#67: You owe your success to your flaws
I get it: you want to be less of a perfectionist, more confident and assertive, less of a procrastinator, and all the rest of it. These, after all, are things that hold us back - or so we often think. As it happens, though, things are more complicated than that. Those same traits that stand in your way are the same ones that have enabled you to achieve awesome things. Is there a way to get the 'awesome things' bit without the 'stand in your way' bit? Well, put up a chair, chum - the Academic Imperfectionist has some thoughts.
Episode transcript:
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hello again, imperfectionists. I’m sitting here in my little office, which is also my spare room, waiting for a new sofabed to be delivered! Exciting. Until very recently, my office wasn’t a particularly inviting place to work. I had a desk that was way too small, squidged into the corner. The few items of furniture that I kept in here were basically just the odds and ends that didn’t have homes anywhere else - except for a functional but unattractive futon for when we had guests. The way I thought about this room was: what’s the point in trying to make it nice? It’s only me that uses it. No point wasting effort on a room that only I’m going to see. Like a lot of you, I have trouble investing in things that are just for me. The result was that I didn’t really use the room very much. The cats used it way more than I did. It was cluttered, cramped, and uninviting. My lovely friend Steinvör - who, impressively, is an academic philosopher turned interior designer - told me off about it, and so I hired her to redesign it for me. I already have my nice new desk and some storage, and by the end of the day there is going to be the new sofa! Which I need to protect against the cats so it doesn’t end up covered in hair like the last one. Oh, and there’s a nice procrastination story in here too. I prevaricated for a while about ordering the sofa. I knew which model to get, but I hadn’t decided on the colour, and instead of just sitting down and making a decision like an efficient person, I just left the browser tabs open and did other things. Then, a few weeks later, I looked at them again, and found that the sofa I wanted was heavily discounted, by 40%. So, I bought it immediately. I saved myself £200, which I wouldn’t have saved if I’d gone ahead and ordered it straight away. Three cheers for procrastination, right?
Ok, this isn’t going to be an episode about how procrastination can save you money, sorry. But I do want to talk about the positive sides of certain traits that many of us view as negative. This is something that has come up in quite a few coaching sessions, which is often how episodes of this podcast are born: a theme that comes up again and again in coaching sessions is probably common enough and problematic enough to address in a podcast episode so that as many people as possible can benefit from some reflections on it. So, here it is. I’ve had multiple clients coming to me and wanting to work on things like procrastination, perfectionism, lack of confidence, difficulties with being assertive, lack of organisation, and so on. And, of course, I struggle with these things too. Often, when clients describe their struggles with things like this, it turns out that what they want, ideally, is simply to delete the problematic traits from their personality. To become a person who doesn’t procrastinate, for example. The problem is, though, things are more complicated than this - and not just because, much as we’d often like to, we can’t simply wipe out personality traits that we don’t like. Things are more complicated because the traits that we view as holding us back are often tangled up with traits that contribute to our success. It’s like they’re two sides of a coin. But, because we’re so much better at criticising ourselves than we are at celebrating our successes or being compassionate towards ourselves, we only see one side: the negative side.
So, take perfectionism, for example. I don’t need to tell you that this is a real problem - that’s why you’re here, listening to this. Insisting that the thing you’re trying to do needs to be done perfectly is a fantastic way not to do the thing at all, which means that perfectionists struggle with getting on with whatever they’re supposed to be getting on with, and that causes problems for them. I say ‘them’ - I mean ‘us’, of course. It’s no wonder that we’d like to be able to dump our perfectionism - just think of all the things we’d be able to do! Imperfect things, of course, but an imperfect done thing is better than any sort of undone thing. Or, so we wish we could believe. The problem is, though, that we’re perfectionists because we care deeply about doing a good job. We’re conscientious. We’re invested in achieving success. We set high standards for ourselves. We’re ambitious. And while perfectionism is one consequence of having traits like these, another consequence is the success that we’ve already achieved so far. Those things that you write about on your CV. So, while perfectionism is a problem, there’s a sense in which erasing perfectionism from our personalities - even if that were possible - would also be a problem. Perfectionism is the price we’ve ended up paying for being the sorts of people who have been able to achieve important things.
Let’s take a look at some more examples. Procrastination. Does it hold us back? Yes, obviously. But, procrastination, too, can arise from traits that have positive aspects. Some procrastination is linked to perfectionism; in other words, we procrastinate because we care deeply about doing a good job, and we’re afraid that making a start will result in our doing a less than good job. At other times, we procrastinate simply because we need to do something unappealing or unpleasant, like cleaning the bathroom or working out when we’d rather not or initiating an uncomfortable conversation. In other words, we procrastinate because we’re demanding of ourselves that we do something uncomfortable. And, of course, a willingness to do uncomfortable things is important. I don’t mean we should be doing uncomfortable things all the time, or even often - for more on this, go and listen to episode #63: In defence of your comfort zone - but a willingness to do uncomfortable things sometimes, when necessary to make progress, is a good thing, and can help us avoid getting stuck in an unfulfilling rut. So, procrastination, like perfectionism, turns out to be tangled up with traits that are useful and instrumental in enabling us to flourish.
