The Mindset Mentor - Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Your perfectionism is restricting you from your dream life. Here's the deal, if you don't get past being a perfectionist, you will never make your life what it truly could be. Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ If you live in the US/Canada and you want to receive motivational texts from me, text me now at 1-512-580-9305 or click here https://my.community.com/robdial Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this show and it's gotten value in some way in your life and you want to help us out, give us a rating review on iTunes or however you listen to us. Reason why is because then it spikes the algorithm that iTunes says, hey, this is popular because a lot of people are starting to like this and a lot of people are giving it ratings and reviews. Therefore, we should show it to more people.

So if you would give us a rating and review as soon as possible, it'd take you two minutes, even while you're listening to me, it would help us more than you could possibly understand. So today we're going to be talking about progress, not perfection. We're going to talk about three different things when we talk about perfection. And this is important because no matter who I talk to, every single person thinks that they're a perfectionist. And if you've been listening to me long enough, you've heard me talk about how perfectionism doesn't even actually exist in the first place. Well, that's what we're going to be

talking about today. And we're going to talk about three different pieces of perfectionism. And when I tell you that perfectionism doesn't exist, I'll explain to you throughout this episode how it doesn't even exist. And then I'll give you a couple different steps of how to get past your perfectionism because your perfectionism, if you are a quote unquote perfectionist, or you think that you are, is actually one of the biggest things holding you back from bringing out your dreams to the world and for making the impact in the world that you possibly could make. So that's what we're going to dive into today. We're going to talk about the perfectionism. And for me, this is a concept that was hard for me when I first started. And this is something that I still struggle with sometimes a day where I noticed myself being a quote unquote perfectionist. And, you know, I've always wanted to create the

best content. I've always wanted to create the best music, the best podcasts, the best social media posts, the best videos to go out. But you have to realize, and this is one thing before we dive into it, I want to tell you that's super, super important. Is 90% done is better than 100% done. And this is really important to realize. And it goes with the idea of done is better than perfect. One of my first mentors used to say this all the time. Done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. And the reason why is because what you can get done, if you think 100% of whatever it is, of this song that you've got to write, you've got to get it 100% perfect.

And it's 90% there now. It might take you a few hours to get it from zero to 90%, but it might take you another 30 years to get from 90 to 99% or 100% or whatever it is. And usually that extra 10%, we never even get to. So done is better than perfect. 90% done is better than 100% done. Because majority of the time, if you're waiting to go from that step from 90 to 91 to 92 to 99 to 100% before you're like, oh my God, this music that I created is perfect.

This document, this book that I created is perfect. It most likely will never get there in the first place. And so done is better than perfect. And you're probably a type of person that demands greatness from yourself. I'm that type of person as well. I demand the best from myself. And when I noticed that my stuff isn't as good as it quote unquote could be, it holds me back from putting it out into the world. And if I hold, if it holds me back from putting it out to the world, that means people are not going to be impacted. So we can use an example of a podcast, for instance, right?

I can sit here and I can plan, you know, I planned out this podcast episode. It took me about 30, 45 minutes to plan out this podcast episode. Now I can plan it and I can look at it and go, oh man, it's not, it's not there. It's almost there. I can just work on it just a little bit longer. And then instead of taking 45 minutes, then I put another two hours trying to make it better. And then another two hours and then another two hours. And what really happens is we end up putting off whatever it is that isn't quote unquote perfect yet. And it never actually goes out. And so I could have taken 45 minutes, plan this episode and then put it out to the best of my capabilities right now. Or I could plan it for 45 minutes and then put it off for a couple of days and then put off for another couple of days and then put off for another couple of days because I want it to be perfect, because I

demand greatness for myself. But there's really more than anything else behind your perfectionism. There's some really big hidden fear that's attached to your perfectionism. And I'm going to talk about that later. But if I say I'm 90% there and I've got to get this extra 10% there, it's usually not that I want to put out a higher quality product, even though obviously I do and so do you as well. It's usually that there's some sort of fear that I have to be perfect or else I'll be judged or else I won't be loved or else I won't be accepted. And so there's three things that I've learned diving into perfectionism. Those are the three things that we're going to go through. I'm going to teach you today. The first thing that I've learned is that life is never just a constant forward progress. Life is really two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, a foot and a half step back. Most of the time, you know, you're going to make mistakes. The stuff that you put out, whether it's a podcast, whether it's music, whether it's a book that you're writing, whether it's a painting, whether it's a presentation for work,

