Perfectionists Anonymous: A Guide To Setting You Free

Perfectionism can look like a badge of honor, but it often behaves like a 20-ton suit of armor that keeps us stuck at the starting line. I’m David Sage, a self-worth and confidence coach, and I’m digging into the real reason so many smart, capable people freeze when it’s time to begin: perfectionism isn’t mainly about excellence, it’s about avoiding pain. When “doing it wrong” feels unsafe, your brain treats a mistake like a threat, kicks you into survival mode, and drains the willpower you think you’re missing.

We unpack the difference between the pursuit of excellence and perfectionism through the lens of approach vs avoidance motivation, plus the high-achiever paradox of pressing the gas and the brake at the same time. I also share why this problem feels so loud right now, including research on socially prescribed perfectionism and how comparison culture can widen the gap between our taste and our current skills, fueling burnout and anxiety.

From there, we get practical. I walk you through tools to break paralysis by analysis, make decisions without chasing a mythical “perfect” option, and build momentum with meaningful, messy action. You’ll hear about the 80% rule for “good enough,” how to reframe failure as necessary friction for growth and mastery, and why self-compassion is a proven performance tool, not a free pass. We close with a simple weekly challenge: do one thing badly, on purpose, to break the seal and get moving.

If this helps, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s stuck, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.

