Don’t Overcome Your Perfectionism! Why Your High Standards Make You A Star

Marie:

In this episode of MarieTV we do have some adult language. If you have little ones around, please grab your headphones now. 

Katherine:

The goal is to be able to make room for all of your human experiences, and not be reactive and choose to respond from a place of as much love and patience as you can muster in the moment.

Marie:

Hey, it's Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of the Marie Forleo podcast and MarieTV, the place to be to create a frigging business and life you love. And I'm so excited about today's show. So I don't know if you have ever identified as being a perfectionist, right? I certainly have. And if you've ever been shamed for it, or told you need to lower your standards, or you're too much, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The conversation we're having today is from probably one of the first people who's ever made me feel hopeful and excited and grateful about my natural traits, and I cannot wait for you to hear this conversation.

Katherine Morgan Schafler is a psychotherapist, writer, speaker, and former on-site therapist at Google. She trained at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy in New York City. Her book, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, is available wherever books are sold.

Katherine, I love your book. So I have to tell you the story of how I got to it. So I get a lot of books sent to my house, and most of them are sent from publishers or whomever, and they're not necessarily requested. And I remember one weekend I was home by myself, Josh wasn't there. And so I'm going through this huge stack of mail and your book was included, and there was something in it because I wasn't aware of the book, you know what I mean? I wasn't necessarily expecting it. And so I sat down at my desk and I start ... I was like, "I feel like I really need to read this. What a cool title."

And so I started reading it. I was like, "Oh, wow." I was like, "I have never heard anyone talk about perfectionism in this way." And so I'm into it, I'm into it. And then all of a sudden you mentioned me in the book and I was like, "Wait, what?"

And it was such a cool moment, and it made me laugh out loud, and it really gave me so much relief, and it made me want to get up and cheer because I feel like so much of my life and so much of the messaging that we've received culturally, especially as a woman, is you're so much, you have such high standards, calm it down, lower it down, and been made to feel like I'm wrong for being the wonderful creative maniac that I am. And you are the first person really that made me feel like, "Oh my God, who I am and what I am naturally is a superpower and not this defect." So, thank you.

Katherine:

That's such an incredible story. I don't know if that means you didn't get the email that I wrote to you, which I'll send to you.

Marie:

I may not have.

Katherine:

You'll get a kick out of it.

Marie:

Yes, yes, yes.

Katherine:

Because yes, you are such a dynamic person, and I put you in the book because you're such a great example of someone who takes their ambition and really broadcasts it in a way that gives other people license to do the same. It certainly has had that effect on me. And so it's such a full circle moment to be here with you.

Marie:

Yeah. And I chose this.

Katherine:

I see that.

Marie:

This is very purposeful.

Katherine:

I see. Mm-hmm.

Marie:

And I remember when Erin was showing me all the potential looks, I was like, "I want that sweatshirt right now." So you know, you write, "Part of the urging to stamp out perfectionism in women arises because perfectionism is powerful energy." And then, I'm smashing together sentences from another section, and I have this bolded, "Do not allow your ambition to be pathologized, refuse to apologize for or disguise your insatiable desire to excel. Reject the notion that you need to be fixed. Reclaim your perfection now."

Katherine:

Yes.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

Yes.

Marie:

Like hell to the frigging yes.

Katherine:

Mm-hmm.

Marie:

Whatever you want to say, comment on that. All you.

Katherine:

Well, I mean, you can't be a perfectionist without being ambitious, and you can't be an ambitious woman without being expected to make your ambition palatable in some way, or straight up hide it, or lie about it. Women who seek power and influence are seen as power-hungry, and men who do the same are seen as alpha males. And there's just all of these double standards that, to be honest with you, felt so outdated.

When I was writing the book, I had these moments of, "Do I still need to include this? Is this still relevant? Because I feel like we've been talking about this enough, to where maybe we've poked enough holes in it that it doesn't need to be brought up again," and then something would happen in the news or in some other way that would make me be like, "Nope, we still have to address all of these ways that gender performance is communicated to us as women, and men, and non-binary people. This is how you should behave and this is how you should not behave."

