's survival and are

others aren't in as great a degree. I guess either way, you can't really, whatever the consequences, you can only really control what's under your control. But it's way easier said than done, especially if your survival is genuinely being threatened. Absolutely. And I think this is really important for people to recognize that you can acknowledge the world needs to change. You can want the world to change and you can also meet the world where it is. Those two things are not mutually exclusive and that's our challenge.

And for us to accept that, you know, we do live in a very tilted economy, a lopsided economy. And it is tough for a lot of people and becoming tougher as we enter into a cost of living crisis. And young people in particular find it really difficult to get on things like the housing ladder and start families and all the rest of it.

I think it's really, really important that we can recognize those issues. We can understand that they are impacting on the way we feel, particularly on the perfectionistic thoughts and feelings because we try to overcompensate for those structural things by working harder.

want them to change, but also allow ourselves to meet the world where it is. Let setbacks in, let those things wash over us a little bit as frustrating and, you know, uh, anxiety provoking as they are. Um, and, and live as you, as you mentioned with a little bit more contentment, a little bit more serenity, wanting to change, maybe even agitating for that change, but also accepting where we are, our life circumstances, um, and,

And I think that's, for me, that's the key. And that's what's helped me break through my perfectionism. Nice. I want to tackle many more action points because we have lots of action points in the book. But before we do that, I thought we'd touch on the multidimensional model of perfectionism. So we kind of alluded to this a little bit when talking about Asians versus white people. But like, what is the multidimensional model of perfectionism? So the multidimensional model of perfectionism is really an acknowledgement that perfectionism is more than just personal status.

So, as I mentioned, perfectionism really starts with this kind of deficit thinking, but that can be expressed in so many different ways. And over decades of talking to perfectionistic people, we've realized that perfectionism isn't just about, I need to be perfect. And if I'm not perfect, I'm highly self-critical of myself. This is called self-oriented perfectionism, right? Self-oriented perfectionism comes from self. And yes, this is a very dominant aspect of perfectionism, particularly in individualistic cultures, but it's not the only one.

Speaking to perfectionistic people that we also find is a particularly pernicious social route to perfectionism too. So the sense that perfectionistic people tend to feel like the social environment around them is highly expectant of perfection and is very judgmental. And it's called socially prescribed perfectionism. So socially prescribed perfectionism, perfectionists kind of hear very snide remarks about them everywhere they go. They feel like people are judging them highly and they're expected to be perfect.

And then there's a third aspect called other into perfectionism, which is kind of perfectionism that's turned outwards onto other people. So I expect you to be perfect. And if you're not perfect, then I'm very judgmental and very harsh and very punitive.

And these three aspects of perfectionism are really what we understand to be a multi-dimensional model of perfectionism. That isn't just one thing like high standards, high self-set standards and striving, but also has social elements like social, prescribed, and also other-oriented. And together, these are the three aspects of perfectionism that I outline in the book.

Yeah, okay. So I'm just going to read out a few, you know, for people in who are watching or listening. This is, I think, one of the multi-dimensional perfectionism scales, just to give people a sense of these three different things. So self-oriented perfectionism. And I guess as you're listening or watching to this, sort of have a think about like, to what extent do you kind of agree or disagree with these phrases as they relate to you? So self-oriented perfectionism. I must be perfect at the things that matter to me.

If I screw up or fall short, I'm hard on myself. I hold myself to an exceptionally high standard. If I do not appear or perform perfectly, I feel a lot of guilt and shame and I strive to be perfect. And those are all the self-oriented perfectionism things. We've got five things for socially prescribed perfectionism. When I slip up or fall short, people are right there waiting to criticize me. Everyone else is perfect and they're judging me if I'm not perfect too. Those close to me will accept nothing less than perfection.

People tend to get upset with me if I don't do things perfectly and everybody expects me to be perfect. Then we have other oriented perfectionism. I find it difficult to tolerate substandard performances from those around me. If people aren't trying their absolute hardest, I let them know. Everyone should totally excel at things that are important to them. When someone close to me screws up or falls short, it's important to call them out. And I dislike being surrounded by people who've got low standards.

So we'll put this questionnaire in the show notes and the video description as well, if you fancy whoever's listening to this sort of rating yourself on these things. The other oriented perfectionism one I thought was interesting because I would not have thought that that would come under the definition of perfectionism because that's more like having high standards, I guess, or perfectionistic standards for the people around you.

Yes, but you have to remember where it comes from. So other interperfectionists are doing what Freud would call projection. So this sense that, you know, I have a burning need to be perfect. And if I'm going to haul myself over hot coals to get there, you are going to do too, because that's only fair.

And so you tend to find that people high in perfectionistic tendencies can sometimes point those tendencies out. It's not all the time, you know, not everyone is an avarice perfectionist. A lot of people like myself wouldn't dream of imposing the standards that I

place on myself but you tend you can find that some people do and a good example would be steve jobs is someone i write about in the book who's clearly an incredible uh entrepreneur business person is you know one of the most successful if not the most successful entrepreneur

in the world. But, you know, he was a complicated man at the same time. And autobiographical accounts show that he was a perfectionistic person, expected perfection in his own life, expected perfection of himself, but also importantly, expected perfection of other people. And when they weren't up to his standard, he let them know.

And that is an example of someone who has high standards for themselves but can sometimes turn them out onto other people. And that's why we find sometimes, you know, when perfectionistic people talk to us, come into the, you know, clinical environment or even just come into a research environment and they tell us about their perfectionism, one of the things sometimes we see is this kind of other-oriented perfectionism. Okay. And do you find that those people are also like,

tend to be perfectionistic in themselves? Or can you have pure other-oriented perfectionism without actually feeling the effects of it internally? Really good question. Don't touch on this in the book, actually, but let's go into it because it is a very interesting question.

