Episode 15 | The Neuroscience of Perfectionism

If you're an entrepreneur who knows that on a logical level that perfectionism is hurting you more than it's helping you in your business, and yet you still seem to get stuck operating from perfectionism, but you just don't know why that keeps happening, then this episode's for you. Today, I'm going to be revealing the neuroscience of perfectionism and what you can do to stop operating from perfectionism.

So, Welcome to Breaking the Entrepreneur Burnout Cycle, your go to resource helping service based entrepreneurs break free from burnout. Each week, you'll learn how to identify and eliminate subconscious habits so that you can create a thriving business, with greater income, greater impact, and the freedom to live life to the fullest while having your time, energy, and health.

This is Breaking The Entrepreneur Burnout Cycle.[00:01:00] 

Hey guys, welcome back in and thank you so much for tuning in. Today, I've got a great episode in store for you because I'm talking all about neuroscience and specifically the neuroscience behind what causes perfectionism and what you can do to stop operating from that, because how many of you guys out there consider yourselves or have called yourselves at some point, a recovering perfectionist, where if You know that on a logical level that perfectionism is hurting you more than it's helping you, right?

That perfection is an illusion, that it doesn't exist. And yet you still can't quite figure out why you still operate from perfectionism, where it causes you to start experience eating a lot of time and energy where, you know, you maybe it's you go to create a reel or you [00:02:00] go to create a piece of content and.

It takes you so long because you re record it for like the hundredth time. Or maybe it's where you go to sit down to write an email and you find yourself writing and deleting, writing and deleting to the point that it ends up taking like an hour to just get one email done. Or maybe you've done all the work for maybe a launch or a new podcast episode or something that you're doing.

That you are excited to bring into the world and that you spent so much time and energy creating, and yet you still can't quite seem to put it out there. And even though your coach keeps telling you and pointing out that, Hey, you know, you might be getting stuck in perfectionism, or you might be overthinking this and reminding you that 70%, you know, or 75 percent is all that you're aiming for.

Even though all of these things are being pointed [00:03:00] out to you, you still can't quite figure out why you keep, by default, ending up back in perfectionism. And if this is you, I want you to know that you definitely are not alone. In fact, just the other day, I was working on preparing a few episodes for the podcast, and for the life of me, I just could not get words out of my head.

I mean, it was what I call the blinking cursor syndrome, where you are sitting there, you are staring at the computer screen, at the blank sheet of paper, and the cursor just sits in the same spot, and it just flashes, and flashes, and blinks, and blinks, and blinks, and blinks on the screen, and it never moves.

Because no words are coming out, right? Where you just can't quite get past what we call writer's block. And, you know, rather than what normally takes me 30 minutes or less, it ended up taking an hour just to even [00:04:00] start and even longer to finish. You know, I decided to bring this to my coaching call for some outside perspective with my coaches and you want to know what ended up jogging my brain and getting the creative juices flowing?

It was the question my coach asked me. She asked me, Rihanna, what are you really afraid of when it comes to talking about what you really want to talk about? And then that's when it hit me. I was caught up in another bout of perfectionism, not intentionally, right? Like, it's not like we choose this where we're like, Oh, I, I am going to operate from perfectionism today.

No, it seriously is like happens subconsciously where. You know, you don't want to be there and yet you somehow end up there. And that's what brings me to what we are talking about today, which is the neuroscience of [00:05:00] what causes perfectionism, because I'm sure that we can all agree how much time and energy trying to strive for perfection, which isn't even real, how much time and energy that just eats up, because let's be real, it doesn't exist.

And I'm sure most of you know this on a logical level, and yet, like I was saying, you just can't quite seem to not operate from perfectionism. And here's what I want you to know. I want you to know that the reason that perfectionism keeps happening isn't because you are logically choosing it. In fact, it's actually happening because it's a subconscious and automatic response from the brain.

in an attempt to protect you. And I'm sure you're wondering like, what do you mean protect me? Protect me from what? And when I say protect you, I mean the brain is trying to protect you [00:06:00] from possible judgment, possible failure, possibly a risk of your time, energy, and resources. And you know what neuroscience shows us is that our brains actually operate for one reason only.

And that is to either help you survive or to thrive. That's the brain's only job and the criteria that it uses to measure whether or not something is a risk of, um, or potentially dangerous to you is the criteria it passes everything through is, is this putting you at risk of losing three things, which are love, safety, and success.

And acceptance. You see, on a primitive level, we are technically tribal people where we value connection and being a part of a tribe. And this is for an actual survival reason, right? Because think about back in caveman days where being part of a tribe [00:07:00] meant that it increased your odds of your survival because it increased your chances of having access to food, having access to shelter, to protection.

and even just the ability to procreate. Being part of a tribe was a, you know, death sentence. If you were exiled from the tribe, then you had to brave the wilderness on your own. And so this is a good thing, right? And the answer is yes and no, because let's be honest, now we are no longer living in caveman days where literally In those days, anything like a saber tooth tiger or, you know, snakes or whatever it is, could literally kill you as you were being out in the wilderness on your own.

However, even though it's no longer the case, We still have that same primitive instinct and [00:08:00] that same primitive instinct has just adapted to modern times where we are now stressing about things that aren't really actual threats to our safety. But our brain perceives it as a threat to our safety because it perceives it as potentially putting us at risk of losing love, safety, and acceptance, which in a primitive level, your brain is interpreting it essentially that you could get kicked out of the tribe.