And to your point, women are constantly told in a thousand ways, you are doing too much, pull back. Unless you're operating in a realm that is not in competition with men, which is why someone like a Martha Stewart or a Marie Kondo, we can say they're such a perfectionist and it's wonderful, and let's celebrate them and syndicate them. Because if you look at Martha Stewart's company, it's based on archetypal homemaker interests, right?

Marie:

Yeah.

Katherine:

So it's like wedding palettes, brunch in a pinch, all of this stuff which is publicly acceptable for women to be ambitious about. And in those instances, it's like more power to her. But then when you have someone like a Serena Williams, for example, who is assertively staking claim to what she wants and doesn't hide any of it, and in fact, attracts attention in what she wears, and some of the things that she says, she's penalized for it in so many ways, not just emotionally, but also actually literal penalties in her games for doing things that men before her and probably after her, will do to a degree that is so much more intense in a negative way, and not be penalized at all.

Marie:

Yeah, I mean, your book is so good. I also just want to say, I said this when you came into the studio. You're a phenomenal writer, so this is your first book?

Katherine:

Thank you. Yes.

Marie:

Was it difficult?

Katherine:

Yes. It was. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've done some very hard things, and I think what made it hard was that the other hard things I've done ... I talk about being sick in the book, and-

Marie:

Yeah, I want to go there next.

Katherine:

... a lot, those hard things you just had to do. And that's been the experience with a lot of difficulty and challenge in my life of like, "Well, I got to do it," and so you just do it. This is like, I don't have to write a book. And I think that's what's so good and hard about writing a book is because it's really, you have to rise to the occasion of yourself, a self that you know about in your mind and an idea that you know about in your mind, but that other people don't necessarily know that version, so it's like nothing bad's going to happen if you don't do it in the same way that if you don't attend to your health or whatever, there's this little consequence. But some things you just have to do.

Marie:

Yeah.

Katherine:

You know?

Marie:

The reason I always bring this up is because I read this stat and I believe it's true, up to 80% of the population feels like they have a book in them, and most people don't ever actually write the book and get it out. So as a writer myself, I remember Everything is Figureoutable, in my last book, not that it almost killed me, that's very dramatic to say, but I struggled, you know what I mean? I was on the struggle bus, and I always love talking to writers because I'm curious. I'm always curious about everyone's process.

Katherine:

It's so hard.

Marie:

Yeah, it's really, really hard. But you are a beautiful writer, and I really hope that you continue to write because it's a very unique voice that you have, and I read a lot, so-

Katherine:

Thank you.

Marie:

... let's go to how your own journey helped you start to realize how attached you were to this sense of control, and that with the diagnosis, you were like, "Oh ..." you really saw yourself, and I'll just say, at the same time, I feel like as a young person growing up, and even in my early twenties and stuff, trying to control things, oh my God, that was the label I wore all the time. That's the other thing that attracted me about your subtitle was, "Oh, losing control? Yeah. Yes, please."

Katherine:

Yeah. It's so cliche, and the cliche-ness of it still bothers me, that I didn't realize how much control I had, or was trying to hold onto, until I lost it, because I didn't experience it as being controlling in the moment. I experienced it as being responsible-

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

... as being driven, as being disciplined.

Marie:

Like a leader. You're taking care of everyone.

Katherine:

Right.

Marie:

Got your shit together.

Katherine:

Right. But it was really ... I lost so much control so fast that I didn't have time to translate it into anything other than what it was, which was, "Oh, I was doing all of those things because I was afraid of something." It was all coming from a place of fear.

"I better get my career together, or ..." I don't know what was going to happen. You sometimes don't even know what the fear is.

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

When you're operating from a place of fear, and I know this also sounds cliche, but I'm grateful for that moment of time because in the Sliding Doors version of life where I didn't get sick and just stayed on that track, I mean, that's the gift of a crisis, is that it's like a call to action. And when everything in your life gets dismantled, you really have to reconstruct it. And it's rare that you reconstruct it in exactly the same way it was before, because you are no longer the same person that you were before.

Marie:

What was your diagnosis? How old were you? And what went down?

