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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about overcoming perfectionism how to stop being so damn critical of people and life one of the biggest realizations one of the biggest personal development realizations that I've had this year occurred for me when I was at a and enlightenment retreat and we weren't really working on personal development we were working on enlightenment stuff and meditation type stuff but just when you do a lot of enlightenment work what tends to happen is that a lot of emotional baggage and interesting revelatory insights aha moments come up for you that are like more psychological and therapeutic and what I discovered there is I did I just got this very palpable sense of how hypercritical I am and that really this is a theme throughout my whole life it stretches back really far to my teenage years and maybe even before that this hypercritical Ness critical of everything I notice myself being critical of people of physical objects of products that I buy cars on the road of women physical appearance of both men and women emotions critical of other people's emotions critical of my own emotions critical of situations standing in line somewhere in a traffic jam stuff like that so I just got a real palpable sense of that and it made me see like oh I'm a perfectionist that's of course I'm a perfectionist and then also in addition to that not just seeing that but also seeing all the all the ways in which the tentacles of this issue creep into every facet of my life I saw this and this made me see like oh this needs to really be turned around because I can go forward to where I want to be in life if I don't turn this around and it's hard because these are very ingrained habits in us I noticed in myself that first of all the problem is that it just makes me miserable and saps happiness so directly it saps happiness because when you're being critical you're not happy it's almost by definition you're angry or you're frustrated or you're upset or you're finding a fault with something so you can't be happy at that point you're always unhappy it also wastes mental energy I noticed myself wasting a lot of mental energy throughout the day instead of thinking about the things I need to be thinking about I'm thinking about all this shallow petty crap these little nitpicks here and there which in the end just distract me from what I need to be doing I also noticed that this this hinders my self-actualization and this for me is where I had my big aha moment because I'm all about self-actualization anything that hinders my self-actualization if I ever become conscious of that then it's like oh wait okay I got to put the brakes on this one here so that's what I saw is I saw just how how much is hindering my self-actualization because instead of focusing on things that I need to be doing instilling the positive habits that I need to instill in thinking the positive thoughts I need to be thinking and creating the positive plans the concrete practical plans for implementing my life purpose instead of doing all that I can get sidetracked into criticism so that was a my aha and of course you know the classic problem with perfectionism and criticism is that if you want everything to be perfect especially right off the bat then you psych yourself out of a lot of situations in life and a lot of projects that you could be starting on you start to procrastinate on those you don't even start them and definitely don't complete them because you expect them to be perfect before they're even begun and I've certainly suffered from that in the past as well and I still suffer from that so the problem with this particular aspect of perfectionism is that it's really perfectionism is an anti mastery mindset if you follow my work then you know how seriously I treat mastery Master is a very important concept for me I think it's one of the most important concepts of all time for successful self-actualization work you need to learn what mastery is you need to apply that process to your career and basically to everything that you're trying to master in your life mastery process mastery process it's all too deep to go into here but basically it means that you focus on the process mastering the process versus focusing on results and of course this is exactly the opposite of what a perfectionist does because a perfectionist always focuses on the results and so this creates problems it really hinders our success perfection is hindered their own success but enough of that for now that's just my own little personal you know quibbles and issues with the perfectionism let's get into the meat of the topic here so what actually is perfectionism I would define it as a neurotic unwillingness to accept reality so if your perfectionist I am making the claim that you are not willing to accept reality now you might not agree with me on this but stick with me because I'll give you some deeper insights here about why this is and it is the case this is the the root of perfectionism is really this it's an unwillingness to accept what actually is true what is the case what is the fact unwillingness to accept it and maybe even to such a degree that you're unwilling to accept that you're unwilling to accept reality there's a there's an important book called the paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz and in this book he makes an interesting observation which is that in modern society we have a lot more choice than we ever did in Prior centuries and millennia that humans evolved and our brain really isn't designed to cope with so much choice it's an overabundance of choice and this choice seems like it's a good thing you know have an over bun what's wrong with that but uh but there is a problem he talks about something called maximizers and satisficers these are two types of people two ways of coping with overabundance of choice the Maximizer is also the perfectionist in a sense the Maximizer is the one let's say you want to go buy a new vacuum cleaner now if you go to the store you want to buy a new vacuum cleaner there's probably 15 or 20 models different colors different cord lengths different wattages different amounts of power different accessories different boxes