A Perfectionist's Spell for Excellence

This week’s spell was prompted by a listener.

She, like me (and maybe you?) struggles with how

to be generous with herself when

her perfectionist tendencies are urging her to

Do More, Better, Faster, Now.

How do we honor our very high standards in a way

that doesn’t become self-punishing?

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Mentioned:

If you haven’t already, click on over to nataliekmiller.com and sign up for my Sunday Letter! It’s full of magic just for you.

While you’re there, visit nataliekmiller.com/contact and let me know what spells would add sparkle to your life.

Make Magic:

Your inner perfectionist is a part of you,

and she deserves love and engagement.

If you send her on the right missions and

gently orient her away from worrying about

other people’s standards, you can work with her

in an incredibly constructive way.

Transcript: A Perfectionist's Spell for Excellence

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello and welcome, my friend. I’m so happy that you tuned in today for a perfectionist’s spell for excellence. So, you all have a fellow listener to thank for today’s spell because she wrote to me after last week’s episode. Last week’s episode was A Spell for Giving with Integrity, and it was all about how we can’t really give to other people what we don’t give to ourselves.

And Ailish, this listener, wrote to me, and said, “OK, OK, but tell me about how I offer excellence. Like, it gets sticky for me. I have some perfectionist tendencies, I tend to overdo [laugh], so how can I still kind of uphold this standard of excellence but in a way that,” she implied, “isn’t self-harmful?”

And I appreciate so much this question because I too have the perfectionist tendency. Perhaps you have a bit of the perfectionist tendency as well, you know, birds of a feather. [laugh] You’re listening to this podcast because you love to grow, and you want to use this magic wand that is your brain to its utmost, and so I’m guessing you have pretty high standards for yourself and for the world.

So, first, I want to say—to remind you and also me—that I’m not a trained therapist. I’m a coach; not a therapist. And I find it really important to say that perfectionism is linked with anxiety; is linked with depression. So, depending on the degree of impact that your perfectionism has in your life, more than Mind Witchery, more than coaching, more than today’s spell may be helpful for you in being with your perfectionist tendencies in a healthier way.

So, that said, I hope you’ll still listen to this spell because I’ve found this approach to my perfectionist tendencies so key, so powerful in helping me to honor the part of myself that has very high standards—for me, for my world, for my work—but holds those standards in a much kinder and more compassionate way.

OK. So, how do we do this? How do we strive for excellence and honor our very high standards but in a way that does not become self-punishing, in a way that doesn’t burn us out, in a way that doesn’t leave us mired in self-criticism?

So, here’s the trick. It’s really a version of last week’s spell. If I want to offer excellence to the world, then I have to offer excellence to myself. That is, I need to treat myself with such exquisite care, such deep compassion. You see? It’s this idea that I actually always get to choose which high standards I am holding. 

Now, the world has its set of high standards for me. The world would like my face to be ageless. It would like my body to be trim and lean. It would like my house to be perfectly clean. It would like my mothering to be endlessly patient. It would like my work to be completely self-less. The list really does go on and on and on.

So, that’s one set of standards. But I get to choose what’s important to me. And, for me, over the last let’s say decade [laugh], more important have become things like self-compassion. So, I take my high standards, I take my perfectionist tendencies, and I ask myself, “How can I be kinder to me? How can my self-talk get even more loving? How can I integrate self-compassion into my everyday life?” 

You see? I’ve taken the same tendency, because I love her. I love that part of me that wants things to be better, that wants things to be amazing. I have a radical self-love that doesn’t want to exile the part that strives for excellence. No, she’s part of me. But, at the same time, I recognize that some of the missions I send her on are really destructive, and others of the missions I send her on are amazingly constructive.

So, for me, a destructive mission for my perfectionist is something like, “Hey, let’s go adhere to 21st century, white, capitalist, patriarchal body standards.” [laugh] That mission wreaks havoc in myself and in my life and, ultimately, that’s not actually something I want to contribute to in this world. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want to offer you that. I don’t want to hold you to that standard. 