Because of that, we end up in so much fear and anxiety as our brains start painting these worst case scenarios in our minds and triggering thoughts like, what if I go live and what will people think about me? What if I look stupid, right? Or what if people don't see me as an authority because I don't have all the answers?

What will they think? Uh, about me. Will they think that I don't know what I'm talking about or what [00:09:00] if people judge me because I don't have my shit together and they see behind the curtain and it's these exact thoughts that are eliciting a fight, flight, or freeze response. And. If you think about perfectionism, perfectionism is, in a sense, a way that we are trying to control other people's perceptions of ourselves, right?

Where we are trying to do everything in our power to make sure that they like us, to make sure that they see us as an authority, to make sure that they respect us and want to work with us. And because of that, we are essentially trying to avoid judgment, failure, and like, you know, losing respect. This is what is happening on a psychological level, and to make [00:10:00] matters worse, these patterns of perfectionism have probably served you up until this point, because What you will hear me talk about in my teaching is that there is no good or bad pattern.

It's just that there are patterns that are practiced because these are patterns that have served you in a positive way, right? Our brains, I think there was a study done by Pavlov on dogs, and it talked about how we learn to keep the patterns that serve us, that Give us food, give us shelter, give us love, give us all these things that we seek and desire.

And we tend to neuroprune, which essentially means erase and delete the patterns that do not serve us or that we associate with a negative emotion. And so perfectionism to some extent has probably gotten you praise [00:11:00] at some level, right? Just think about school, right? I know that in school they preach, get the good grades.

You've got to know the right answers. You've got to have all these things together in order to be successful. And you get praised for essentially being perfect, right? It's these exact patterns. That are being kept because your brain sees that as a positive thing. It doesn't actually know that it's actually hurting you more than it's helping you.

So how do you break free from perfectionism? Well, to do that, you first have to understand what your brain is fearing. And the mistake most entrepreneurs make is that they try to just change the behavior of perfectionism without actually looking at what the Okay, what is actually causing this behavior?

And to be honest, that's analogous to trying to solve a medical issue by merely treating the [00:12:00] symptoms without actually, you know, even taking time to understand what is causing the symptoms. Essentially, all you're doing in this scenario is you're wasting time, you're wasting energy, you're wasting resources, just putting a Band Aid on the problem.

It's not until you find the root of the problem that the symptoms will always come back if you don't. And so how do you begin to understand what your brain is fearing? Well, I have here are three simple questions that you can ask yourself in order to begin identifying what is at the root of your current symptom of perfectionism.

Okay, so number one, what task are you currently struggling with? Right? So if you are finding yourself like Unsure about a topic or unsure or something's taking longer than it normally does and you just don't know why Right. It's [00:13:00] about getting clear with that and being aware of what exactly is the task that is keeping me stuck that I'm feeling overwhelmed and stuck in Right?

Maybe it's writing an email. Maybe it's going live. Whatever it is, you want to write that down so that you can start to analyze, okay, what is it that my brain is protecting me from? So question number two is what is my brain protecting me from? Right? So if you are going live on Instagram or social media anywhere, and that is the task that you constantly find yourself either procrastinating around or where you write a whole script and then you go live and you start stuttering and then you just stop the live, right?

That's just an example. Speaking from my own experience, that would be the task that you're struggling with. So that would be the answer to number one. Number two, where you're asking [00:14:00] yourself, what is my brain protecting me from? That is where only you know the answer to that. In my case, when I used to go live, my brain was protecting me from this fear I had of looking stupid, of not knowing what I'm talking about, or coming across as if I don't know what I was talking about.

And there was a whole belief there and a whole story there that If I don't know what I'm talking about, then no one's going to want to work with me. And then my business is going to fail, right? So it goes pretty deep, but it starts with first understanding. What is it protecting you from? What are you actually afraid of?

Okay. The third question is, what does my brain believe will happen? If I do not get this perfect, what does my brain believe will happen if I do not get this perfect? [00:15:00] So like I said in the example that I gave you with the Instagram live I had this fear that It was going to be, you know, I might look stupid and if I look stupid, well, then my brain said, that means that no one's going to want to work with you.

Right? That was a belief that my brain had that would happen if I didn't get it perfect. And so going back to the story that I shared at the beginning about the blinking cursor syndrome, as I was trying to write these. Uh, episodes, right? This is essentially, uh, another scenario where I had this high expectation where the task that I was struggling with was writing out the episode and what my brain was actually protecting me from when my coach asked me, that is, What if [00:16:00] people don't like it?

What if people don't like the new direction that I'm taking this podcast in? And because of that, my brain then took it down the road of what would happen if I don't get this perfect? Well, my brain was telling me if I don't get this perfect, Then my podcast is going to be a dud. It's going to flop. Not going to bring in any new leads.

It's not going to do anything, right? These are just examples of how our brains can actually keep us stuck in procrastination and an indecision and in overwhelm. Because the reality is, perfectionism is the symptom of a fear that is happening subconsciously. That is happening because your brain believes that if it's not perfect, then something negative will happen.

Take the time to journal on this [00:17:00] because once you find what is at the root of your perfectionism, it's then about learning brain based tools that I teach inside of my programs to eliminate fear. These subconscious beliefs. All right, that's all I have for you today. As always, if you found this helpful, I'd so appreciate it if you shared this with your colleagues, friends, and family, and leave the podcast to review so that we can continue helping more entrepreneurs break free from the burnout cycle.

And as always, I am rooting for you and your thriving life. Until next time, I will see you on another episode, and bye for now!