Katherine:

So I was 33, I got diagnosed with this rare condition called gestational trophoblastic disease, which is highly treatable, 95% treatment rate, whatever. And then, you know when you hear something health related, it's like, "In one to two percent of people ..." and I kept being that one to two percent. And so all of my doctors were like, "Well, we're just going to do this, and then it's going to manage it. We're going to do chemotherapy." And it wasn't radiation therapy, but I lost a lot of my hair, and I was at Memorial Sloan Kettering for a good chunk of the day for many, many months.

And then it ended up just echoing into my life more and more. I had to have a hysterectomy. All of the stuff, which I know you've gone through, that every time that I thought it was under control, it wasn't.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

And so, it was just a constant recalibration, and at some point you really have to just calibrate fully internally. And I've had to do that before in lots of other ways in my life, but not in this way. And so it was just a wild moment, you know?

Marie:

And did it drive you deeper into your work as a psychotherapist, and specifically around investigating and really understanding perfectionism?

Katherine:

Yeah, because I was noticing a difference between the clients that I've worked with, at the time, my practice was on Wall Street, so I was working with really ambitious women in big law and finance, and they had such an energy that they brought to the room that was so electric, and all at once constructive, and destructive, and just so brimming with potential. And I started to notice a difference in myself-

Marie:

Being with them?

Katherine:

Yes. I started to feel more muted because I was trying to do what everyone around me was telling me to do, which is, you need to work less, you need to calm down, take a bath, sit in the bath, do nothing, meditate, don't think about anything. And that's not how I process things. I'm a walker. That's how I process things and move through things, and I don't like doing nothing.

Marie:

Yeah. We're going to talk about that, by the way. I have to interrupt you for a second. One of my dearest friends in the world, I've known her forever, and I remember I was struggling once, she's like, "Marie, you're just like ... you need to take a bath." And I was like, "Fuck off. I hate fucking baths." I just remember the experience of having so much rage and my friend trying to help me, and I was like, "Nope. That doesn't work on this thing."

Katherine:

Yeah. And I actually love a good bath, but I don't like forced ...

Marie:

Correct.

Katherine:

It's like-

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

... the thing about a good bath is you haven't had a good bath in weeks, and then you do, and then it's nice, but every day and it feels so contrived.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

And then it stresses me out more. And so, I was exhausting myself trying to be this version of healthy that people were telling me was healthy. And that's why I started feeling like I was fading out, and my clients were just so magnetic in so many ways, and I was like, what is happening here? And that's where I got to all the things that I put in the book.

Marie:

Yeah. And let's talk about that too, because I thought it was really fun when I started peeling into the book. You have created five different kinds of perfectionists. So let's talk about those five types and the value of knowing your type. And I love too, for everyone listening, at the back of the book, you say it very, very clearly, it's like, "Hey, these are constructs." This is something that you've created based on all of your experience, all of your training, all of your clients, but it's not made to "stick us in these perfectionist boxes." It's just to kind of explore these notions of tendencies and to give us footholds and toeholds into seeing like, "Oh, great. Here's ways, if I tend to lean in this flavor, these are some things I want to explore." And so, I love it. So walk us through the five types.

Katherine:

Yes. Okay, so we'll start with classics.

Marie:

Yeah.

Katherine:

Because I think the classic perfectionist is what most people think about when they think about perfectionism, and like perfectionism itself, which can be really, really wonderful, and you can use to your advantage and can be really, really destructive and just pull you down, each of these types have their advantages and liabilities. So the advantages to the classic perfectionist, these are people who are very put together. They're highly reliable, very disciplined. They do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it in the way that they said they would do it. And that's great.

On the cons side of this type, they can sometimes operate in a way that doesn't necessarily engender a lot of collaboration because the classic perfectionist is like, "Well, I really want to get it done well, so I'm going to do it myself." And that doesn't lend itself to feeling connected to people. So classic perfectionists can feel really taken for granted because it's like, "Oh, she'll do it. She likes doing that." And even if you like doing something, that doesn't mean it's not hard, it doesn't mean you don't want appreciation. And people can often feel like they're kind of haughty, or living in their own world.

So then we have the procrastinator perfectionist, and the best way to explain this is they want the conditions to be perfect before they start.

Marie:

Ooh. You're going to get a lot of people with that one.