What about problematic traits like impostor syndrome and a lack of assertiveness? I’m grouping these together partly for reasons of brevity, but also because they both broadly relate to anxieties about how we’re perceived by others. Are we deceiving people into thinking that we’re more competent than we actually are? And, will we come across as arrogant or selfish or stubborn if we try to enforce our boundaries or ask for what we need? I’ve spoken to a lot of people who say they wish they didn’t have these traits - who, I suppose, wish that they could go through life confidently believing that the praise they receive from others is justified and that asking for what they need won’t attract any negative judgment from others. But, being sensitive to other people’s opinions of us is not a bad thing at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Ok, I’m sure you’ve got the idea here. The traits we dislike in ourselves, and view as holding us back, have a positive side that is easy to miss. So, what’s the lesson here?
One lesson is just the awareness of what’s happening, I think. Awareness that the traits we view as negative aren’t straightforwardly negative. Things are more complicated than that. It’s tempting to think - and I know plenty of you do think, because I’ve heard you say - that if only we weren’t such perfectionists or procrastinators or if only we weren’t in the grip of impostor syndrome and all the rest of it, we could absolutely smash our goals, live our dreams, soar, level up, defeat the boss, save the world, etc. But that’s not the way it is, because the traits that are holding us back are just one aspect of the traits or qualities or sets of values or mindsets to which we owe our success. Having those annoying, problematic traits doesn’t make you faulty. They’re part of what makes you brilliant.
Here’s another lesson from all this. Those traits we dislike in ourselves are aspects of something more positive, but we might say that they’re problematic manifestations of that positive thing. They’re good traits gone bad. They’re what you end up with when certain positive qualities take a toxic, unhelpful turn. So, it’s great to care about doing a great job, but when that care tips over into perfectionism, there’s a problem, because fixating on perfectionism doesn’t help us do a great job, it just holds us back from doing any sort of job. But that toxic, unhelpful turn isn’t inevitable. It’s not an unavoidable logical consequence of having the positive quality that leads to it. So, perhaps it’s possible to have our cake and eat it here: to retain our positive traits while preventing them from tipping over into something that’s destructive. But, how?
I think that has to involve getting in touch with what the underlying positive traits are, and then understanding how they’ve led to behaviours or thought patterns that are destructive. So, as a first step, let’s ask: what values are at stake here? For example, what values do you have that are leading you to procrastinate, or be afraid to assert yourself, or whatever it might be. Another way to put this question, in case it’s more intuitively appealing, is: what are you afraid of here? What are you trying to avoid, when you procrastinate, or when you worry that other people have a falsely positive view of you, or whatever it might be. Perhaps the answer is something like: I’m afraid of doing a bad job, or causing people to dislike me, or losing confidence in myself. Assuming you endorse the value that you come up with - assuming, in other words, that you care about doing a good job, being thought well of, and believing in yourself - the next question is, how can you best achieve what you want to achieve while honouring that value? So, take valuing doing a good job. Fixating on perfectionism is not a good way of achieving what you want to achieve while honouring that value. But, thankfully, there are other options. Giving yourself permission to experiment and explore might be one path that’s open to you: trying things out and learning, through experience, what a good-enough job looks like here. Reminding yourself that ‘good job’ does not entail ‘perfection’ is a good option too. Good enough is, after all, good enough. Those character traits you wish you didn’t have are, as I’ve said, the price you’re paying for certain positive things in your life - but that’s not to say you’re getting the best deal, and this exercise involves trying to get a better one. It’s a bit like when you call your internet broadband company or electricity provider to negotiate a better deal. The money that’s going out of your account every month is, it’s true, the price you’re paying for your broadband or your electricity - but perhaps you’re paying more than you need to be paying. But if you don’t make the call and demand a better deal, your broadband provider will be happy to leave you on the shitty tariff. Something similar is going on with your inner critic. You need to make the call and say that you want to keep the conscientiousness and the ambition and all the other good stuff, but you don’t want to be paying with perfectionism. Yeah … sorry about that analogy, but you get my point.
One thing I like about this approach, when I discuss it with coaching clients, is that it involves a move away from the view that we’re faulty because we’re perfectionist. Everything is working just as it should. We have all the right values. We just need a little tweak so we can express them more efficiently.
Now, as a final point here, I’ve talked about digging down beneath our problematic character traits until we find the values that underlie them, and then asking ourselves how we might honour those values in less destructive ways. But, suppose you dig down and find values that, now you think of it, you want to reject? This happens sometimes. I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve experienced it myself. You might, for example, discover that you’re really invested in doing things a particular way because you were told to do things that way by someone from your past - someone whose approval, it turns out, you no longer care about. The underlying value has changed, but the behaviour patterns that grew out of it have stuck. In a case like this, you don’t need to worry about trying to honour the value. You need, instead, to work on dismantling the patterns of behaviour that aren’t working for you any more. That might not happen overnight. But, as you explore other options and work out what you might want to occupy the space that was once filled by the value you now reject, it will come.
I hope you’ll find it rewarding to explore some of those aspects of yourself that you find frustrating, and that what I’ve said here might help you do that in a compassionate way. Let me leave you with a question to mull over as you digest all this. Ask yourself this: How would I view myself and speak to myself if I were confident that there’s nothing about me that’s wrong? Good luck, friends.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
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