The #1 Thing That Stops Perfectionists from Growth

[00:00:00] If you are ready to burn bright instead of burning out, to lead without losing yourself, and to enjoy the life you have worked so hard to create, then keep listening. I'm your host, America's Leader on Rewiring Perfectionism, CLG, and this is Perfectionism Rewired, the podcast. Welcome to Perfectionism Rewired. Today we're talking about the number one thing that stops perfectionists from growing.

[00:00:27] A commonality that all of us perfectionistic people have is that we want growth. We always want to be improving. This episode is especially for those of you that are feeling a bit stuck despite how hard you're trying. Like you're going to therapy, you're doing the work with Byron Katie, you listen to Perfectionism Rewired on repeat,

[00:00:56] and yet you're still not making the progress that you want to be, and it's not for lack of trying. If that's you, this episode is the answer to why. I'm sharing with you a proprietary framework that I've only shared with private one-on-one coaching clients until now.

[00:01:19] When clients inside Perfectionism Optimized learn this, they have many light bulb moments. A client just last week, she said, OMG, CLG, like this explains so much and just helps me see things a lot more clearly. I bet you will also have at least three aha moments by the end of this episode. Let's dive in, starting with where growth comes from, your brain.

[00:01:50] Those of you who have binged listened to Perfectionism Rewired, you've heard me say this over and over and over again. Your brain's most important job is to regulate your internal systems in the most efficient way to keep you alive and well. Your brain operates predictively. Brains predict. They don't react. And so, of course, your brain allocates resources predictively. This is called allostasis.

[00:02:15] Your brain is allocating resources that are limited and necessary for you to stay alive, like oxygen, glucose, potassium, water, bile. Just like enterprises have financial departments that forecast and track revenue and expenses, you have a robust financial department in your brain.

[00:02:39] Your brain constantly tallies up deposits and withdrawals of these limited resources while simultaneously checking in with the health of the organization that is you. Your brain is asking questions like, how much bile is your liver producing? Do you have enough water? What are your salt and potassium levels?

[00:03:01] The status of these resources that are available to your brain at any point in time is called your person account. Just like how the status of your financials is called your bank account. This is your person account. And the number one thing that stops you and all perfectionists from growth is your person account. Why?

[00:03:29] Developing skills and growth are the most costly activities for your brain. When your person account is low or running a deficit, your brain will say, no way, Jose, to growth in order to conserve spending. Think about it. What do you do when your financials are running at a deficit?

[00:03:56] You slow down spending. Your brain does the exact same thing. When your person account is depleted, your brain stops spending on non-essentials like your growth, like developing new skills.

[00:04:14] Why it does that is because your person account is more influential to what you see, peer, feel, and act than the outside world is. The health of your person account is the basis for every thought and perception you have.

[00:04:37] When your person account is low or maybe even in a bit of a deficit and you're going to therapy, you're reading all the books, you're doing all the work with Byron Katie, you're listening to all the perfectionism rewired podcasts. But your person account is low. Your brain is like insufficient funds and it immediately cuts off your person account from those expenses.

[00:05:06] It's like, nope, we're not going to learn anything. Your card's been declined. Now, you can still do them. I bet many of you are. You can still go through the motions of, yeah, I'm going to therapy, doing the work with Byron Katie. I'm reading all the books. But when you are doing the actions, you're like, okay, if I do this, then I ought to be changing. I want you to think of it like you're on a rocking horse. You're doing a whole lot of activity, but you're not going anywhere.

[00:05:34] Because if your person account is depleted, you're not going to improve no matter how much therapy you do or self-help tips you follow. That is fact from multiple, multiple medical journals that are, as always, linked in the show notes.

[00:05:57] Even if you're like, I'm never going to do coaching, like you want to do a perfect start session because having your person account be solvent is what makes anything you do much more effective. You can use the perfect start coaching session to get the personalized tools that you need so your person account can become flush and healthy. So you're no longer on that rocking horse.

[00:06:23] You can secure your perfect start session by going to CourtneyLoveGavin slash rewire. And there is also a link in the show notes. Scientific research recently discovered perfectionist brains cost more to operate. Breathing, maintaining your blood chemistry, pumping your heart, producing and storing bile, digesting, etc. Just the bare minimum to stay alive and well.

[00:06:50] It costs more when you're a perfectionist. I like to think of it as when you have a Ferrari, it usually calls for you to put the premium gas in it. Fueling, putting gas in that car is more costly than say a Honda. Same thing. Perfectionist brains cost more to operate.

[00:07:10] Those of us with perfectionistic tendencies operate in a depleted state much of the time without even realizing it. This was me before I became a healthy perfectionist and rewired. Like we're operating with these depleted person accounts, but we don't even realize it until we crash, get really frazzled. And it leaves us asking like, what happened? Why did I just snap at my spouse? How did I get here?

[00:07:40] Why is it though? I know us as perfectionists, we need to know why. Knowing why puts us at ease and it also makes us way more likely to actually take better care of ourselves. Why do we, as perfectionists, why do we tend to run at a deficit in our person account?

[00:08:00] Brains don't differentiate between a physical withdrawal from your person account, like working long hours, going to an interval training class, running a marathon, or a mental withdrawal, like ruminating, overthinking, worrying, or anxiety. To brains, to brains, it's all withdrawals.

[00:08:24] To brains, it's all withdrawals from your person account.

[00:08:49] Here's what this looks like with our brains not differentiating between physical withdrawals and a mental withdrawal. Here's what that looks like. Your brain predicts you're going to have a big expenditure, aka stress. Stress is simply a situation. Your brain believes you're about to have a large expenditure. Stress can be positive, beneficial.

[00:09:18] It can be good and healthy for you. This is known as eustress, E-U stress. It's stress that makes you healthy and strong, like running a marathon. And then there's other kinds of stress that are negative and bad for you, meaning it doesn't contribute to who you are. That is known as distress. An example of this is when you ruminate.

[00:09:47] When your brain predicts you're going to have a big expenditure, aka stress, your brain directs your internal systems to release cortisol. Cortisol is not a stress hormone. On earlier episodes of Perfectionism Rewired, I might have referred to cortisol as a stress hormone.

[00:10:09] That is because it wasn't until recently science has confirmed that cortisol is a glucocorticoid. Cortisol gets glucose into your bloodstream quickly so that your cells can use it quickly. Your brain is releasing cortisol when you catastrophize about what your sit-down with your boss will bring.

[00:10:37] Your brain is releasing cortisol when you think about what could go wrong while you're away from your kids on a work trip. Even though it's distress, your brain believes this is a very smart spend from your person account because it believes that it's for your survival.

[00:10:58] Even though we both know sitting down with your boss is not going to determine whether you live or die. It's not a survival moment. However, this is where episode 248 comes in where your words you use like, Oh, this is going to kill me or, oh, I'm totally going to die. My kids won't survive without me while I'm gone.

[00:11:28] When we use violent and inaccurate language describing the events in our lives, your brain predicts that your person needs energy and it makes a withdrawal, releasing cortisol, flooding glucose into your bloodstream. When you don't metabolize that surge of glucose, it stays in your cells.

[00:11:54] When you do this frequently enough, your brain loses its predictive potency. Your cells no longer respond to it. They're just like, okay, cortisol, whatever. They become insensitive and your person account goes into the red. This is also known as chronic stress. Now do you get it? Why brains don't differentiate between a physical withdrawal from your person account or a mental withdrawal?

[00:12:22] To our brains, they're all the same withdrawals from your person account. What I see the most with perfectionists is your person account is running at a deficit that's incremental. It's like a slow drip. That crack becomes a crater over time. For example, do you regularly ignore your person when it needs to go pee? Work 80 hours plus a week skipping meals and social activities?

[00:12:50] Do you replay past conversations in your head that you wish would have gone differently? Do you cancel doctor or beauty appointments in pursuit of achieving your professional goals? Do you feel the stress of keeping up with the amount of home chores, tight scheduling, or deadlines? Do you have a non-supportive partner? Do you regularly catastrophize, worry, reassurance checking? Do you compare yourself to other people?

[00:13:19] Do you regularly put off endeavors until conditions are ideal? Do you overanalyze social interactions, assuming the absolute worst interpretations of what other people meant? Do you obsessively check emails or messages for errors after sending? And by obsessively, I mean check more than once. Do you set your own deadlines and berate yourself if you miss them? Do you criticize yourself after mistakes?

[00:13:47] Do you redo work that could be finished or turned in? Do you have rigid routines and get upset if one thing goes awry or is done out of order? Like you have a very specific way of how you get your kids in the car. It has to be done in this order. And then if one thing goes awry, you beat yourself up. Do you feel guilty when you relax, leave your kids, or take time for yourself? Do you say yes when you want to say no? Do you tell yourself you're not allowed to relax until dot dot dot?

[00:14:15] Do you read or listen to disturbing news or murder podcasts? Do you do dull, repetitive, uninspiring type work? Do you scroll your phone mindlessly? Do you watch shows you aren't really into? Do you power through your day with little to no breaks? Do you stay indoors most of the day?

[00:14:40] Do you fixate on how one change or misstep has ruined your vision instead of adapting and going with the flow? Do you feel like you end the day with more work than you started? Do you ignore when your brain is telling you, hey, let's go to bed, and you stay up later? Do you regularly have heated arguments? Do you multitask? Do you multitask?

[00:15:04] These are just a handful examples of useless withdrawals to your person account. Before we know it, we've overspent, and it lands us in debt. Now, you're probably like, well, how do I know if my person account is healthy? How do I know whether or not I'm running a deficit?

[00:15:27] I see that I'm doing a lot of those withdrawals, but are there signs that I can look for? And if yes, what are they? That is exactly what we're going to be covering in the next episode, episode 253. Listen up. Taking charge of your perfectionism is so much easier than you have been led to believe.

[00:15:54] Whether you want to stop playing out worst-case scenarios in your head or be joyfully present ambitious again, you don't need more rigid rules, guesswork, or hard work in perfectionism recovery. You need a framework that helps you understand and, most importantly, rewire your perfectionistic habits from the inside out. It starts inside of perfectionism optimized.

[00:16:19] Besides the obvious mental health and wellness benefits, rewiring your perfectionism is the fastest way to figure out what's really underneath your perfectionistic patterns. This radically different, proven, proprietary approach helps you succeed by dropping the contempt and judgment that blocks change.

[00:16:40] Discover how to trust yourself, take control of your world, and feel truly empowered to own your perfectionism instead of being owned by it. Head on over to CourtneyLoveGavin.com and start your transformation today.