So the answer is, it depends. So what we tend to see is those who've got high levels of perfectionism, self-oriented perfectionism, fused with or combined with high levels of other-oriented perfectionism, can demonstrate what we would consider to be really highly perfectionistic tendencies that has an impact on them and those around them. And that can have negative consequences for their social relationships. It can also have a negative consequence for their own mental health.

Now, there is a case that we've looked at in the literature where you can see these high standards divorced from perfectionism, but fused with something called narcissism. And so we call this kind of narcissistic perfectionism, which is something that I haven't touched on in the book because I think it's quite separate to the issues that I wanted to tackle. But nevertheless, there's some really interesting studies in this that I've done myself where you tend to find other way into perfectionism.

doesn't come with perfectionistic tendencies, but instead comes fused with narcissism. And so these people have a sort of grandiose view of themselves and therefore they almost kind of channel that grandiosity into expectations that they expect for other people. And that doesn't have the same implications

interpersonal consequences i have to say psychological consequences for the person themselves but has significant and implications for the people that these these uh individuals interact with yeah because um

It's a very, very draining. Let's imagine you had a narcissistic perfectionist boss. That would be a very draining way to work. That would be an extremely difficult working environment trying to navigate those tendencies. And so you can have it without self-oriented perfectionism and it can be fused with narcissism.

I'm just thinking back to all my interactions with my team and thinking, oh, have I? But OK, so what are the again, what's the what's the difference between having high standards and being a narcissistic perfectionist? Is it just a matter of degree? Well, let's put it this way.

The perfectionist doesn't believe the bulletproof narrative they're trying to construct for themselves deep down. They feel like they're inefficient, they're flawed and they're not worth anything. And that's why they try to project perfection to prove to other people and gain the validation and approval of other people. So that as kind of props for their self-esteem, which is really low.

Narcissists are very different. Their self-esteem is really high because they believe the narrative, the bulletproof narrative that they're constructing for themselves. They actually take on that image and think that they are the perfect worker boss that they're projecting outside onto other people. That's the critical difference between a perfectionist and a narcissist. Okay, got it.

In what way does perfectionism contribute to lower, I guess, productivity? Okay, I love this question because the answer is fascinating. So you would think, wouldn't you, that perfectionists would succeed? And that's kind of very common conventional wisdom, I guess, in broader society, right? The perfectionists are these kind of really high-over-strivers and as a consequence they succeed. We know that there's baggage, right?

We know that there's kind of mental health problems that can coexist with perfectionism. But on the other hand, these people are really high achievers. And, you know, you could point to high perfectionists, Serena Williams, Victoria Pendleton, Steve Jobs, Demi Lovato. You know, all these people who self-confessed perfection made it to the top of their professions, clearly really talented and high achieving. And therefore, it must be the perfectionism that propelled them there.

When we look at the data, however, we find no relationship between perfectionism and performance.

And this is really curious because they work so hard, they put everything into their activities and yet they don't seem to perform any better. Why is that? Well, there's two reasons. One reason is that they work hard, but they work too hard. So what you tend to see is this kind of declining and then diminishing returns to any extra unit of input. So they work to the max and then beyond. They sacrifice rejuvenating activities like diet, sleep, diet.

good healthy behaviors like exercise for instance we know they're rejuvenating we know these things help with work performance they don't do them they burn out and we know there's strong correlation with infections and burnout so this is kind of one of the reasons why professionals struggle to perform perhaps to the to the extent that their effort would would suggest they should do but the second reason is a really fascinating reason and one that we've been really keen to look at in the lab and the second reason is perfectionists find it really tough when things start to go wrong

So if you give perfectionists a task to do, you say, look, you should comfortably achieve this outcome on this task. And you say, go ahead and do it. So we put people in the lab and we use sport because sport's a really good microcosm of sort of more competitive society more generally. We say, okay, you should comfortably complete this distance in this time on this cycling task, right? So go away and do it.

We get them to do it. They work really, really hard. And then at the end, we tell them, unfortunately, you didn't quite make the target we set. And then we do something really naughty. We say, try again. Now, the perfectionistic people, when they are given that failure feedback, feel so ashamed of that and embarrassed of that failure.

that they will do everything they possibly can to avoid feeling those things again. So on the second trial, what we see is that effort drops off a cliff because you can't fail at something you didn't try. So as soon as they encounter situations of almost certain defeat where they know putting everything of themselves into it is not going to end well, they just withhold.

Now people who aren't particularly perfectionistic do the complete opposite. When we tell them to do it again, their effort doesn't change. If anything, it goes up slightly. And that is another reason why perfectionists really struggle to perform because it's fine when things are going well, but as soon as things start to go wrong and there's a high chance of failure, they withdraw themselves. Now that's in the lab. How does that look in real life? Well, in real life, they procrastinate. They find mistakes.

anxiety provoking situations, things that are really tough, really hard to get going. They see the task ahead of them. They know it's going to be challenging. And so the mental energy and the anxiety that that's stirring up in them is so fierce that they'll just completely hold effort. So they'll stop doing things. They'll procrastinate. They'll watch the latest Netflix series. They'll go and cook up the latest TikTok recipe. Anything to avoid facing the anxiety of doing a task that needs to get done. Now, of course,

That helps, it eases that anxiety for that moment. But in the end, they're just damaged by the passage of time. And as a consequence, the work goes in late or it's substandard or it's not as good as it could have been because we're under these time pressures because of the withdrawal and the procrastination that we're engaging in, which again is not conducive to high performance.

So it's a really, really fascinating topic, this one. And I wanted to cover it in a separate chapter in the book because I think it's really important that people understand that yes, perfectionism has a kind of sense that it is this positive motivational force. But actually, when you dig deeper, when you look closer, you tend to find that perfectionists really struggle to perform.

