Practicing Imperfection: A Stress-Relief Strategy for HSPs

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover how to balance the idea of perfectionism by doing the opposite, practicing imperfection.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, a way to question and reduce stressful thoughts. And you guessed it, I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover why perfectionism is a common struggle for highly sensitive people, five ways to let go of the need to be perfect, and how imperfection can be a path to inner freedom. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays, where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.

If you’re a highly sensitive person The chances are high that you’ve been caught sometimes in the loop of perfectionism. Many people get caught in this, it’s not just highly sensitive people, but we often fall into this trap, and there are a number of reasons why this is the case. One of those is that we process things deeply.

That is just our nature, it is nothing wrong with us. And we tend to think deeply about situations. We tend to think deeply about projects that we plan to do, we we go in, we go all in, and so it’s natural to want to bring it to a conclusion, which is to do the best possible job that we can, and that in itself is not a bad thing, it can get you caught into Thank you.

this loop of perfectionism. Another thing that can really affect us it’s a part of our nature as highly sensitive people, is our empathy. When you have high empathy, you pay attention to the emotional states of other people, and one of the things that can happen is you can get caught into the fear of disappointing others, and this is a big one because it’s this outside influence that can drive us to go even further, to push past where we would normally take a break and to go for perfectionism at all costs.

So that’s something that is understandable for all of us as highly sensitive people, but it’s something to be aware of because it’s something that can be worked with as well. The other thing is, As highly sensitive people, we tend to have a certain sensory sensitivity. We want things to be right.

We like it when things are right. It can bug us sometimes when things aren’t. And so that can be a motivation to keep pushing sometimes past where it’s necessary into the realm of perfectionism instead of just doing a really good job. Another place that we as highly sensitive people can be prone to perfectionism is because of our strong sense of intuition.

And because of this, we tend to see all the possible mistakes in advance. And that’s our nature, and it’s good. We tend to look before we leap, and we tend to to think about things in advance. But it can also get us caught into trying to do it perfectly and not allowing ourselves to even start because of seeing all of these possibilities.

Learning how to embrace imperfection can actually become a form of stress relief and self acceptance for highly sensitive people. And that’s what We’re going to be looking at today. So why is perfectionism a form of stress for HSPs? It keeps us in a chronic state of stress It activates the nervous system’s fight or flight response and it can just leave us in this agitated place and it can also make us not take the breaks that we need that can lead to burnout and can lead to other problems including just the fear of making a mistake or that can lead to procrastination or avoidance as well.

So here’s some examples of perfectionisms and perfectionism that HSPs can sometimes struggle with. For example, over editing emails or texts before sending. If you’re guilty, raise your hand. Yeah, that’s me. Avoiding creative projects out of fear of not being good enough. This can happen. Like you want to do a really good job, so you never take the first steps.

And Feeling overwhelmed by choices okay, which meditation app am I going to use, or which self care habit am I going to start with, or which, here’s one recently I was looking to hire a physical trainer to do some exercise with, and I’m like, oh, I’ve got to really research this well and find the right one and do You know, I can become overwhelmed by that kind of thing.

Wanting to say the perfect thing in conversations. This can also freeze you up and and make you less participating as a result. And here’s another good one. Struggling with to delegate tasks because of the thought, I can do it better myself. I remember my mom saying the same thing, and I can certainly recognize it in myself as well.

It is a very freeing thing, I can say, to get over that and to find out that other people do it better than me or can do it better than me. But it’s very easy to get caught in this thought that I could do it better myself or that it’s too much trouble to try to train somebody. And and this prevents you from being able to take advantage of collaboration.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these patterns? This is how perfectionism can hold you back. Let’s look now at five ways to let go of the need to be perfect. These are just strategies that you can play with. I’m just giving you some ideas and you can experiment with them. One of them is to set imperfect goals instead of perfect goals.

I really love this one because it just lowers the bar and I can still perfectly achieve that lower standard because I’ve agreed with myself ahead of time that’s my standard. So instead of shooting for the moon, which is a good thing to do sometimes, I might shoot for just the next step or just some small version of that.

and actually get a win out of it, get a feeling of accomplishment out of it instead of always being working on long term projects that take years or may never fully be realized. For example, instead of I must meditate for 30 minutes every day why not try with I’ll meditate a few times this week, and even if it’s only just a couple of minutes, lower the bar, like really lower the bar.

If you want to exercise, maybe, I’m just going to exercise for one minute every, as many times as I can this week. And maybe it’s just once a day or every few days, but I’m going to just shoot for one minute. I think that’s. It seems ridiculous, but this is what I mean by an imperfect goal, or I want to do I’m going to shoot for average in this job, and it can be very freeing to do that.

So shift the goal from perfect consistency to showing up in any way possible. This is another place where we can get caught with perfectionism, is I need to do this, I’m going to do this every day from now on, and so if I miss one day, now I’ve ruined my perfect record, and it’s oh I’m not going to keep doing this anymore.

What if just showing up any way whatsoever was a, was your goal, then you would win every single time, and that’s the value of setting an imperfect goal. Then, another strategy is to try the good enough mindset. Good enough is literally the opposite of perfectionism. Ask yourself would I be okay with a friend doing this imperfectly?

For example, If someone if you wrote a typo in an email, for example, or said something wasn’t exactly the right, perfect wording, and if you imagine your friend writing that, would you judge them for that? Probably not, so why hold yourself to a different standard? Why do you have to do it perfectly when other people are allowed to do, make all kinds of mistakes and blunders and everything?

So this is just again, lowering the bar, not that I’m shooting for nothing, but that I’m, we’ve been too overcompensating into the perfection area. Why not just lower it a little bit and be okay with doing things that are good enough. Yeah, I got the message across. Could have been said a little better.

but good enough. Another strategy is to embrace messy action as an experiment instead of thinking like this has to be done right. Just think let me try this and see what happens. And so you’re open to the chaos that may ensue the lack of results that may happen. It’s more like experimenting.

I often use the word exploring a lot. I do that a lot when I’m doing the work of Byron Katie. It’s just I don’t know what I’m going to find, might be interesting, might not be, but let me just try this and see what happens. This is what I mean by messy action. And when you play with that, get in touch with that, and experiment with that, it can be very freeing.

A fourth strategy would be that done is better than perfect. Take that challenge Pick one area where you normally get stuck in perfectionism and commit to finishing it with 80% effort instead of a hundred percent or 110% or 200% whatever amount of effort you normally give. Go with I’m just gonna do a kind of, I wanna say half-ass job, right?

Just like doing something that’s. Yeah, good enough and but that it gets done and this can be a little humbling at first because we have an identity sometimes with the perfectionism doing it really well. We get accolades for doing things really well, but there are a lot of things we don’t do because we can’t.

We can’t get over the hump and this is a way of doing that. Let’s just do the 80 percent effort or even 50 percent effort or 70 percent effort. Like you still get a passing grade in a class even if you get a D or D It’s still a pass. So why does it always have to be an A for example, send an email Without over editing, just send it, write it, do the best you can, and send it out.

I’m, when I’m texting, I have that, I use that little thing where you can slide your finger over the keys and it writes the words, and sometimes it makes mistakes. And I used to always check afterwards to make sure that it didn’t make any mistakes. But now I just do it and send it. And people come back saying, what the heck did you say?

And it becomes a joke and we have fun with it. But like 80 percent of the time it does a great job. So I’ve stopped trying to do it and it’s freeing.

Okay, another place where we can another strategy you could say for practicing imperfection is when you don’t do something perfectly, use some self compassion kind of statement. Something like, it’s okay if this isn’t perfect, I’m still learning. Or I’m allowed to make mistakes. Or, being imperfect doesn’t mean I’m failing, it just means I’m growing.

And so this emphasis of I’m a work in progress, I’m not perfect, I know it, and this kind of, it’s almost a humility and owning my human side is very freeing and can also prevent us from beating ourselves up when we don’t do things 110%. So imperfection really is a path to inner freedom. Inner freedom means that how you feel on the inside is good.