you're going to make mistakes on it. Not everything is going to be perfect. And you know, if your goal is that you want to eat healthy, if you want to lose 20 pounds, if your goal is to eat healthy seven days a week, all the time, you may have a moment of weakness and you might eat that Snickers and you might be like, oh my God, I ate a Snickers. You have two options at that point. You know, the key is to forgive yourself for that and to focus on the progress that you've made. So if you have, let's say you have, you know, 21 meals over the course of a week, three a day, then you have one Snickers. Well, that means that 20 of your 21 meals were on point. Most of the time when we have that happen though, if we have a moment of weakness,

we don't pay attention to the 20 different times that we did really well. What we do is we guilt ourself and we shame ourselves for that one time. We beat ourselves up because we had a moment of weakness. Have you ever done that before? Have you ever, you know, ate really, really healthy and then you mess up one time and then what happens? You shame yourself for it. You guilt yourself for it.

And you're like, oh, fuck it. I'm not even going to do this anymore because clearly I'm not good enough to do this. And then you literally don't even pay attention to all of the success that you had. You don't celebrate yourself for the 20 meals that you had. You don't celebrate yourself for the three or four times as you went to the gym this week. You beat the shit out of yourself for the three to four minutes out of the entire week that you were eating a Snickers. You beat yourself up for one moment of weakness. What you have to do if you want to get past perfectionism is you have to start focusing on the good. You have to start focusing on the progress that you've made and learn to forgive

yourself and keep moving forward. Now, I'm not saying that that means that you can have four Snickers in a week because obviously that's the reverse. But what I'm saying is you don't have to win all the time. You just have to win most of the time. You know, in the book Atomic Habits, he talks about one of my favorite phrases, he says, is every action that you take is a vote for the person that you want to become. You know, and if you look at it and you say, you know, when you're in a vote, you don't have to win 100% of the votes in order to be elected. You have to win 51% of them. And so if you look and you say, oh man, you know, 20 meals over the course of the week, I did really well. One of them,

I didn't do so well. Well, maybe that's a lesson that a person cannot be perfect. And maybe it's a lesson that you need to have a cheat meal in the week. If you're trying to be that healthy, you should have a cheat meal at some point in time anyways. And the point of it is to celebrate the 20 and to look past, forgive yourself and get past the one. And to realize that you're not going to be perfect in everything you have. You're going to have two steps forward and one step back. You're going to have five step forwards and one step back. There's going to be step backs in every single thing that you do in life. When you make those mistakes and you find yourself in a moment of weakness, what do you do? You make adjustments. You don't beat yourself up. You make adjustments and say,

ah, you know what? I could have done better here. How can I make sure that I don't fall into that trap again? You know, if I do like Snickers, is there a healthier option that would still suffice and make me feel like I'm getting that sugary snack? Is there something else that I could do in this situation? Maybe I could have a banana. I don't know if that's a good thing for if you want a banana instead, but maybe there's something else that you like. Maybe it's oranges. You can feel like you still get a little bit of a sugar fix from it.

And so what you do instead of beating yourself up is you look at it and say, all right, yeah, I messed up. Okay, but I did do really well the entire week. How can I make adjustments to make sure they don't find myself in this situation again? Maybe I don't buy Snickers anymore. Maybe I don't go to whatever store I normally get them at, right? Start making adjustments in your life to make

little teeny tiny incremental adjustments so that you can get better every single day. Hey, when you're trying to nail an important project, you may need some extra help. Fiverr Business puts a world of expert freelancers at your fingertips so that you can get those projects across the finish line and be proud of your work. Plus, you'll get everything that you need to seamlessly integrate your new team members into your workflow. And man, Fiverr Business makes it so easy to find and manage top talent. Stop wasting your time searching for talent. Just leave it to Fiverr Business. Their team of dedicated business success managers help you match with the best talent for your team. No more endless guessing and interviews. Plus, save time and share your favorite freelancers for future projects.

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headaches. Open an Alto Crypto IRA with as little as $10. Just go to altoira.com mentor. That's A-L-T-O-I-R-A.com mentor. Start investing in cryptocurrency today. Go to altoira.com mentor. That's A-L-T-O-I-R-A.com slash mentor. Start investing in cryptocurrency today. Go to altoira.com slash mentor. Here's a pro tip. Don't use perfectionism as an excuse not to finish something as well. So when you're looking at something and you're like, like the example I gave a few minutes ago of like a podcast, right? I could plan the majority of a podcast in 45 minutes and I can put the bullet points down and then I can go, you know what? I'm just going to let inspiration come through and whatever comes through, comes through.

A lot of things that I say isn't even on my word document. And so don't use your perfectionism as an excuse not to finish. You have to look at it and say, okay, am I basically done with this? This painting, am I basically done with this painting? With this presentation for work, am I basically done with it? You know, would it take me another seven hours in this presentation to make it 2% better? All right. If that's so, I think that we're done here. And that's the pro tip that I want to give you of that is you have to make sure that you're not using it as an excuse not to finish something.