It's almost like a self-sabotaging behavior, right? Yeah, exactly. That is exactly what it is. Perfectionists are world-class self-sabotagers. Is this something that you struggled with? Absolutely. I mean, you know, my book is two years over June.

My editor was ready to throttle me, I think, as I was still tinkering with it the day before it was going to press. We just can't help ourselves because we just want things to be perfect and we find it really challenging psychologically for them not to be. So we tinker, we iterate, we work too hard, we put things off, we kind of manage our anxiety in suboptimal ways.

and obviously a better way to handle that would just be to get things done to get things on the page you know this idea that done is better than perfect I know that and I try as hard as I can to engage with that mantra but it's tough particularly when you're putting a book out into the world you know for everyone to read I mean that's really that's a big thing yeah I know the feeling one of the things that my writing coach helped me realize was I had a lot of

perfectionistic tendencies when it came to writing a book and I don't really have those with making YouTube videos even though a YouTube video might get a million views which is more views than my book is ever going to sell copies of so like for some reason when it comes to a YouTube video I feel more chill about putting myself out there in that sense I guess because I've made like 700 of them at this point over the last six years but the thought of a book oh my god a book is a big deal yeah and my writing coach was like why are you thinking that a book is a big deal I was like I don't know because there's a book shops and he

And he was like, why does that make it a big deal? And we kind of like went on this line of questioning. And I kind of realized the reason a book is a big deal is because it is more open to criticism than a random video is. Because a random video will be seen by people who already like me. And that's fine. But a book might be bought by someone who doesn't know who I am, doesn't know anything about me. And I can just imagine the Amazon reviews. This guy thinks he knows anything about productivity. What a freaking twat. Like, how dare he suggest that? Like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I can just imagine reading those.

And knowing in my mind that, yeah, haters gonna hate. And you know, this person's just expressing a preference and like, it's all good, water under the bridge. But in reality, the feeling of like, oh no, my work is being criticized and judged. Yeah.

Yeah, at some level it's going to, you can try to brush it off, but at some level it's always going to impact you, right? And I think that's really interesting what you say in terms of, you know, you have a level of comfort with the things that you know you do well, the things that you know attract viewers that gain a lot of attention. Whereas with something that you're not quite sure about yet because it's the first time you've done it and you haven't really tested it with the outside world. Yeah.

that can be really like psychologically that can be a real challenge. So I think it's you, what you're expressing there is what I feel. I think what most people feel and it isn't just, you know, about writing books. It's whenever we push ourselves out of our comfort zone, there's always that trepidation. And if you're perfectionistic, that trepidation is going to be amplified. Nice.

So we spent some time talking about, I guess, the misconceptions and the causes and root causes of perfectionism. And we've hinted on one of the action points that you found helpful, which was this thing of letting life wash over you and being okay with how things turn out.

I wonder if we can go over some more action points. So for someone listening and watching this far who might vibe with perfectionism in their own life, what are some other things that we can do to get over perfectionism or at least reduce the impact that it might have on us? Okay.

So I think there's really, first of all, first and foremost, before we do anything else, I think it's really important to appreciate where perfection is coming from. And I want readers to pick up my book and come away with a sense that this isn't your fault.

There are a broader context to these feelings that actually your society and economy is designed, structured, organized to instill a sense of deficiency. Because if you didn't feel deficient, if you felt content, you wouldn't consume, you wouldn't work. And our economy would quite quickly and abruptly spiral into a recession at that point, which is the worst kind of depression, depression.

recession, a demand-deficit driven recession, which would create all sorts of havoc.

This feeling of being not enough is really fundamental to the way in which your society is structured. I really want people to bear this in mind because I think this takes a lot of power away from that deficit thinking to understand that, okay, this is the system working. This is a system working exceptionally well. Perfectionism is really wise perfectionism as evidence of the system works, that we have created a situation and a culture in which people feel compelled to consume and work.

as hard as they possibly can in order to prove themselves of worth in this society. And if we can understand that, if we can wrap our head around that, then that is the most important starting point. This is not your fault. These feelings have a broader context and it's okay. Now, from there, what can we do? Well, I talk about in my book, the fundamental role of self-acceptance, because I think self-acceptance is really like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism.

And underneath that broad philosophy are some actionable things you can do. And the first is self-compassion. Now we have to at all times treat ourselves with kindness. If you screw up a presentation, kindness. If you didn't get the grade you wanted in your assessment,

kindness okay if you went to work and your annual review came back and it wasn't quite as good as you're expecting don't go out of that room with your boss and berate yourself how could it be so stupid what was i thinking why didn't i put in more effort why didn't i work on weekends or evenings or whatever to to make sure that this didn't happen kindness

It's okay. I did my best. I worked hard. Nobody's perfect. I made mistakes. We're human. And to be human is to be imperfect. If we can learn to treat ourselves with kindness every time something goes wrong, we will instantly start to break down those self-critical features of perfectionism that make it such a difficult personality trait to carry around. Now, that's not easy.

and it takes time and practice. You're not going to do it straight away. I still come out of my lectures if I've done a bad job or I think I've done a bad job and ask myself, what was I thinking? But instantly I'm turning that round and saying, okay, you know, this one bad lecture out of many, many that I give, it's not going to impact my future career. It's not as catastrophic as you instantly think it is. It's just...

one bad day at the office. The second thing is to challenge our perfectionism in important ways. So being self-critical after setbacks is crucial, but also putting ourselves in situations where we encounter setbacks is also crucial. Remember I talked about perfection can recoil from those situations. It's really, really important to try to push yourselves into them instead. So if you don't feel like one of your talents is speaking, for instance, push yourself at work to do a talk, go through the anxiety that that engenders.