Katherine:

So these are people who are really thoughtful, take great preparative measures, can see something from a 360-degree angle, and can think about all the contingencies that might unfold. The problem comes in when their preparative measures spill past the point of diminishing returns, and they are preparing too much and they're not actually doing the thing that they want to do, so it creates a kind of paralysis.

And the counterpart to the procrastinator perfectionist is the messy perfectionist.

Marie:

That's me most of the time.

Katherine:

I have a big chunk of messy perfectionist in me too, and messy perfectionists want the middle of the process to be perfect. So they love starting anything, and it's such an advantage to be able to push through the anxiety of a new beginning. Messy perfectionists don't even feel anxiety around that. It's exciting and adventurous, and they romanticize it. And so they can put their hands in a million pots at once, and it gives them energy. The problem is, these very naturally enthusiastic people can say yes to a million things in a way that doesn't allow them to commit to even one thing.

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

And so, they end up wearing themselves too thin, and not only doing the million things that they wanted to do, but not even getting one thing done. And that can lead to this really destructive narrative of, "I guess I don't care enough. I guess I'm not disciplined enough. I guess I'm not smart enough for anyone to take me seriously." And none of that is true. None of that is true.

It's just that you need help in the middle, and procrastinator perfectionists need help in the beginning.

Marie:

Yeah.

Katherine:

The intense perfectionists want the end of the process to be perfect. So these are people who are focused on the outcome. They have razor sharp focus, they're extremely efficient. They don't care about being liked, so they're very direct effortlessly, which is another great quality. But on the cons side, sometimes they can get to the end goal in a way that kind of dismisses their wellbeing and the wellbeing of people around them.

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

And so it's like, "Great, you achieved all of your Q2 goals, but half of your team is now quitting."

Marie:

Yeah. Totally.

Katherine:

And so, then lastly, there's the Parisian perfectionist. And this is a really interesting iteration of perfectionism because it plays out interpersonally, and we think of perfectionism as only operating in these achievement roles, or sports roles, or something like that. But this is about ideal connection. And so Parisian perfectionists want to be perfectly liked. They want to perfectly like other people, they want ideal connections. And on the pro side, these are people who you do not have to explain how important relationships are in life. They just get it. They're naturally warm and inclusive. They'll go out of their way to talk to the person standing alone at a party, for example. But on the cons side, they can sometimes take shortcuts to connection through people pleasing, which we all know doesn't work. And so not only have they now not connected to anyone, they've also disconnected from themselves. And that can just metastasize into bad cycles of people pleasing.

Marie:

So good. And I know at perfectionistguide.com, you have a great quiz. So for everyone watching right now, you can go take the quiz. We'll put it in the show notes. Thank you, by the way.

Katherine:

Yes.

Marie:

That was such a beautiful outline of each of the five types. So I want to dispel another myth. So we've already kind of, really, and I'm going to use this word because I've had a good amount of coffee today, and I love coffee. We've smashed through the myth that perfectionism has to always be bad.

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

So here's another myth. Average is not a bad thing. Perfectionists are totally fine operating at an average and below-average level in a lot of areas, just not the areas they long to excel in. Bam.

Katherine:

Yes.

Marie:

Those are your words.

Katherine:

Yes. Yes.

Marie:

I love that you wrote that, because again, when people kind of try and squash us down a little bit, it's like, "Oh, everything has to be ..." it's like, "No, not everything, just the shit that really matters."

Katherine:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great thing. And one of the things that people don't understand about perfectionism is that it's highly individualized.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

And that's what frustrated me to the point where I was like, "I got to write a book about this," because so many of the things we think about perfectionism are so limited. It's so black and white. It's like perfectionism is bad and unhealthy, so if you're a perfectionist, that means you are bad and unhealthy in some way. And not only is that approach not useful, it's actively harmful.

Marie:

Say more.

Katherine:

Well, it's actively harmful because thinking of yourself as a perfectionist is like thinking of yourself as a romantic, or an activist, or an artist. It's an enduring identity marker. Meaning people who think of themselves as perfectionists, or romantics, or whatever, hold onto that identity through their whole lifetime. And that's why we don't experience perfectionism episodically. Right? So you might say, "I went through a depression after college," but you don't say, "I went through a perfectionism after college." You say, "I am a perfectionist."