And here's another thing that's important when we're talking about the 20 versus the one is it's hard to see how much you're growing. And it's hard to see how much better you're becoming. It's like when you go to, you know, if you have kids out there and you live with your children and you see them every single day, and even though they're growing in front of your eyes, they don't seem like they're growing. But then when your friends see your kids, they're like, holy crap, look how much you've grown. Or when you look at pictures of when your children were younger, you're like, holy shit, that human was tiny. Now they're so much bigger, right? You don't notice your children growing in front of your eyes as much as when you do when you look at back at pictures. You don't notice your kids growth as much because you see them every single day. Well, you don't notice your

growth because you are in your life every single day as well. And so it's important to make sure that you're not only looking through the windshield of your life and where it is that you're trying to go, but you're also looking in the rear view mirror in a good way, not at the crappy things in your past and ways you've screwed up and the things you should have forgiven yourself four years ago, but to look back and go, damn, man, I really have come a long way. Do you want to know why? Because it's like Tony Robbins says, progress equals happiness. When you can look back in your life, you can look back to six months ago. When you can look back to four years ago and you can say, man, look how far I've come. It gets you excited and it makes you feel proud about yourself and it gives you more motivation to continue working for what it is

that you want to work for. So stop looking at the bad things. Stop looking at how, you know, trying to be perfect. You're not going to be perfect. You know, if your goal is to have a certain body type, you know, you're not going to get to that body type in one week. We all know that. We all know that it's going to take time. So you have to realize that you have to constantly look back and go, you know what? I've lost five pounds. I might not be where I want to be right now, but I've lost five pounds in the last two months where I want to be right now, but I've lost five pounds in the last two months. I don't know the last time that I lost five pounds. You know what? I should fucking celebrate myself for losing those five pounds. I should be excited about

myself. I should pat myself on the back because here's the thing that you have to realize. People think if I celebrate myself, I'm going to get complacent. No, that's not what happens. When you celebrate yourself, you want to find more reasons to celebrate yourself. No, that's not what happens. When you celebrate yourself, you want to find more reasons to celebrate yourself. And so you actually become more driven and more motivated towards losing the other five pounds, towards working harder towards it.

So that's number one. Number two, the second key that I'm going to give you here, and the second thing that I've learned is that achievement of your goals is accomplished through baby steps. Remember this, the law of 1%. All you want to do is when you go to bed tonight, you want to be 1% better than you were when you woke up this morning. That's it. Success is not

a couple of massive things that happen in your life. Success are little teeny tiny boring things done every single day. That's it. And if you take the simple math trick, 1% better every single day over the course of the year, you're 3.65 times better than you were 12 months ago If you just focus on being a little bit better imagine being three and a half times better 12 months from today than you are right now You're gonna be different. You're gonna be in a different place And so it's not about scrolling through instagram And seeing somebody who has the body that you want and then looking down and being like shit

I still don't have the body that you want and then looking down and being like, shit, I still don't have the body that I want. It's about looking at who you were two months ago, three months ago, six months ago, a year ago and going, you know what? I have lost some weight. I have actually started eating healthier. I have actually gone to the gym a whole lot more than I have in the past year than maybe in my entire life. How can I celebrate that?

How can I celebrate the fact that I'm growing, that I'm getting better? And if you continue to get 1% better day after day, day after day, and you don't allow your head to hit the bed until you got 1% better, then you're going to wake up every single day with a little bit more motivation, a little bit more drive because you're moving in the direction of whatever your goals are. You know, if you want to lose 30 pounds, you're not going to lose 30 pounds the next week. It might take you a year. It might take you two years to get the body that you want. It might take you three years to get the body that you want. But all that matters is that you're taking little teeny tiny baby steps towards that direction. So you must wake up every day and set your attentions of how to be better every single day. Ask yourself every single morning, what can

I do today to be better? What can I do today to get myself closer to my goal? And consider a day wasted if you don't become better. You might be thinking like, I don't have time though. Oh my gosh, I want to better myself. I want to lose the weight. I want to, you know, learn about Bitcoin. I want to learn about how to become a coach. I want to start this business, whatever it is. And you might think, I don't have time.