Just sit with it, let it wash over you for a little bit and then go out there and do it. And you will almost always find at the end of that talk that the impact or the feedback or the consequence of it was not as catastrophic as you thought it was going to be. Look, look, it might not be a, you know, a polished erudite speech that maybe you see on a TED talk. It might not be that, but at the same time,

It also is likely to have been an experience where you've learned something, where you stood in front of people and conquered that fear and tried to push through and break through your perfectionism. Those are really important things to take away because those things that you can learn, that help you develop, that help you become more confident and importantly, help you break through your perfectionism is by taking those small steps out of your comfort zone. So challenging your perfectionism is really important. Try to do that as much as you can. And thirdly,

And this is really important. Always remember that whatever you do, failure is not humiliating. It's humanizing. It's normal and natural to fail. In fact,

We will fail way more than we will succeed. You have one success, it's followed by infinite amounts of failure because failure is just regression to the mean. It's an indication that we're moving in a direction, that we're learning, that we're developing.

And it's really important to remember that failure is part and parcel of that process. It's not humiliating. It's not something shameful that needs to be rehabilitated at all times. It is just what it is. It's a part and parcel of human growth, human development. And I think that's so, so important. We need to change our relationship with failure and remember that it's a very humanizing part of the human condition. So those are, I think, the main three things that I think

I would like readers to take away from the book. Right, we're going to take a very quick break from the podcast to introduce our sponsor, which is Brilliant.org. Brilliant has been a supporter of my channel for the last several years. I've been using their product for the last several years, and it's the best app I've ever found for online courses in maths and science and computer science.

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To the point about self-compassion, a book that I've recently reread in the last week is called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by a guy called Kamal Ravikant. And I read it a few years ago and I was like, eh, it's a bit woo. It's a bit like, you know, hand-weavy. And then I read it again last week. I was like, oh, okay, like this is actually really solid. And one of the exercises, you know, this guy talks about, you know, he was a successful like investor startup guy, right?

had a lot of struggles with mental health and perfectionism and depression and things. And one very actionable strategy that he found really helpful is just, you know, throughout the day, reminding himself to take a few breaths. And when breathing in, just literally telling himself, I love myself.

And I've been trying this for the last few days where I'm just like, you know, as I'm walking, walking down, walking towards the car while listening to an audio book at 3x speed on my AirPods, just like looking up, taking a breath and just sort of saying to myself internally, I love myself and then breathing out. And the way he describes it is like, imagine taking a deep breath and imagine like light from above coming into your system. And then as you breathe out, that light is going into the areas of your body where it most needs to go.

And I was like, nah, come on, come on, this is, this is bollocks. And I tried it. I was like, oh, I actually do just feel better. And there's something about that. That's profoundly, you know, just, just that active, active self-compassion. Because the way, you know, as, as you would know, if we, the, the way that we operate in life is mostly sort of system one, mostly instinct based on,

having a thought repeatedly and then that thought gets solidified and the grooves form in our mind and so it becomes way easier to have that thought.

And so if the thought going through our mind is, I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I'm a failure, and we repeat those often enough, those become the default paths through the forest of our mind. Whereas if we can just tell ourselves a couple of times a day, I love myself, and that thought then becomes a default, that just changes the way that we approach almost every situation in life. So I've been finding that really powerful over the last few days. I think it's so powerful. It's just...

As I said, it's like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism. You know, perfectionists will always find ways that they didn't succeed or they didn't do something perfectly or there was always some chink in the armory that they will find.

even if you've done something exceptionally well. In fact, you know, even objectively high levels of achievement to perfectionists aren't enough because success is a bottomless pit. It depletes us in its pursuit. And just like the horizon, it keeps slipping away the further we get to it. This is how perfectionism operates within the mindset of people. And so, of course, you know, when things don't go well, we're going to turn on ourselves because

We weren't perfect in that moment. And exactly what you've just said, if we can turn that or reframe those thoughts from instantly turning on ourselves to instantly telling ourselves, okay, that you are enough, that actually, you know, there's a sense of love and appreciation for ourselves in this moment, how we are right now. That's so powerful. One of the places I'm trying to get to, and I'm not here yet, but it seems like a lot of more spiritually enlightened people are here, is

So like one level is like you fail at something and you're like, oh, I'm a failure. I'm a terrible person. The next level is you fail at something and you're like, that's fine. You know, it was just a bad day at the office. But then it feels like the next level up is almost not even registering as a failure because a failure or even a success is a value judgment. It's a story that we tell ourselves about the flow of life. And if we can just surrender to the flow of life.

and allow things to be as they are and not give it to the value definite, the value judgment of this was good or this was bad. Oh, that would be such a freeing way to live, right?

I'm not there yet, but it's like, you know, a path to work towards. It would, but the way society is at the moment, but you'll quickly be let know if it wasn't good, particularly the higher you go, right? Like if you're a content creator like yourself, you know, if you put out something that isn't quite of the standard of the other videos, people are going to be right there to let you know. And it's so, it's one thing to say, okay, you know, there's a value judgment on things not going quite as well as you want, but there's also having to kind of disperse

do that kind of thought process in a in a society in a world particularly you know online world where you'll be reminded very quickly yeah so that's the challenge yeah that's the challenge exactly yeah like one i sometimes think like when it when it comes to kind of uh negative comments on the internet one very reasonable approach is to just not read them um but

But I'd like to get to the point where I can read them and they'll just wash over me. And it's just like, it's spiritual training almost. It's training of the mind. But I will let the audience know if I ever get there, but I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. One thing that you say in the book is to give up a status position as like an actionable thing. What do you mean by that?