Marie:

Yeah.

Katherine:

And so, if you're talking about perfectionism in this black and white, it's bad way, what you're really saying is, to perfectionists, you need to be less of who you are.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

And you know what? If you can get rid of it completely and be a whole new person, even better. And that is taking an eradication approach to healing, trying to get rid of something that's in you and part of you, as opposed to an integration approach, which is like, "Let's get some boundaries around this. Let's understand it more completely. Let's get support where we need support."

I would never say to a romantic, "Let me tell you the solution to all your problems. Just believe in love 75% of the time." That's like how people talk to perfectionists. They're like, "Just lower your standards a little bit. Just do this. Just do that." And it doesn't work.

Marie:

And I want to talk a little bit about the difference between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. And I thought your observation here was so accurate. You talk about this a lot in your book. We're all up and down at different times in different ways for different reasons. You write, these are your words. "If you're wondering if you're an adaptive or maladaptive perfectionist, spare yourself the trouble. You're both."

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

I love that you say you're referring to the mindset the person is in, not the person themselves. And that is such an important distinction. This is why I love reading your work, because it feels so precise from a truth level. And the distinctions that you have throughout the book are really, really important. Because I've noticed, I've seen myself in your book in so many different ways. It's like, "Oh yeah, when I'm off, when I'm scared, when I'm fearful ..." you said something before that I so identified with. For me, so much of the things I've done in my life, at the time I was doing them, whatever they were, I'm like a fish in water.

I didn't know that fear was driving me until the shit hits the fan, and you're off on the sidelines for a minute, and you have, for me, a moment of, "Oh ..." perspective shift, and you're able to reflect and see things from a different point of view. But I love this notion that you're not maladaptive or adaptive. It's like who are you, what mindset are you in, in this particular moment?

Katherine:

Right. Mental health, we are just beginning to talk about it in the right way. Mental health is really fluid, really context-dependent. Meaning, if you're at home for the holidays, you're probably going to be stressed.

Marie:

It might be tough.

Katherine:

And that moment isn't reflective of who you are and what you're capable of and all of these things. And the fluidity of mental health is something that I think people don't like to discuss because it makes us feel out of control, and control, there's something soothing about it, the illusion of it anyway. But really, whether it's sunny outside or not, or whether someone attractive just hit on you, or whether you are on time or late impacts your mood in these ways that really make you go up and down. Forget about the medications you're on, or serious crises you're going through.

And I think it's helpful for people to understand because so many times we think, "Oh, I'm doing so great," that we feel invincible and we take away the things that are helping us to feel so great because we don't need them anymore. And we are, if anyone is like me, humbled quickly, in realizing that. And at the same time, it's really powerful to understand that if you are suffering through a depression or you're depressed-ish, that's not a sentence for the rest of the season, or the year. You can move the needle in both directions based on a lot of stuff that you surround yourself with.

Marie:

Yeah. And life in and of itself. Josh and I talk about this all the time. I remember, and I want to talk about this next, because you have a story about Lena in your perfectionism up close chapter, you wrote, "A part of her wanted to stop pushing herself, stop feeling compelled to rise to the occasion of being her best self. She wanted to figure out how to be her average self without feeling like a loser." And I was like, "How freaking cool is that?" And then I'm going to read one more thing and we'll discuss. Then you talk about, "The tension of perfectionism emerges from the constant clashing between two of the most fundamental aspects of your identity. You're a full of flaws human with significant limitations, and you're a perfect being with unlimited potential." I cannot tell you how many times I have experienced that tug of war inside myself, and also Josh and I talk about it.

Probably, we've been together 20 years, and he's probably one of the most intuitive people I've ever met. And so we could be sitting in bed and I'm like going through a whole thing and he'll be like, "What? You're so loud right now." I'm not saying anything. Do you know what I mean?

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

He's like, "You have to say it out-"

Katherine:

Wow.

Marie:

And we've had these conversations, I'm like, there literally feels like sometimes two very, very competing parts of me. The one who's like, "You need to lay down for six months." And the other one who's like, "Absolutely not."