Transcript

Perfectionism And The Stuck Start

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Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things: personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage, and I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions. I want to start by asking you a question that might feel a little uncomfortable. Have you ever sat down to, I don't know, start a project? Maybe it's a new business idea, a fitness routine, setting a budget, or even just a difficult email. And you found yourself just paralyzed. Not because you didn't know what to do, but because you were terrified of doing it wrong. We often wear perfectionism like a badge of honor. We mention it in a job interview as our biggest weakness. You know, when they inevitably ask that question. And when we answer this way, we're secretly hoping that the interviewer actually sees it as a sign of high standards. But if we're being honest with each other, perfectionism isn't just about excellence. It's primarily a shield, a twenty-ton suit of armor that we carry around, hoping that it will protect us from judgment, regret, criticism, or not being enough. Today we're going to strip that armor off. We're going to look at why perfectionism is actually the enemy of growth. The science behind why our brains get stuck in this loop, and most importantly, how we can move forward from this paralyzing all or nothing mindset into a state of meaningful, messy action. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life. So take action, subscribe, and share this podcast with them. Now I know if you're a chronic perfectionist and you've been struggling with this for a long time, you might just want me to get to the end, skip over and be like, how do I fix this? How do I stop being such a perfectionist? But I think we really need to understand more about what we're trying to fix if we're going to quote unquote fix it. So before we dive into the how, we have to fundamentally redefine the what. We tend to use terms like pursuit of excellence and perfectionism interchangeably. Like they're just different degrees of the same thing. Well, they're not. If we look closely at the psychology behind them, we find two completely different engines driving our behavior. The pursuit of excellence is a drive to do something. It's an approach motivation. You are pulled forward by a vision, by the joy of the craft, to create something beautiful, or by the genuine desire to master a skill. You're not just playing, you're playing to win. Perfectionism, on the other hand, is a drive to avoid something. It's an avoidance motivation. It isn't about playing to win. With perfectionism, you're playing not to lose. But this is where a lot of people get it wrong. We assume that the something we are trying to avoid is always external. Like judgment, criticism, or rejection of other people. And sometimes it is. But a lot of the time, the harshest judge isn't the one out there. It's in the mirror. Perfectionism is frequently an armor we wear to avoid internal pain. We are desperately trying to avoid the sickening feeling of regret, the sting of failure, the crush of disappointment, or the brutal, relentless weight of our own self-judgment. We think if I can just make this perfect, I won't have to feel bad about myself. If I can just be perfect, if everything I am doing is the best I can possibly do, then I will feel like enough. When you're trapped in perfectionism, a mistake is a verdict on your worth as a human being. Whether that's being spurred on internally or externally, you're still going to experience it on the inside. But here's where it gets weird. The paradox that trips up so many high achievers. Many people actually experience both of these drivers at the exact same time. They aren't mutually exclusive. This is why we mix up the benefits of a drive for excellence with perfectionism being something that's serving us and driving us towards doing things. Imagine you're starting a new venture or writing a book. You can have a deep, authentic passion for the work and a genuine desire to bring a high-level vision to life. That is the pursuit of excellence, acting as your compass. But simultaneously, as you get closer to launching it, a wave of panic sets in. You start endlessly tweaking the font, rewriting the same paragraph, and delaying the launch because the thought of it failing or the thought of you being disappointed in the final result is too much to bear. That is the perfectionism slamming on the brakes. In this situation, you have the drive to do and the drive to avoid firing simultaneously. And what happens when you press the gas pedal and the brake pedal at the same time? You burn out the engine. When we realize that our perfectionism is actually just our brain's misguided attempt to protect us from feeling bad, everything shifts. We stop asking, how do I make this flawless? And we start asking, am I willing to tolerate a little bit of disappointment or messiness in order to finally bring this to life and eventually achieve excellence. If we take a step back and think about the internal mechanics of willpower, it starts to make more sense. We often think that we just need more discipline to overcome our stalls. But perfectionism actually drains your willpower because it creates an environment of constant threat. Your brain perceives a potential mistake as either an internal threat or a social one, or even both, triggering a fight or flight response. You aren't lazy, you're literally in survival mode, and you can't create when you're trying to survive. If you feel like this struggle has gotten harder lately, you aren't imagining it. There's a fascinating yet sobering piece of research that explains why this is a modern epidemic. In a massive meta-analysis published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, researchers Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill examined data from over 40,000 college students between 1989 and 2016. Their findings were staggering. They discovered that recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, and they are more demanding of themselves than ever before. This socially prescribed perfectionism, the feeling that the world expects us to be perfect, increased by 33% over the study period. We are living in a comparison culture. We see the highlight reels of everyone else's lives and compare them to our behind-the-scenes footage. This creates a psychological gap where we feel that unless we hit a home run every single time, we've failed. This pressure has a direct impact on our mental health, leading to higher rates of burnout and anxiety because we've tied our self-acceptance to an impossible moving target. So now let's talk about the most common and arguably most painful symptom of perfectionism. It's what happens at the starting line. It's the blank page, the unsent email, the business plan sitting in a drawer, the decision you've been putting off for six months. There is a massive misconception out there that if you are putting something off, you're just lazy. Or that you just lack discipline. Or that you don't care enough. So I want you to hear this, especially if you've been beating yourself up lately. Perfectionists are rarely lazy. They're paralyzed. If you've ever heard the term paralysis by analysis, this describes perfectionists to a T. Think back to what we just talked about. If perfectionism is fundamentally a drive to avoid the pain of regret, failure, or self-judgment, what is the single most effective way to guarantee that you never fail? Never start. If you keep the idea in your head, it remains flawless. In your imagination, that book you want to write is a New York Times bestseller. That business you want to launch runs perfectly. That new fitness routine makes you feel incredible. It's gonna be perfect. But the reality is that perfection is unattainable, and the only place we can experience it is in our own heads. As long as it stays in your head, it's safe from the messy, unpredictable reality of the world. The second you take action, you shatter that illusion of perfection. You have to face the gap between your pristine taste and your current unpolished abilities. And for a perfectionist, that gap feels incredibly unsafe, uncomfortable, and disappointing. So what do we do as a perfectionist? We subconsciously hit the brakes. We call it procrastination. But it is actually a preemptive defense mechanism. Our brains are trying to protect us from the vulnerability of trying and coming up short. And this doesn't just stop us from starting projects. It completely hijacks our ability to make decisions. Have you ever found yourself completely stuck at a crossroads? Maybe it's choosing two career paths, two places to live, or even just what branding to use for a project. You make pro and con lists. You ask everyone for advice, but you just can't pull that trigger. Perfectionism tells us a very specific lie about decisions. It tells us that there is one perfect right answer and a bunch of wrong answers. And if we make that wrong choice, our lives will be ruined. We freeze because making a decision requires cutting off other options, and cutting off options feels like opening the door to regret. But here is the truth. You have to anchor yourself to this truth if you want to see progress. Clarity does not come before action. Clarity is the result of action. You cannot steer a parked car. You have to hit the gas, get moving, and trust that you can course correct along the way. The antidote to the paralysis of perfectionism isn't more research, more thinking, or more preparation. The antidote is giving yourself permission to make a messy, imperfect action or decision, knowing that the only true wrong answer is staying frozen at the starting line forever. Let's just be real with each other for a second. We all know that perfection is impossible. We are human beings. And part of being a human being is being imperfect. You are going to make mistakes. You're going to screw things up. You're going to be imperfect. Yes, there are situations where one thing is way better than the other, and if there's only two choices, you could hypothetically make the argument that making the one that's way better is the perfect choice, but almost everything comes with a trade-off. And there's almost never a perfect option. And the 0.1% of the time that you can make a strong argument for perfection is a terrible thing to optimize for in your whole life. So if perfection is unattainable, and the closest thing we can get to being perfect is mastery. And we know that in order to achieve mastery at something, you have to take action a ridiculous number of times. You're going to start out bad. You're going to have to fail many, many times, learn, get feedback, and iterate. In fact, on average, it takes 10,000 deliberate hours of practice to become a master at something. And that's still a far cry from perfect. And even the people that quote unquote achieve mastery are always striving for a higher level of mastery. From the outside looking in, people would call that person a master. But from the inside looking out, you're never there. It's not a place or a thing you can quote unquote achieve. So if we know the closest thing to perfection, which is still a far cry from it, is mastery. And that takes on average 10,000 deliberate hours to get to it. And even then it's not fully achievable. Why are we holding ourselves to a standard of perfection when we've had like two hours or one or zero? From a logical standpoint, it's craziness. You can't expect that level of perfection when you're just starting out at something. You can't expect that level of perfection, period. Now, yes, there's something to be said for striving towards excellence and always trying to do your best. But you're not always going to do your best, and that's okay. So how do we break this cycle? How do we stop being our own harshest critics? How do we overcome perfectionism? Well, it's all about shifting our internal framework, and it's not going to happen overnight. So here are some tools that you can use for overcoming the perfectionist trap. Jeff Bezos once said that the optimal decision is made when you have 70% of the necessary information. His reasoning is that if you're waiting towards higher percentages like 90, 95, 100 is basically impossible, then it's going to take significantly longer to make the same decision. But if you're a perfectionist, that might feel like too low of a number. So let's just start with 80%. The 80% rule. Embracing good enough. We often think that if we don't give 100%, we're failing. But in most areas of life, 80% is actually the sweet spot. It's the point where you've done the work. It's high quality, and you haven't burned yourself out. Aiming for that last 20% of perfection usually takes double, triple, whatever it is, way more time and energy than the first 80% did. Give yourself permission to work at 80% in most areas of your life. This frees up the effort and energy that you need to go 90, 100, 110, I realize it's impossible, at the things you truly care about. Reframe failure as necessary friction. In behavioral psychology, we know that growth requires friction. You can't build muscles without tearing the fibers. Remember, life is like a muscle. So take action and build it. If you don't take action, you're not building the muscle. You can't learn a language without sounding like a fool for a few months. Start looking at your mistakes, not as failures, but as the friction required for the next level of insight. Or just change your feelings on failure altogether. Remember, failing forward is often where we make the most progress. Move, fail, iterate, try again. Reframe the way that you're thinking about it. Remember that not taking action, not doing anything, letting perfectionism prevent you from starting is zero percent perfect. It is nothing. It is as far from perfect as possible. If we're talking about mathematics, going from zero to one is an infinity percent increase. So even if you go from zero to fifty, that is significantly closer to perfection than not doing it at all. So use the mantra progress, not perfection. And good enough is good enough because the way to get closer to perfection is to do, to take action and improve. Perfectionism is actually one of the things that keeps us farther from perfection than most traits in a completely ironic way. And lastly, this is a big one, practice self-compassion as a performance tool. We often think that being hard on ourselves and being mean to ourselves keeps us disciplined. But it's actually the opposite. Shame is a terrible long-term motivator. And it's not great at short-term motivation either. When you feel like crap, you do like crap. What I'm trying to say is when you feel bad, it saps your willpower and your energy. So deliberately trying to make yourself feel bad is one of the worst things you can do for motivation and willpower. When we beat ourselves up for making a mistake, we create an association between that task and the emotional pain. Next time your brain will want to avoid the task even more. Self-compassion isn't soft, it's strategic and proven by science. It allows you to feel better, to recover faster, and to take action. As we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with a thought that has personally changed the way that I look at my own work and my life. There's a quote by researcher and author Brene Brown that perfectly captures this struggle. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It's a great quote. And the truth is you cannot avoid those things by being perfect. In fact, oftentimes we are using perfectionism as a form of self-flagellation, shaming ourselves for not being perfect, and avoiding the things we need to do, even though we can't avoid it. We can build a life of meaning by being brave. Your worth is not a variable based on your output. It's a constant. When you finally realize that you don't have to be perfect to be valuable, that's when the real work begins. That's when you finally have the freedom to be great. So this week I challenge you. Just do one thing badly. Write a messy first draft. Go for a five minute run instead of the hour run you planned. Just break the seal. And remember, you are enough. And you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, true confidence, and resilience. Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions podcast. Your time is valuable, and I'm so glad you choose to learn and grow here with me. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more Sage advice. One last thing. The legal language. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.