One of the things that I think is really challenging right now, and I dedicate a chapter to this, is the omnipresence of consumer culture. And I talk about my own experiences in the book growing up poor and going to school and seeing all around me people who have the best trainers, the newest phones. And as we got into the sixth form, you know, these kind of new cars and

This kind of excess that you'd see that was kind of ways of marking people's states. And of course, you know, all of those kids were the kids at the schoolyard cred. You know, they were the people that people looked up to because consumer culture and cultures of success teach us to be embarrassed about any part of our lows that don't match up. Like there's something wrong with you if you don't have these things.

And I think one of the key lessons really is that I definitely got myself wrapped up in that. I definitely looked at other people around me and just yearned, wanted, craved for the things that they had. And it was really psychologically problematic. And I started to try to plug those holes in material things. When I was in my 20s, I used to buy a lot of, you know, the best fashion items and, you

spend well beyond comfort on things like watches and cars and kind of to kind of compensate, I suppose, for those feelings of deficit that I had when I was younger. And for me, when I say give up a status position, what I'm really saying is,

is try not to let your status or your worth be defined by things outside of yourself. So it might be really hard like to, I don't know, put down the Rolex watch for a moment and go out with a Omega or something, you know, whatever it might be. It might feel hard because you might feel that that's going to mark you in some kind of negative way.

And what I'm trying to say is to break down those perfectionistic tendencies. It isn't just about kind of putting yourself out there, embracing failure, feeling setbacks and the rest of it, but also letting go of things that you think are external markers of your self-worth. And that can be material possession, certainly was for me. And that was one of the biggest, you know, breakthroughs for me when I started to let go, not just of successes or failures, but also things that I thought marked me as

as a higher or lower status person. And so those possessions, I think, you know, really important. There's a really famous quote. I can't remember the psychotherapist name now. It's not coming to my mind. But he said, whenever we are excessive in our lives, it is normally a indication of some internal deprivation. And I think that's very true. Certainly my experience that, you know, being excessive with people

material things was plugging a hole for something that I was missing in myself. So that's what I'm trying to get across there. Yeah, nice. There's a good, I think I either read this in Happy by Darren Brown or in William Irvine's Guide to the Good Life, which are both books about stoicism, but a good mental model of when it comes to possessions, which is if there were no one else in the world, would I still want this thing?

And obviously it's a somewhat flawed model because if there was no one else in the world, then life might be quite lonely. But I think it does speak to a thing of, am I buying this for the signaling that it represents or am I buying this thing because I actually want this thing for a more intrinsic reason? And I think that running things through that filter, at least for me, I'd still buy a book even if there was no one else in the world because I want to read the book.

But would I still buy a Canada Goose jacket if there was no one else in the world? Probably not. Like there's something about having the logo on the shoulder pad that feels good. And I was like, hmm, interesting. And whenever I like when I want to buy things, I like to run them through that filter. And if the answer is, oh, I probably wouldn't buy this if there was no one else in the world, then I at least think twice before buying the thing. Because then I know that like, OK, fundamentally, I'm buying this to signal something to signal some sense of status or whatever, right?

And that's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but I think being aware of it is the first step. Yeah, I think like obviously, you know, high profile individuals like, you know, millionaires of TikTok and people like, you know, Andrew Tate who have kind of amplified these unrealistic expectations of how one should, you know, the good life, I suppose. Yeah.

uh exactly like you said you know a lot of peacocking a lot of very extravagant spending to kind of mark our status and our worth in the world and i suppose you know like you said it's look if you want to buy nice things there's nothing wrong with that like if and if it makes you feel good if there's something about it that intrinsically uh is fulfilling and gives you something in your life there's nothing wrong with that and if that happens to be a state of version and fine but

it's why you're buying it. It's why you're trying to signal your worth in this way. And I think if you, you know, it can be exhausting and quite difficult for our mental health if we continue trying to upscale our lives. And it goes back to this idea that, you know, contentment, what we have, meet ourselves where we are. Those are the important things. That's the one. What are your thoughts on social media? Social media,

I actually really think that social media has such power to be a incredibly useful tool in a disconnected world. It can bring people together around shared interests. It can facilitate offline relations. I have to say it can help with meeting up people

It can help bring diverse people together. It can help really solidify community. All of these things were, by the way, what it was originally set up to do as a social network in the truest sense of the word. So when Facebook first came out as a university thing,

So it was to, you know, kind of grease the wheels of university and campus life. And credulous college students like me used to use it to kind of organize football socials or, you know, set up drinking circles or go, you know, bring together different types of communities within the university around shared interests. And this is what it was used for. You know, it really helped university community and bring people together on campus. But unfortunately,

It isn't that anymore. And what it is, is an advertising device. It's really, that's where the profit's made. And so the imperative of the social media algorithms now are not to facilitate offline relationships, but to keep people online.

To keep them, you know, engaged with the app, scrolling through, flicking through pictures. Again, instilling a sense that, you know, that you could be more. There's these images of other people's lives and lifestyles that appear very perfect and you could have this.

If only, if only, oh, and here's a targeted ad. Right when you're at your, kind of your most need, ah, and this is what I need to buy in order to have this life and lifestyle. So social media has become kind of an advertising device that follows the traditional route of analog advertising, but kind of puts it on steroids, amplifies unrealistic ideals so that targeted ads can provide material solutions.

And it's not a social network anymore. It's an advertising device. And I think that's where the damage can come. So social media per se is not a negative thing. It can, it's got tremendous power to be incredibly enlivening. But at the moment,

It has, in my opinion, this is, this is just my read of social media, but in my opinion, it's gearing itself towards creating those kind of aspects of discontent that are very catnip for perfectionism, catnip for advertisers, keepers consuming, keepers working harder to attain this kind of life and lifestyle is projected as 24 seven in social media. So,

My opinion on social media is quite nuanced. I think it's got a lot of potential. It's got a lot of power. But at the moment, the algorithms are designed in a way that can create more discontent than purpose. Hmm.