Katherine:

Right.

Marie:

And is genuinely excited about 17 different things.

Katherine:

Yeah. And I think that that's everyone's experience. And I like to think of the ratio ... I think of some of the people I know and I'm like ... this is going to sound so weird, okay? But it's like-

Marie:

Nope, bring it.

Katherine:

Oh, they're like 70% in the human, in their humanness.

Marie:

Yep.

Katherine:

And 30% in their being. And then some people who engage in life in such a way where you're like, "Oh, they're way more in the being realm."

Marie:

Yes. Yes.

Katherine:

And their humanness feels weird to them in some way. So I mean, these are our two core pieces of identity, and it's really interesting how we reconcile them. And there are lots of creative ways to reconcile them in healthy ways, but nothing that works works all the time, and it catches up with you in moments-

Marie:

Totally.

Katherine:

... which I think is totally natural and part of it, where you just can't win. It's like driving a car with kids in the back of the car. They're going to fight at some point. You can do things to make them not fight as much, but expecting that long car ride to always be pleasant and peaceful-

Marie:

Peaceful, yeah.

Katherine:

... and loving. It's like-

Marie:

Not going to happen.

Katherine:

Not going to happen.

Marie:

Just giggles. There's going to be ... there might be throw-up, Legos thrown, Cheerios on the floor, lots of screams, and people hitting each other.

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

I love that, because I love that you also, I feel like in your bio, when I was reading your intro earlier ... let me see, where is it? I'm going back up there. The Association for Spirituality in Psychotherapy in New York City. There's such a beautiful, in my perspective, spiritual undertone to all of your work. And I really, really appreciate that. And in this conversation of the two parts of us, I've been thinking a lot about it lately. It's like the divine aspect of who we are, the being, versus for me, the personality, the ego, the mind, it's just the clash of those two things. It's fascinating to witness.

Katherine:

Yes. It's funny that you're bringing this up because when I approached agents with this book, the original proposal title was called Truce, Making Peace with the Human in Your Being. And it was about that core component that you just pulled out, which is the only part of the book that I literally kept in. Because I wanted to write it ... when I sat down to actually write the book, it wasn't coming. It was like, "I want this to be fun and ... I don't know the word, but not this intense, spiritual, heady kind of thing.

Marie:

You accomplished, I would say goal accomplished because I laughed a lot in your book. I'm going to read you something else you wrote which is brilliant. "A misconception about being present is that presence equals happiness. You can be present and feel tired, you can be present and feel heartbroken. You can be present and not feel ready. Presence guarantees freedom, not happiness." I was like, damn. Freedom is my number one value in life. And when I am fully present, part of reading this made me ... I was like, "Oh, that's what it is."

When I'm fully in the moment, I feel a hundred percent free. And there are certain activities I do, like dance, for instance, where I'm lost in it. I'm like, "Oh my God." I start crying. Half the time I cry in my hip-hop class, and I'm so grateful that it's so dark and everyone is so sweaty, and we don't know what the hell's going on, that they can't see me because it's so much freedom.

Katherine:

Yeah. So many people cry in yoga. And not just at the part where you lay down, but in random parts and they will literally come to therapy and say, "Something's wrong, I was crying." And I'm like, "No, nothing's wrong. You were just free. You're just having a moment with yourself and there's something beautiful about that, and you're kind of expressing that in some way or your body is," but yeah, I don't like the myths around what it looks like to be present, or healthy.

Marie:

Yes.

Katherine:

It strips down what it means to be a human being and turns us into these templates that are ... it prizes neutrality over feeling alive. And I don't value neutrality. It's not important to me that if someone says something that is potentially really triggering to me, that I understand how to hear it in total neutrality because that's not the goal. The goal is to be able to make room for all of your human experiences, and not be reactive and choose to respond from a place of as much love and patience as you can muster in the moment.

But neutrality is not it, and neutrality and mindfulness are smashed together in this way in commercial wellness sometimes where I'm like, that's not what it is.

Marie:

No, thank you. Yeah, no, it is. It's devoid of nuance. It's very plastic. It feels extremely superficial and not realistic at all.