different packages different prices different values different warranties so you've got all these options so how do you choose the best one well the Maximizer he says to himself okay I need the best vacuum cleaner in the world what is that well it's not just a matter of literally the best it also has the best value so I need to I need to find the sweet spot between not too expensive but enough accessories plus the best warranty plus the best product design plus the the best longest cord and all this stuff I need to find the perfect sweet spot of all this so what I'm going to do is I'm going to compare 15 different models going to do the research read all the reviews and I'm going to go and I'm going to shop different stores I'm going to compare I'm going to do a couple weeks of research then I'm going to buy my vacuum cleaner and he thinks that he's going to become happy this way when he buys that super awesome perfect vacuum cleaner now the satisficer what does he do he walks in there he's like well there's 15 models I'll just narrow down to these three I like this one here okay I'm going to spend five minutes thinking about it I'm going to grab it and let's just go I'm going to be happy with it as long as it vacuums the floor and it doesn't break I'm good that's the satisficer so you might think well leo you know we don't wanna be satisficers we want to be maximizers right isn't that what self-actualization is all about it's about getting the most it's about mid maxing the hell out of life not quite not quite it might seem like being the Maximizer will get you the maximum of everything including happiness but actually that's not the case the Maximizer isn't really happy he's constantly disappointed by life because his mind is like the perfectionist mind it's always looking for perfect sometimes it finds perfect but a lot of times it doesn't find perfect and when it doesn't find perfect it's upset it's frustrated and it's not happy and most of the time because you've been developing this habit of being hypercritical of everything all the time you're not happy anymore you can't be happy because you can find fault with almost everything you might buy that perfect vacuum cleaner you come home and then next week you're browsing online and you see a new ad for a new vacuum cleaner you're like oh this is better than the one I bought and it's too late to return this one man right and so you're unsatisfied you're unhappy whereas the satisficer he sees that he's like oh yeah well maybe it's a little better who cares I already got my vacuum cleaner it works the satisficer is actually the one that's happy because happiness is about acceptance you need acceptance and you're not going to get very far in your self-actualization work if you don't cultivate this ability of acceptance it's a bit of an uphill battle for me to convince you of this because I know that a couple years back if you sort of talking to me about acceptance I would be like acceptance what are you talking about Lea this is like some hippy woo I don't want acceptance you know I'm a hard-nosed guy on results I want real tangible things on I'm oriented towards making money my business and I want results in my relationship and all this stuff well yeah the thing you got to realize is that you will never never ever become happy this way life never ever it's not going to work so I don't know what you need to do to realize that maybe am I talking about it here we'll help help you to see this maybe get a couple things to click in your mind um you know for me it was that retreat that I took and I was sitting there instead of doing a lot of self self inquiry and introspection and you know this popped out and I saw that all I'm never going to be happy this way I really have this problem with being hypercritical right it's not going to work it's like I'm trying to stick a square peg into a round hole it's just not going to work so you need to start to come to that kind of realization by the way if you're not sure if you are or are not a perfectionist what I'll have for you at the at the end of this video is I'll have a perfectionist quiz so I'm going to point you to a link where you can go and you can download a little perfectionist quiz that I created just one simple worksheet with a couple of questions like ten questions on it and you can see just how much of a problem this is in your life might surprise you because maybe you're not quite sure of just how deep your perfectionism runs but more on that later let's get back into the meat of this so here's something that was a real epiphany for me at my retreat about perfectionism is that perfectionism this is a key inside right here perfectionism is a sneaky form of procrastination extremely sneaky extremely self deceptive form of procrastination most forms of procrastination are pretty obvious we got to go start work on our dream project but instead we're going to go clean the house or trim our toenails or you know something like that we procrastinate by doing like haha entertaining stuff like looking at gossip or tabloids or browsing online this kind of said okay that's obvious procrastination I talked about that in other places other videos but here this one this one's real bad because when you're hyper critical that energy and time that you're using to be hyper critical is time that you should be spending on yourself doing the thing you got to be doing in your life following your life purpose or whatever other ambitions you might have right and so what I saw my epiphany was that oh not only am i hyper critical and that robs me of happiness but I'm actually using this as a form of procrastination on my life purpose oh now this stakes are even higher than I thought initially and what I realize is that I'm actually using criticism in a very subtle way to avoid taking responsibility for all the places in my life where I need to be kicking ass and you know it's not like I'm saying here that I'm kind as deadbeats like I'm I'm pretty productive I work a lot I work pretty hard and I don't call myself a procrastinator really but like I'm saying this is a subtle thing this is a subtle form of procrastination and I'm seeing how it holds me back it's robbing me of my dreams in a nutshell that's what's going on here now one