It's never that you don't have enough time to work on yourself, to make yourself a little bit better every single day. You have 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. If you were to be intentional about everything that you did, you do. Maybe you have to wake up a different time. Maybe you have to go to bed at a different time. Don't ever say that you don't have enough time because every single person gets 24 hours. What's really important is that you have to realize that if something is really important to you, you're going to find a way. If something is very important to you, you're going to find a way. That's just how it goes. How important is it for you to have a better life? Think about that for a second. Is that not important to you? How much better is it to

make your life better so that your significant other's life is better? So that your children's life is better? So that your entire family's life is better? How important is that? Doesn't that sound like it probably should be the most important thing to you to better yourself so you better everyone else around you? My first mentor used to always say to me, if it's important to you, you'll find a way. If it's not important to you, you'll find an excuse. So, you know, one of the things that Gary Vaynerchuk always says is stop saying I don't have enough time and just say I don't give a shit and see if that changes how your frame is. If you go, well, I actually, I actually do give a shit. You know, I do give a shit about it. Well, maybe I should change my schedule. Maybe I should be more intentional on every single thing that I do. I always ask people when I'm on lives

and we're talking about time management, we're talking about not having enough time. I say, Hey, who here thinks they don't have enough time? What do you think happens? Everybody's hands raise. And I say, okay, who here would also be really worried if I were to be able to go back through your last week and see everything that you did for 15 minutes, every 15 minutes of the entire week, everybody's hands go back up. I go, why is that? Because you're wasting time at some point in time. You are, you can find the time. You can make the time if it is important to you. Okay. And the last thing that I it is important to you, okay? And the last thing that I've learned about perfectionism,

which you may have heard me speak about before, is perfectionism is a mask. Perfectionism does not really exist. It's fake. Perfectionism is a mask that you wear for some sort of fear that you're afraid to bring something out into the world, that you're afraid to show your art, you're afraid of rejection, you're afraid of rejection, you're afraid of failure,

you're afraid of being judged, whatever it might be. You're afraid of something. And I'll give you an example. The example that always makes a lot of sense to people when I say perfectionism doesn't make sense, it's not real, is let's say that I'm a painter and I've been painting inside of my garage for six years. And my friend comes over, I make these beautiful paints. My friend comes over like, oh my God, Rob, your stuff is amazing. Why don't you like, I never even knew that you're a painter. Why don't you put this online? Why don't you put it on the internet? Why don't you, you know, make a show and try to sell this? And I'm like, no, it's not perfect yet. Like it still needs some work. I still need to keep

working on it. And I'm like, my friend's like, just do it. Just put it out there. The reason why it's quote unquote, not perfect yet. It's not quote unquote done yet is because not because it's not done is because I'm afraid of something. I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of being judged. I'm afraid of having that show, putting my soul onto a canvas, putting it onto a wall and having people look at it and maybe walking by them without them realizing I'm the painter. And someone goes, oh my God, this shit is ugly. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm not afraid of being done. I'm afraid of being judged by it. I'm afraid of somebody saying they don't like my paintings. I'm afraid of somebody walking by and saying the thousand dollars is how much he wants to charge for this. I wouldn't pay him 10.

That's what we're afraid of. That's what perfectionism is trying to keep us from. And so what happens is we would rather, we would rather live a life where we don't bring our dream out to the world, just so we don't have other people reject us. We don't have people judge us. We don't have to hear other people's opinions because what's worse than that? I mean, that's pretty hard, isn't it? To be able to put my heart and soul into a canvas and then be rejected for it, to fail for it. But you have to realize if it's important to you, not everybody's going to love all of your stuff first off, but if it's important to you, you'll find a way to put it out there. And so perfectionism, when we say I'm a perfectionist, it's not that what you're making isn't done. It's not that what you're making isn't good enough. It's that you're afraid of it being rejected.

You're afraid of other people telling your opinions. You're afraid of ultimately doing the thing that it is that you want to do and not going the way that you wanted it to right away. So we would rather live a life so much further below our potential simply because we're afraid of the rejection, other people's opinions, and we're afraid to be in judged. If you are on this planet, there is something that you're supposed to do. Stop listening to perfectionism. It doesn't exist. It's a fear for something. You have to ask yourself, what is it a fear of? And then you have to ask yourself,

how can I get past it so that I can bring my magic out to the world? So that's what I got for you for today's episode. I've had a lot of messages. If you guys didn't know, I'm traveling through Italy right now. So a lot of people are like, oh my God, how can I follow your travels on Italy? If you guys want to travel, see my travels and live vicariously through myself and my girlfriend, follow me on Instagram. That's where I'm putting everything, Instagram stories, Instagram posts.

Follow me right now if you want to, so you can kind of tag along and see what we're doing. We're in Florence right now. We were in Lake Cuma a little while ago. We're going to be going to Rome. We're going to be going to Tuscany. So follow me on Instagram, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you love the podcast, send me a message. Tell me that you love the podcast and probably share this episode on your Instagram stories as well. So once again, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.