So, I ask my perfectionist to disengage from that standard myself. And then, really, what I’m doing—and this is a trick—is I’m perfecting my perfectionism. [laugh] I’m saying to my perfectionist, “You know what? We can do better. We can choose to work on, we can choose to orient toward the things that we really want more of in the world, the things that are constructive—and self-compassion is one of those.”

In the case of my body, if I’m not going to orient toward upholding the impossibly high body standards of our dominant culture, then where do I orient the perfectionist tendencies? And for me, it’s toward body kindness. To me, it’s toward ease and rest. “OK, perfectionist, here’s a project for you. How can we cultivate ample rest?”

Now, if you’re a regular listener, you know that that is quite a project for me. [laugh] I have done lots of episodes on allowing rest and moving towards rest, because I find that really challenging. And guess what? It’s perfect, because my perfectionist tendency loves a challenge—and I offer her that one. 

Another place that perfectionism can definitely show up for me is in the work I’m offering into the world. So, when I’m offering you these podcast episodes, or when I’m writing my Sunday Letter—P.S. you’re subscribed to the Sunday Letter, right, because, whew, lately, it’s been a thing where, at the end of typing it, I read it, and I don’t even know where did those words come from? It’s like they came through me. OK. Anyway, subscribe if you’re not subscribed. You can do it on the home page of my website, nataliekmiller.com. 

All right. So, when I’m putting things out into the world, I can get rigid. I can hold them really tightly. If my perfectionist is oriented toward a perfectly polished and pleasing product—like, if it’s oriented toward pleasing you, if it’s oriented toward looking glossy and shiny and perfect—well (a) that is not very helpful for me because I can always find a rough edge, and (b) that’s not actually what I want to put out into the world. 

The kind of shine I want is like a glow of authenticity. It’s the inner radiance that comes with delight and gratitude and self-love and self-acceptance. Like, it doesn’t, for me, need to be shiny, and it doesn’t need to compare with anyone else’s stuff, because that’s not what I want you to do. That’s not what I want any of us to do. I want all of us to feel free being our whole selves out loud in the world, and so I ask my perfectionist tendency to orient toward showing some of the rough edges, to orient toward being real and being honest and being authentic, rather than being impressive or—I don’t know—like, the word that comes is “impenetrable.” 

I don’t want to show you shields and facades. I want to show you as much of my heart as I’m brave enough to show, because when I am fixated on dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s, and creating things that please everyone, which is not possible, I know that what I generate is anxiety and agony—agony—[laugh] so much delay and procrastination and fiddling and indecision, and I don’t want any of those things. So, I don’t orient my excellence in work in that direction. 

So, the perfectionist’s spell for excellence, really, it’s just treating yourself with excellence. It’s deciding what’s really important to you, what’s most important, and how can you orient toward that? 

For those of us who are givers, which is I think you if you’re listening to this podcast, those of you who are generous and who love to give, it’s really asking yourself, “What do I want for other people, and how do I hope they treat themselves? How do I hope they see themselves? What is my vision for us humans?”

And then how do I ask my perfectionist tendency, how do I ask my high standards to include those things if what I really want is for people to be self-kind and self-compassionate, is for people to feel free to be their whole selves? Well, then, my inner perfectionist, we have quite a tall order to fill. And that is an excellent project for that part of me. 

I hope you find this helpful. Thank you again, Ailish, for the question. Other listeners, I love it when you reach out and you ask for a spell. It’s actually really helpful for me because, a lot of the times, I’m inspired and I know just what I want to say, but it’s always coming from a place of co-creativity. 

It’s coming from a place where I’m responding to what I’m seeing and feeling. And, so, when you bring something to me, like a question, that is just my favorite. It offers me such an easy way to co-create this podcast with you.

All right, my friend, how can you treat yourself excellently today? How can you be so kind and so loving and so generous with you? How can you be the sort of human that you’d love for other people to be free to be? 

I know that when you answer that question, and then you act on those answers, you go such a long way toward creating a better world for all of us. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording