Tips and tricks to overcome perfectionism

When you try to change your perfectionist behaviours, you will experience discomfort. In order to cope with the discomfort, and continue the journey, these coping tips will help you:

1. Practice not being perfect. This will invoke some discomfort. Try to tolerate this discomfort.
2. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Be self compassionate.
3. Remind yourself of the unhelpful consequences of perfectionism i.e., social isolation, the constant feeling that you are working too hard, no time to relax, etc.
4. Learn to laugh at yourself. Have a self-depricating sense of humour.
5. Reward yourself often. This will help you to build compassion and permissiveness towards yourself.

Use a step ladder approach to changing your perfectionist behaviour. Watch the video of this talk to learn more about the step ladder approach and how you can customize this approach for yourself.

If you have questions about perfectionism, post them in comments on https://hasgeek.com/kilter/overcoming-perfectionism/comments

Tarique Sani’s slides on perfectionism are available on https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yjjdkn0nSqDGG-thm-j_FC7Ev6njWfhMSiq9IU1HJiU/edit?usp=sharing