So what are the strategies maybe around social media for people who struggle with perfectionism? I think it's really about learning what social media is first and foremost, understanding that it is an advertising device. You know, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, they're not, they don't disguise this. They talk about how ad revenues are really the revenue streams for their platforms. They're very open about it.

And it's just about understanding that. You know, if we can approach social media understanding that the way it makes money is through advertising and the way advertising works is that we are, you know, kind of lured into a sense that we need a product. And so social media works on this deficit model. We can understand that as a first step. And then the second step is to go back to what it was originally for. So engage with Instagram, but on interests that, you know, are important to you. Yeah.

like build a community around things that, you know, whether it be pets or cooking or cycling or whatever it might be, use Instagram to really facilitate those offline relationships to meet people and spend time in the world outside of social media with other people. Uh,

I think going back to social media as its original purpose is really, really important. And for young people, I think education is so crucial. I think if you're a parent, it's really important to educate young people in what social media is about and how it can be used positively in terms of facilitating offline relations. So for me, it's really about engaging with it in the right way. It's not about getting rid of it altogether. Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

I think one thing that I like to do is, you know, I get a lot of value from Twitter, weirdly. And people always are surprised by that. And, you know, whenever I say to people, oh, yeah, you know, Twitter is a great source of information and insight and everything. They're like, but wait, what? I thought Twitter was just for the news and for like dunking on Andrew Tate or whatever. But I think a lot of it is about curating the people that you follow and curating your feed so that it does give you great book recommendations and stuff rather than kind of

vitriol or hate or like lifestyle aspirationally type things yeah and so i like to keep my feeds broadly educational adjacent um with the occasional like you know male fitness model to inspire me to actually go to the gym uh

I find that like that level of kind of nudge from social media. It's like, oh, well, you know, if I see a photo of a Gymshark athlete on the thing, I'll be like, you know what, I'm going to go gym today. And I think that's broadly a healthy thing, even though probably the reason behind it might be like, my body's not good enough. I don't know, you know, there are worse outcomes other than I'm going to go gym today. I mean, look, you know, people use social media in their own ways. And I think,

I'm also a user of Twitter. I think, you know, the world we live in right now is one where there's a lot of impetus to kind of, like you say, dunk on people to kind of, for views, for shares, for likes, for mentions, you know, kind of extreme views are amplified and views are polarized within those settings. But like you said, if you can use it in a way that's broadly positive, you can follow the right people, you make sure that your feed is positive

manage so that you don't see too much of this kind of scrap screeching and noise then it's obviously a very positive thing you keep up with the news you can you know you can you can gain insight from influencers who you think have some really valuable stuff to share it's a positive experience but again it's about managing that is is the important part um and understanding that you know there's good things and bad things about the about the platforms yeah

Okay, something potentially controversial that you say in the book is that you don't believe in the growth mindset. What do you mean you don't believe in the growth mindset? Okay, so I really love this because you're the first person to really challenge me on this and I really want to have this discussion because I think it's so important and healthy debate on these issues is really crucial. I guess it is a provocative part of the book and maybe there's a bit of deliberate provocation here, but I do think we need to have a conversation.

And the reason why I think we have to have a conversation is this. One of the things that troubles me a little bit about the growth mindset, and by the way, I'm not against growth. I think growth is absolutely fundamental to human development. But what I am against is the sense that we have to grow at all times. So you often hear quotes like, you can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you or fail better, as you often hear sometimes in corporate speak.

These mantras sound noble, but when you actually dig into them, you find something that's quite unhuman. And I'm focusing on this first part of that quote, this idea that you can't let your failures define you. Because what that tells us at some level is that there's something deeply shameful about dwelling in a state of failure.

That somehow that sense of failure has to be immediately rehabilitated on the redemptive arc of growth or excellence or development. And that it can't be left alone to just sit for a moment, not touched, not rehabilitated, not touched.

not changed, not suppressed, but just allowed to be, exist as it is. As a kind of humanizing, as I mentioned earlier, humanizing part of our existence, that that failure or setback or roadblock or thing that didn't turn out the way we expected it to turn out is just part and parcel of what it means to be a human. And so the reason why I wanted to push back a little bit on the growth mindset is

is that as a mindset, i.e. a mind that is set on one thing, that is growth, can be problematic when you string it out over time and only allow yourself to grow and not let in areas of life where you might stand still or you might regress and accept them as just kind of natural, normal parts of our existence. So that is why I'm pushing back a little bit on the growth mindset because I think growth is fine.

but sometimes you won't always grow and that's also fine. Okay, that's very reasonable. I wouldn't disagree with any of that. So it sounds like you're...

Okay, so growth mindset as distinct from fixed mindset would be kind of how Carol Dweck would describe it. Growth mindset being like our abilities are not fixed and can grow. Fixed mindset, our abilities are fixed and therefore any failure is a reduction of myself because like, oh, it shows that I'm stupid. It shows that I have no self-worth. So in that sense, kind of perfectionism falls into the quote fixed mindset thing.

But I guess what you're saying is growth mindset, if taken too far, then could can also be problematic. Like any virtue taken to excess becomes a vice. And there's always a balance here between self-improvement and self-acceptance. And not everything needs to be converted into a kind of here are eight lessons I learned on a Twitter thread for from any kind of setback. Sometimes we can just be like accepting of a failure.

And we can choose to reframe it as growth if we want. Or we can choose to be like, yep, that was a bad day at the office. Or if we're really enlightened, we can choose to accept it as part of the surrendering to the flow of life. But we shouldn't. It sounds like what you're saying is that we shouldn't feel as if

We have to convert every single, quote, failure into some sort of lesson or some sort of growth opportunity. Yeah. Karen Horny, who was a psychotherapist who was probably one of the first to really delve into perfectionism in any great detail in the 30s, 40s and 50s, talked about something called the tyranny of should.

And in this society, we feel like we should be X, Y, and Z, should be fitter, stronger, happier, healthier, more productive. And these tyrannical shoulds are what create divides within us from the imperfect person we really are, you know, the person's flaw that makes mistakes that will sometimes slip up to the perfect person that society tells us we should be, you know, strong, fit, healthy, attractive, intelligent, whatever it might be, productive, whatever it might be.

And my worry with the growth mindset is, is that what we're doing is we're just kind of adding another should to a long list of other shoulds that we should be continually growing, developing, improving. And none of those things are problems. But I think Carl Rogers put it really well when he said, I am at my greatest, happiest when I strive towards goals to which I am dimly aware. Yeah.

And I think that's a really interesting way to look at life because yes, we will have goals. Yes, we will have this kind of ethereal vision in our minds about where we want to go. So we might want to be, you know, a VP in our company. We might want to be a professor. We might want to be a YouTube influencer that has a massive impact on vast waves of people. You know, we have this kind of idea and image where we want to go. And yes, you know,

On the road there, it's important to have that kind of, that kind of end point. But at the same time, to know that not always you're going to be, not always is it going to be a case where you're going to grow all the time. Like you're going to hit roadblocks, you're going to go sideways, you're going to even regress sometimes because what you thought you knew, you didn't actually know.

And all of these things are just as important as growth. You know, feeling like you're regressing isn't shameful. It isn't something to kind of quash or avoid or not talk about or not think about. It's actually just part and parcel of this kind of road to these goals that, you know, in your mind's eye, you have a sense that this is where you want to go. But, you know, tying yourself and being fixed and having only kind of a sense that you can only grow on that journey, I think is important.

for me anyway, what's psychologically challenging and can turn itself into perfectionism if left unchecked. So this is what I'm, I guess this is the point I'm trying to get across in this idea that, you know, growth, growth, growth is fine, but too much can be perfection. I love that. Yeah. The tyranny of should. I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few months. Like whenever I find myself sort of

giving myself a should, I always kind of like, hmm, interesting. When I tell myself, oh, I should go to the gym, I sort of have grown now to recognize the should and really think, hmm,

what's what's going on here and on one level i should go to the gym because it is good to be healthy and i value health as uh you know all that crap but on another level it's a should and too many shoulds uh lead to a shitty life as some people might say yeah so that's really good thank you uh it's it's not an original i wish okay um do you i i i have been unable to figure out like i you know i like things to fit into neat buckets and like i would love to be able to say

telling yourself should is always a bad thing. Uh, but clearly it's not clearly there's like a middle way. Um, have you, have you got any thoughts on where is the middle ground between, uh,

Should versus like not should that make sense I'd have another tyranny in today's go ahead the tyranny it could Because I think there's a tyranny assured how we should look but then there's always a tyranny of where we could be and what we could have and who we and you know particularly in a meritocratic culture like ours were told all the time that you could be this supposedly marriage for a meritocratic culture are supposedly married and

One that valorizes meritocracy but doesn't necessarily follow it through. But of course, like, but you know, you're told, you could be this if you just try hard enough. So not only do we have these shoulds coming at us from the bottom to say, this is how you should be. We also have these coulds from the top going, and you can also be this person. We're kind of pincered

in the middle. I think, you know, I don't think it's any coincidence that Karen Horney came to the conclusion at the end of her writing that kind of Zen Buddhism was the way forward. All roads lead to Zen Buddhism. Exactly. She kind of ended there and this is kind of a big

influence on my thinking too because this kind of idea of letting go living in the moment being present and trying not to be overly impacted by the ways in which you're told you should behave and should look and all the rest of it and could be is the is by far and away the most fail-safe path to a contented life yeah but you know

It's not easy. There are practical things we can do. I've talked about some of them, but it's not easy. I just think, you know, even just being aware that these things are pressing on us is the first step. And so, so yeah.

That's my take. I really like that thing you said as well around being dimly aware of goals. One thing that I'm kind of attempting to make the case for, which is kind of annoying because it's actually hard to find evidence for this. You know the whole smart goal stuff?

specific goals show a specific and challenging goals correlate with increased performance that's right and that's kind of annoying because i've always been anti-specific and challenging goals in that i prefer my goals to be a bit more vague pencil sketchy and i prefer them not to not ideally be that challenging and i prefer them to be within my control yeah like oh i vaguely want to make one youtube video a week for the next two years and let's see what happens and that was how i stayed consistent on youtube for two years whereas everyone i know is like

I'm going to make X videos, which will hope where the specific measurable challenging goal is 10,000 subscribers. Those people realize that failure after failure after failure, you can't control that outcome. So like you end up just burning out and giving up. Whereas if it's a pencil sketch goal, that's not that challenging. That's fully within your control. That's a, that's a recipe for contentment at least. Yeah.

Do you know what? You'll be pleased to learn that actually new research is coming forward right now to kind of challenge that idea of the specific goal framework. And in particular, champion, like you just said, more nebulous goals. Really? Yeah. Incredible. I can put some of those into the book. Can you tell me more? So a researcher called Christian Swan...

has done some work on goal setting. I can send you some papers actually, probably be faster for you that way. And they're just showing that, you know, it's not always about setting specific hard line goals that creates the maximum impact that actually, and this is in a sports setting because my background is sports psychologist is what I know this research.