objection you might have is you might say something like well leo but what if I stop being a perfectionist I mean is that kind of what you're advocating here I stop being a perfectionist but then if I do that won't my work suffer I mean I've been using my perfectionism to kick ass in business and to get my hot girlfriend or to find the perfect husband you know I've been using my perfectionism for all this kind of stuff I want perfect kids and I want perfect this and perfect that and I I got my perfect car and I setup my perfect house so it's been going good for me right here's the problem with that is that there's a lie there's a big fat lie lurking in there when you tell yourself this the lie you tell yourself is that you tell yourself basically that perfectionism is excellence you equate perfectionism with excellence right that's where this objections coming from but that's not what it really is that's not what perfectionism is for and there's a difference between these two you also have to recognize that what got you here won't necessarily get you to where you altima to go if you've been driven your whole life by perfectionism and this neurotic thirsting for making everything perfect and for nitpicking everything and being critical with your employees and critical with your children and critical with everything and critical of course with yourself we're gonna get to that in a minute if you've been living that way and that's been your sole source of motivation you're probably gonna want to cling to that your we'll defend that say well Leo this is where my motivation comes from but you know what that's a neurotic form of motivation and so what will become necessary if you want to go somewhere further in your life I mean yeah it might have gotten you where you are now but where you are now is not where you can ultimately be I guarantee you that you're not even at ten percent of where you could ultimately be if you really take on this effort of self-actualization so that means you've got 90 percent left more growth right more potential to tap into and if you don't want to tap into that potential you're gonna have to change how you're motivated what motivates you I think this is one of the biggest things that holds back successful people already successful people you know a lot of successful people who have earned six figures I've coached these types of people one-on-one and what I discover is that they have negative or flawed forms of motivation neurotic motivation and that's just not going to allow them to reach their full potential and changing that motivations a little scary because it might mean like oh I'm going to suffer a temporary setback and then you know an achievement oriented ambitious person doesn't want to suffer a setback so it's a little bit of a difficult issue but you also start to see that you know after a few years maybe a decade of this kind of perfectionistic motivation you sure to see that there really are consequence they really just sabotage itself it holds itself back art is not done for the sake of perfectionism art is done for the sake of joy the joy of creating the thing that you're calling your art and if you're an ambitious person and you have a life purpose then you're an artist I hope you think of yourself as an artist even if you're doing business and nothing traditionally artsy you're still an artist in my book I consider myself an artist art is about putting passion into your work taking your work personally right being highly creative in your work and that's the kind of work that really matters that's the kind of work that's really fulfilling so if you are an artist recognize that an artist is not create getting something because he's neurotic and he I mean some of them are neurotic but but because he's neurotic and he he needs to create this perfect painting or this perfect sculpture or this perfect piece of architecture no the artist gets joy and delight in the process of making art you see if there's a difference there think about how much more enjoyable your life would be and also more productive if you actually truly got joy out of the entire process even the mistakes even the imperfect stuff hmm maybe you would accomplish more not less but that might require you some work you know to make that transition what needs to happen if you want to be a really powerful artist you need to focus your mind on mastery focus your mind on the process enjoying the full process not thinking about outcome the perfectionist is too attached to outcome he undermines himself the mastery process gets corrupted when you do it that way it gets corrupted and then you don't get your result one time then you get all pissy and and you want to get depressed and you want to quit and right that's what happens when you don't get that result that outcome that you want immediately that's not what the master does the master is in it for the long haul the master is in it because he enjoys the work the true artist loves the art form a masterful writer loves to write a masterful pager loves to paint a masterful sculptor likes to sculpt not because he needs to have the perfect painting made or the perfect sculpture to WoW the whole world that's not why he actually likes the process he enjoys the medium so start shifting towards the mastery perspective very important let's go on to another really key insight this one's also huge this is one that I had while I was sitting there thinking all this stuff at my my retreat and it's the that criticizing others and criticizing oneself is two sides of the same coin they're really equal they're identical so I can guarantee you this if you're hyper critical of people physical objects and situations in the external world you're hyper critical also of yourself and of course that's exactly how it is with me because I'm critical of everything out there I also hold myself to that same step standard and so I'm hyper critical that myself and so here's another facet of this whole problem is that not only do you kind of hate the world as a perfectionist but more importantly you hate yourself deep down you hate yourself and you probably set very high standards for yourself and maybe you've achieved many of those standards and you feel like you're doing pretty good but also I would