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

I loved this. This was fun. I loved this subtitle that you had. "I want to talk about the greatest form of power, surrendering." So you write, "Surrendering is the ultimate loss of control and the greatest form of power. Surrendering is not conceding defeat, surrendering is conceding to potentialities beyond your imagining. To surrender is to affirm that you're not alone. Surrender is a prayer that says, I'm open."

I feel like this is something probably I'd say in the past 10 years or so, that I've had so much more fun with than forever in my life. Early on I absolutely had an association of either surrender or rest, which we're going to get to next, with weakness. A feeling like, "Oh God, no, I'm not going to surrender. If I surrender, not only am I going to lose control, but everything ..." y'all don't have it. What an arrogant standpoint. But that's the truth-

Katherine:

No, I get it.

Marie:

... of how I felt. I was like, "I can't trust y'all." Like, "I need to get this done because I haven't seen you perform to the level that I think is good." That's just me being real.

Katherine:

Well, it's also about feeling like a caregiver, and a lot of people who are in a role where if you mess up, the company is no longer going to be able to make payroll, and then all of these people's lives are going to be disrupted, and then ... so it's very easy to conflate the sense of surrendering with giving up.

Marie:

Correct.

Katherine:

Or being reckless, not just with your responsibilities, but with other people.

Marie:

Correct.

Katherine:

And it's a totally different thing to the point where it might be opposite. It might be the opposite.

Marie:

But that surrender notion for me, too, has also been really great about the prayer of saying "I'm open," and being willing to stay connected to something beyond myself. It's been really important. Okay, so before we wrap, I want to talk about the power of taking a break. So perfectionists do not like doing nothing, we know that. But eventually everybody hits a wall of exhaustion. And I just had this conversation yesterday, so we were doing MarieTVs yesterday, and we were doing a bunch of Q&A Tuesdays. And so I was connecting with someone in our community and I could ... you know when you feel, and you know some ... you're like, "Oh yeah, I get that." And she was at a point, well, I think, like this conversation, but we were talking about, I was saying, "Hey, I'm just going to invite you to maybe allow yourself to rest a little bit."

Because based on everything she was sharing, she is not only an extraordinary caregiver, cares so much, responsible for so much, but she was starting to notice and feel like, ugh, it's a season of change, but not necessarily feeling like she had permission for herself to slow down. And I could tell it was really confronting. So let's talk about the different iterations of rest in addition to physical rest. I loved this and that it's not a four letter word. So you have decompression, playing, and restoration. Let's break those down.

Katherine:

So I think if you think of ... well, maybe we could start with productivity, which is becoming the dirtiest word in wellness, which I can't stand that approach to it. And I think if we put some elasticity around that word and think, being productive happens when you're able to operate from premium energy. And so, anything you do that brings you to a place of operating from premium energy is productive. And so, that means that if you take a nap and that nap restores you, and you wake up from that nap and go out with your friends because your value is high quality relationships, or you write, because you're trying to write a book, that one hour of rested you is going to be more productive than the 10-hour version of you that is burnt out, resentful, hungry, tired, all of those things. And so it's really about getting 30,000 feet in the air and saying, what do you want? What are your values? And then approaching those values from a place of premium energy.

And I use this framework of instead of time management, focusing on energy management-

Marie:

Hell yes.

Katherine:

... which comes from this life-changing article I read in Harvard Business Review by Tony Schwartz and Katherine ... oh God, I'm forgetting her last name, it starts with an M, it'll come back to me. But anyway, they were talking about how it's not that we run out of time, that's not why we don't do things. It's that we run out of energy. So it's not that you didn't have 15 minutes yesterday to respond to your emails. It's that when you arrived at those 15 minutes, you were so burnt out that you were like, "Ugh, I can't, I just can't." And so you just scrolled on Instagram, or you turned on the TV, or whatever you did.

And so, if you think about going through your day and taking rests in such a way that, "This is going to give me energy," then you're going to be able to turn the volume all the way up on premium energy and get done so much more. And that looks like decompressing, right?

Marie:

Emptying out.

Katherine:

You've got to empty out because the things that fill you up and restore you, if you haven't emptied out first, they have nowhere to go.

Marie:

Totally. No room.

Katherine:

They have nowhere to go. So you decompress, emptying out. That looks like for me, watching TV, I like watching action movies to decompress.

Marie:

Yes. I like zombie movies to decompress.

Katherine:

Oh, I never knew that.

Marie:

Really good zombie movies.

Katherine:

Walking, things like that. And then, restoring is something maybe a little more active and that engages you on a multisensory level. It looks different for everybody, but there's a formula to it, and it's really any way you shake it, you need to rest.

Marie:

So for me, when I was looking through this framework, the passive and the emptying out, it's like you don't have to feel guilty about that at all. And the playing, the active relaxation, I identified so many things when I was reading this chapter, like filling myself up through dance and through fitness, also through cooking a really good meal. There's certain house projects that I get so much energy from. And I'm like, "This is technically work, but it's not."

Katherine:

Yeah.

Marie:

I just come back to my actual "career work" feeling like, woohoo, when I just did it. And that equals restoration. Okay. So before we wrap, is there anything that we didn't hit on? Because I guarantee you, Katherine, we have such a huge population of amazingly powerful, ambitious perfectionists in our audience.

Katherine:

I know, I know.

Marie:

Is there anything that you want to say before I have you read from the end of your book?

Katherine:

Well, one thing that I put in the book was about different kinds of help. And I think sometimes when we're in a place where we need help, we think of it as such a grand task. We think of it as an emotionally vulnerable thing, to say, "I need help." But sometimes the help we need is actually not emotional help. It's not validation in certain ways, or for someone to understand, or see us, and all the deep stuff. Sometimes it's informational help. Like how do you submit this license? How do you do X, Y, and Z? Sometimes it's financial help. "I need financial support to do this." Sometimes it's tangible help. "I need help moving."

And being able to… I offer six different types of help in the book. Just being able to create buckets of when you're stressed and overwhelmed, which type of help do I need? So that it doesn't all feel mushed together and amorphous. And I think that's what stops people from asking for help so much because they don't know where to start. And so just kind of organizing it in those ways, I think, can be the bridge that gets someone from knowing that they need help to knowing how to ask for help, and who to ask for help from.

Marie:

I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you for bringing that up.

Katherine:

Yes, my pleasure.

Marie:

Okay. Can you read the beautiful bit.

Katherine:

I would love to.

Marie:

There's so much in the book, and for those of you guys watching right now while Kathrine's getting ready, really, if you can identify with anything we talked about, you need to get your hands on this damn book. It is so good.

Katherine:

Thank you. Okay, here we go.

Everything you need to be powerful you already have. Everything you need to enjoy your life you already have. The work of self-acceptance requires you to accept your flaws and limitations. Yes. It also requires you to accept your wholeness. There's perfection inside you. There's completeness and there's freedom. There's a place where your mistakes can't touch who you are and where the past simply does not fucking matter. That indestructible part of you in a den deep inside, what some people might call God, there's nothing you can do to break that part. If you can connect to that place inside yourself, you will connect to your power.

Marie:

So good. Lady, so good. Thank you so much.

Katherine:

Thank you. This was a total pleasure. I talk about the importance of pleasure in this book, and this was a top-to-bottom pleasure. Thank you. Your work has impacted me, helped me for the last 10 years. This is such a full circle moment, like I said, and I just am so thrilled to be here.

Marie:

Oh, thank you. I can't wait for your next book or your next project, or whatever it is, and I'll continue to sing your praises. You're wonderful.

Katherine:

Thank you.

Marie:

So I'm curious, what's your biggest takeaway from this conversation today? And most importantly, how can you put that insight into action starting now? I want you to leave a comment below and let us know. And of course, if you enjoyed this episode, hit the like button and subscribe to make sure that we can reach even more people in our awesome community, and it makes sure that you never miss a thing. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thanks again, and I can't wait to see you soon. 

If you want this magic to keep going, then you have to watch this next episode with my dear friend Liz Gilbert. It is amazing. It's going to fill you up even more. So click here and watch it now.

Elizabeth Gilbert:

The true perfectionist won’t even start, because they know already that it’s not going to be the thing that they’re dreaming of. Their taste and their standards are so high.