But that actually, you know, if you set yourself less clear, but nevertheless, you know, pointed goals. So, you know, like I say, these goals where you have an idea of, I want to, you know, win a race. It doesn't have to be like this specific race on this specific day, but like over the course of a year, I want to win X amount of races. It doesn't matter where or when or why. It just matters that, you know, you have this kind of, this goal that kind of is pushing you in this direction.

but nevertheless it's not a kind of imperative that i must do this on this time yeah and there's some really interesting uh data that's coming through to suggest actually you know those types of goals are a lot more psychologically freeing and actually contribute to higher performance interestingly enough than the more specific goals so i'll send you that research if you want i can't speak in too much detail about because not my area but i think you might find it interesting yeah i

Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, I think about like the name actually rings a bell. I think I've come across some of this stuff in my Zotero library when I've been looking into this. But one phrase that like I really, and I haven't heard anyone else phrase it this way, but I'm sure someone will have done way before me is that,

goals are a destination. Oh, sorry. Goals are a direction. They're not a destination. And setting a goal of like pencil sketching a rough direction means, okay, cool. I'm going to set on this journey and try my best to enjoy every step of the process because, you know, as Miley Cyrus would even say,

It's the climb. It's not about how fast I get there. It ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb. I think it's really important also to remember that it depends who's doing these things. So for some people, rigid goals are not a bad thing. If you're conscientious and you make a list of things that you want to achieve, well, that is actually quite useful because it gives you a kind of roadmap that you can apply your energies towards. But if you're perfectionistic...

You're not setting those strict and rigid goals because they're kind of a roadmap. You're setting them because they're managing your anxiety. They're like, I need to set these goals because if I don't set them and I don't meet them, then my anxiety is going to go through the roof. So this is kind of a way of managing anxiety that we're setting these goals.

So I think, again, it goes back to where it comes from and the reason why we're setting these things in the first place. And if you're especially perfectionistic, having rigid, firm, and what are often lofty goals is going to be really problematic because...

You may not meet them and you may not meet them for you know, no good reason Yeah, you could just about a bad day You know you could have woken up on the wrong side of the bed a global pandemic could have come and shattered the the project that you were working on Completely out your control for the pet fiction is that's really tough psychologically for the conscientious person. It's not so bad They set the goal they move towards it. They didn't quite meet it. They can accept that So again, it just also depends on personalities - yeah, absolutely What one of the mental models I use for this is sort of imagining a

like lowering the bar. And if you struggle with procrastination, keep the bar as low as humanly possible. If you're struggling with consistency, keep the bar really, really low. And by a low bar, I mean vaguely defined, not particularly lofty, not particularly ambitious goal. But then as you clear that bar, you raise the bar slightly and then you raise it slightly and you raise it slightly. So for an Olympic gymnast, the bar of, oh, I'm just going to show up to practice whenever I feel like it,

It's probably not that helpful. They want to win, which is fair enough. But for someone who struggles to go to the gym, you know, setting a lofty goal of becoming Mr. Olympia is probably actually going to cause you to procrastinate rather than help you avoid that. And so kind of adjusting, adjusting the height of the bar.

lowering lowering it to make it vague and like not that lofty exactly right and you i tell this to my students all the time because lots of them like really struggle to start essays right because this is like a they see it's a 3000 word essay this is really like oh my god i'm not gonna do very well in this test it's really hard topic i don't know about it ah so let's go on netflix um i just say just get just just write something write a letter to your mom i

Like just get words on a computer screen and start the process. It doesn't even have to be related to the task at hand.

Because if you can start writing, it's a nice note to your mum, but also it gets you in that kind of frame of mind where you're putting words on paper and then begin. And then, you know, like you say, it doesn't have to be, you don't even have to consult the literature. Just put down your thoughts on this particular topic. Right. And then begin to iterate, work those thoughts into some kind of structure, then bring in the literature and build it, like build it from, you know, piece by piece.

um because that is a way better way of smashing through the procrastination than going everything has to be perfect right now on the first draft and if it isn't i can't possibly do it so what you're saying there is a really really helpful way for people to break through that procrastination because i know procrastination is something that a lot of people struggle with yeah there's a quote from uh cal newport that i love for this which is you know he says that when he's right when he's working on his books

He tells himself every time, this one just needs to be reasonable. The next one is going to be good. Yeah.

And so I'm trying to take that attitude towards everything in my life, whether it's book writing or like a gym workout or a YouTube video. This one just needs to be reasonable. The next one's going to be good. And I go to that one, it's like, this one just needs to be reasonable. And I think reasonable or good enough is, I think, the solution to a lot of the perfectionism, procrastination stuff that we deal with. And would you say like that's how you've built up this channel, right? Like, do you feel like it started, there was a lot of mistakes made at the beginning and you can look back at it now and see the development? Is that how you've approached it?

building up oh absolutely i wouldn't even consider the mistakes i would just be like yeah it was good enough yeah as long as and and my bar for a video is as long or a podcast episode is as long as this helps at least one person or has the potential to help at least one person it's worth putting out there that's a very low bar and it's that's still the bar so you know it's it's it's nice to be able to have continued this for six years now great well i mean it's really nice to see this you've done really well i mean some of the numbers you get are incredible so yeah

And it's growing, right? It's good enough. Yeah, it's good. No, it's really, obviously it works. Whatever you're doing, it works. That's the one. Well, Thomas, thank you so much for coming on. This has been absolutely wonderful. Any final pieces of parting wisdom for those who might've gotten to the end of this episode who are still struggling with perfectionism? Okay, well.

Three words, I suppose. You are enough. And that is all, that is what it is to be a human being. You are a human being. You exist. So you are enough. And I think that's the most important lesson to take through life. Something to remember all the time when things go well, when things don't go quite so well. It's okay. You're human. We fail. You are enough. Beautiful. Thank you so much. No worries.

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