submit to you that deep down like in the cracks and shadows of your subconscious mind you actually hate yourself and you're very hard on yourself you're very harsh on yourself youself flagellate and you have a secret guilt about all the stuff that you didn't do right because you nitpick everything you nitpick everyone and then you nitpick yourself because once you establish a standard that's standard you know your mind will hold you to that same standard - so that's a key insight to realize big insight when you start to see this again it's like oh yeah uh I can't let let this perfectionism stand because if I let this perfectionism stand this is how I'm going to die my life my I'm gonna die this way my life is going to end this way it's just going to be an you know 40 years until I die let's say but uh throughout those 40 years I'm just going to become more and more and more self-critical and then at the very end of my life what's going to happen is that I'm gonna look back in my life and I'm gonna nitpick the out of it and I'm gonna tell myself up I wasn't perfect I hate I hate my life I regret my life my wife wasn't perfect my kids weren't perfect my job wasn't perfect my health wasn't perfect and now my death is perfect that's what's going to happen to you so unless you want to face that fate then I think it's time to talk about a solution so what is the solution to this well I think a really big important component of it is just simply the realization of how much damage you're causing to yourself how much you're holding yourself back it's like that old analogy of the high-performance sports car which is going 100 miles an hour but the parking brake is on right how much better could it do if the parking brake was off and a lot of times that's how we justify some of our neurotic behaviors and we keep them in place as we say well but Leo you know I'm successful on it I'm ambitious I mean I'm a perfectionist but I've been doing good for myself yes perhaps you have but I'm talking about the next level for you imagine the next level what if we took the parking brake off imagine how well you would do then hmm can you believe that there is the next level for you even very successful people have habits and behaviors especially internal mindset things that that are like parking brakes that have been on the whole time in their life and they've succeeded despite it but man they could go much further so part one of the solutions just realizing maybe watch this video a couple of times really listen to and really think about it start to notice take the quiz that I'm going to give you at the end you know really start to take a look at how you're robbing yourself of of happiness and material achievements second step is start to notice how critical you actually are this is going to be i opening for you to because right now maybe you have some idea in your mind of like yeah you know leah i know how critical i am you know i do criticize a lot of things throughout the day okay that's good but when you actually take a close look let's say starting tomorrow you start taking a real close look at how much criticism you do in your life on a daily basis you're going to notice like oh it's a it's ten times worse than I thought it was this problem is ten times they guy I've only seen the tip of the iceberg here the rest of the iceberg is is still yet to be discovered down below the water so that's going to be step two so that's going to take your realization it's going to even blow it up even further it's gonna be like holy this is a real problem good that's going to motivate you to change right the third step is to start to retrain yourself you need to retrain your mental filter that's the problem you have a mental filter right now in your mind like this lens that you're looking throughout the world and this lens is telling you find perfect nitpick everything you know when I'm driving down the road I'll nitpick even stupid stuff like a car that I don't like some design of a car like oh that's an ugly Chevy that's like ugly for like who designed this car who would buy this car and I start going down this world like why would they design it this way why didn't they just like tweak the bumper this way and why didn't they change the headlights this way right that's what I'm talking about here this the subtle criticism and you do this with everything I mean you do with people you do this with physical appearance of stuff you do this with physical objects you might buy something and you might be critical about it you might do this with the meal that you order you might go buy a cheeseburger then you look at it and you're eating in its pretty good cheeseburger but then you nitpick something's like oh they forgot the pickles or something you know the fries they gave me five less french fries and they should have that kind of stuff yeah so start to notice that and then retrain yourself retrain yourself to let go and accept you got to accept these things life is not about min maxing everything this is not an RPG game life is about enjoying it accepting it being cool with it even when it's not perfect see the thing is the original point that I talked about is that you do not want to accept reality that's the fundamental neurosis that you have you don't like reality as it is you have your fantasies about reality and then you insist that that's how it has to be it has to be like my fan see but the fact is that it life is not like a fantasy life is life it is exactly what it is so if you got five less french fries than you deserved that's what happened that's the truth that's reality can you be man enough to accept it you have the balls to accept it it takes courage to accept these things takes courage and at first it's gonna be like a a drug addict coming off of in diction it's gonna be no I'm gonna criticize I wanna criticize and then you gotta retrain your mind to just say okay let me just let go of those french fries I don't need those five French fries probably better for me in the long run you know it's better that I didn't eat those five french fries helps my health um but then your minds can be like no I need those french fries first let me go complain about the five french fries that they didn't give me good practice acceptance yeah it's