It’s peaceful. It’s relaxed. And you may think that the only time you can relax is when you’ve done something perfectly. You have that little moment of time after you’ve completed a perfect project and you’ve gotten the perfect grade for it. And then you’re like, ah, I can relax. But of course that lasts two seconds because now the next project comes and now you have to get anxious about doing that one perfectly.

When I first started my website back in 2010, I was, of course, this is public facing. I tried to do like my best to have a really good, everything perfect, all the wording exactly the way I wanted it. and the design, everything. And I noticed how much it was stressing me out. So I did the work, I do the work of Byron Katie regularly, and I questioned my thought, like I need to do a really good job on this.

And I turned it around and found that I don’t. And I started experimenting with it, literally experimenting. I started posting with some typos here and there. I started not having the perfect navigation figured out. Just putting it up and some of it was yeah, when I look back on it, could’ve used some improvement.

But the experience on the inside was a different thing. It changed from being tense and worried and trying to worried that everybody’s watching me. It became less and less like I had an audience at all. And over time, it felt and has felt continues to feel like, That I’m just doing some work with myself and learning.

I’m doing this big research project which happens to be something that serves others as well. And I’m a big work in progress. I use that as an example just to show you the difference in feeling. Same thing with, even with this podcast. I decided when I started it based on some of this website stuff from before that I was going to just talk and not worry if I had to backtrack or if I made a mistake or whatever.

Did too many ums and ahs or any of that stuff. I just thought I’m going to sit and talk like I talk with a friend just hanging out and there’s no judgment there. This allows me to be free to explore, to think, to talk with you, but not be judging myself at the same time. It’s not perfect. I’m not claiming it’s perfect.

And what’s interesting is that’s allowed it to be more. Relatable, more real, more human less polished and more of something that that works. It’s easy for me. It’s easy for you. And I don’t have a lot of production. For example, I don’t edit my podcasts. I don’t go through and pick out words and oh, I should have said that.

I let’s, oh, I said that wrong. Let’s just cut that section. I don’t do that. It’s just. Here it is take it or leave it and this is an example of practicing imperfection to allow yourself to have more inner freedom and to have more joy in what you do and in some ways to be more relatable and more real and That’s a nice trade off.

I can live with that. I’d like to encourage you to think of imperfection as a kind of form of self care. It creates more ease, it creates more flexibility, it creates more joy, and I’d love for you to just Think about how you could incorporate even a little of this. Now, don’t become a perfectionist about being imperfect.

Just even a little of this. Is there any one spot today or in your life going on right now where you could just try on? a less perfect version of how you approach things. In this episode, we looked at why perfectionism is a common struggle for highly sensitive people, and we saw that it is due to a number of things, including just going our nature to process things deeply.

Our high empathy, which can lead us to be afraid of disappointing others. Our high sensitivity, wanting everything to be right. And our intuition, which can sometimes make us think in advance a lot and sometimes see possible mistakes before we ever get there. I also like to say that highly sensitive people like to do things well.

We get satisfaction in that. And It’s natural for us to go sometimes too far with that and get out of balance. We also looked at five ways to let go of the need to be perfect. And those were setting imperfect goals instead of perfect ones. I’ll just meditate a few times this week and even if it’s only a couple minutes.

Or using the good enough mindset. And embracing messy action as good and even what we’re interested in doing, thinking about having it done is better than doing it perfect. And then using self compassion statements like it’s okay if it isn’t perfect, I’m still learning or I’m still a work in progress.

So we also looked at how imperfection, really in all of this, is a path to inner freedom. When we value our inner experience as much as our outer experience, as the outer outcome of a task that we’re doing, then becomes as important to, to take the balanced approach as it is to do a really good job. Like we have to do a good job on the inside as well as on the outside.

It’s a bigger task, but it means some compromise has to be there. on the outer portion. So these are just a few ideas on this big topic of perfectionism. It’s something that can be explored in even more detail, but I hope this gives you a few things to think about if perfectionism is something that you sometimes wrestle with.

So thanks for listening, thanks for being here, and I look forward to our next time together. In the meantime, I hope you have a great rest of your day.