kind of a hippie concept acceptance for perfectionist that's a very foreign concept form concept for me it's hard meditations a real good habit you know if you really want to practice this practice meditation practice enlightenment work those are some great tips but I'll give you even a more concrete exercise that you're going to do here you can do those things but at the very minimum do this you're going to get a rubber band for your wrist such as this right here see this rubber band you're going to put around your wrist and you're going to wear it for one month every single day you're basically not going to take it off you're going to shower with it you're going to sleep with it you're going to eat with it keep this thing on for a whole month and you're basically going to do a one month 30-day challenge of no criticism this is my no criticism challenge so I'm actually in the middle of my challenge right now I've been doing it for about a week it's been working quite well so what I do is I just notice throughout the day whether I'm being critical and any time that I see that I am being critical and I hear my inner voice being critical in any kind of fashion small or big what I do is I snap this sucker and tell yourself the following it's like a little mantra that I have my mantra is this when I criticize I rob myself of my future because that's literally what you're doing when you're criticizing no matter for what little reason that's energy that you're wasting and you're not taking responsibility for doing the things you got to do to advance your life criticism does not advance your life right so that's going to be your assignment you're going to go and do that get yourself a nice rubber band get a rubber band that actually isn't too tight on your wrist so you can wear it all day long that's important if you get a really tight rubber band it's going to cut off circulation to your hand and you're gonna take it off pretty quick all right and just keep going with it keep going with it week after week after week this is what is the retraining right the reason this exercise is so important is because this is where the rubber meets throughout this is where you actually retrain your your mind you change that lens through which you see the world and instead practice acceptance just accept what is accept life see the beauty of life be grateful for life you know practice any of those right there and what do you think about instead of critical stuff you think about what are my dreams what are my goals what's my life purpose how can I take more action towards it where could I you know where could I get more creative ideas who could I talk to who's gonna advance my my career and so on and so forth spend more time with the kids spend more time with your intimate relationship whatever spend more time with friends that kind of stuff and then lastly go and check out the perfectionist quiz I'm going to have a link to it down below it's gonna have some questions there that will help you to see just how bad of a problem this might be for you all right that's it I'm signing off go ahead post me your comments down below click the like button please share this video with a friend and come check out actualized other work right here this is my newsletter you can go find it there it's free newsletter stay tuned with weekly updates I release new videos on self-actualization topics every single week they're free stay onboard do the exercises that I give you every single week learn these concepts these are concepts that you need to master life these are not just theories this is not just philosophy I study this stuff this is what I do this with my whole day my whole life consists of is basically studying the best most practical most important concepts that I need personally that I need to master my life to get the most fulfilling rewarding life that I could possibly create so whatever those concepts I discover are I come and I share them most of them I share for free with a lot of depth these concepts are so powerful this is not just like going to school when you're at school to teach a bunch of a relevant crap this stuff here is extremely practical when you start applying this stuff that starts changing how you see life starts changing your mood starts changing your thought patterns start changing your practical daily habits start changing how you do business how you hang out with your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife or your kids this is extremely practical stuff and when you stay onboard and you just do this weekly with me in a few years your life is going to transform and in a decade or two it will really transform and you can get to levels that you wouldn't have even imagined or possible this is not easy work this is challenging work it's not easy to retrain your mind over the course of a month to think about your life purpose instead of thinking about negative stuff right that's not easy to do most people are too lazy to do that I'm not here giving you magic pills what I want to convince you of is that there's enough reward here to do this work in fact there's so much reward in doing self-actualization work that the initial investment you're going to do of having to spend time watching this stuff and doing some of these exercises and going through some of the emotional labor involved that's going to be all paid off tenfold a hundredfold if you just keep going with it you're gonna start getting exponential results as you keep going right but at first it's kind of slow going your first year is going to be little slow going you can still get some results but you're going to fall off track most likely so really the mission of actualize that organ is to keep you on track for a long time to come how do you stay on track with this stuff with self-actualization work for years and for decades imagine the potential that that would have for you and it doesn't take that much a couple hours a week that's all you need to start with right it'll start to build its own momentum so if you think that's a good idea then stay with me I'm self actualizing I'm excited to share my deepest insights with you as I'm on my journey and I hope that you get on board with your journey alright sign up stay tuned and I'll see you soon you