This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 110 / The Perfection Infection with Jill Savage

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Perfection is the enemy of confidence. It tells us we need to do it all, be it all, have it all, look good while we’re doing it AND somehow make it look effortless. I am Nicole Kalil, a recovering perfectionist - and on today’s episode, we are going to talk about what my guest calls, the perfection infection. Jill Savage is the author of fourteen books: No More Perfect Moms, No More Perfect Kids and No More Perfect Marriages among them. She also hosts the No More Perfect podcast with her husband, Mark. I think it’s pretty obvious that Jill has a very clear message. Known for her honest and engaging communication both as a speaker and in life, she’s here today to challenge us to stop comparing our insides to other people’s outsides. I’m going to give it to you straight…you will never arrive at confidence via the perfectionism highway. Grace, kindness, messy imperfect action, trusting yourself, especially during the hard times, that’s the stuff of real confidence. Confidence is your choice to make anytime you want, because that is woman’s work. You can learn more about Jill Savage by going to: www.jillsavage.org or follow her on IG @jillsavage.author To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com. Get your copy of Validation Is For Parking.

Hey friends, hold on to your seats because shit's about to get real on this episode of This Is Woman's Work. When we sit in that unrealistic expectations place, we do a lot of indicting. When we sit in the reality, we do a lot of inviting. Perfection is the enemy of confidence. It tells us we need to do it all, be it all, have it all, look good while we're doing it, and somehow make it look effortless. Think of perfectionism as your dream home on the outside, but it's a mess on the inside. There's faulty wiring, bad pipes, the joists need replacing, and the heat will not work. It's a facade.

It may look good to everyone else, but it's awful to live in. And yet so many of us are aiming for perfect. I am Nicole Kalil, Recovering Perfectionist, and on this episode of This is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about what my guest calls the perfection infection. Grab your notebook and a pen, strap yourself in, because this is going to be a conversation so many of us need to hear. Jill Savage is the author of 14 books, and after just releasing my first one, I can't even put into words how impressive that is. No More Perfect Moms, No More Perfect Kids, and No More Perfect Marriage are three of the 14. And she also hosts the No More Perfect podcast with her husband, Mark.

I think it's fair to say Jill has a very clear message. Known for her honest and engaging communication, both as a speaker and in life, she's here today to challenge us to stop comparing our insides to other people's outsides. Jill, I could not be more excited for this conversation. I've talked about perfectionism in previous episodes, but I've never made it the episode topic. So this is going to be a good one. And thank you for joining me. Absolutely. It's good to be with you. Yay. Okay. So let's start with what you call the perfection infection, which I love by the way, tell us about what that is and why it matters. Yeah. Well, the perfection infection I say is when we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others, and we,

uh, compare ourselves and others as well. So, um, so I start in my no more perfect mom's book, talking about that, the perfection infections, when we have an unrealistic expectations of ourselves and we unfairly compare ourselves to others. And it robs us of so much joy. It robs us of so much contentment. And so I think that we have to start with ourselves and this inside job that needs to happen of kicking the perfection infection out of our own head and our own heart. But then when I wrote No More Perfect Kids and No More Perfect Marriages, I looked at, for instance, in No More Perfect Kids, what happens when the perfection infection invades our parenting? And we have unrealistic expectations of our kids, or we unfairly compare our kids to others. So who might we be comparing them to? Well, we might be comparing them to a sibling that is easier to parent, because let's be honest,

sometimes some of our kids are easier to parent. We might be comparing them to that child, that imagined child that was in our brain that we were just sure we were going to have, but they never have shown up. So we're always disappointed in this child because they don't like the things we thought they would like, or they don't operate in school the way we thought they would because they're not a little mini me. And so what can happen then is that we can become a hypercritical parent. We can find ourselves content in our parenting. And then the same thing can happen in a marriage relationship. So in that case, it's when we are unfairly comparing our marriage to others or comparing our spouse to others. And when we have unrealistic expectations of marriage in general, or when we have unrealistic expectations of our

spouse in general, and all of that robs us of so much joy and contentment and being, and being able to see what we have instead of always being disappointed in what we don't have. There's so many good nuggets in what you just said. I started by saying perfectionism is the enemy of confidence. I think comparison is the thief of confidence, as you said. And it's interesting what jumped into my head. And I want to talk about the marriage part. Actually, before I talk about the marriage part, I don't think that there is a area of our lives where we are holding ourselves to perfectionist tendencies more than as moms. Oh, I agree. I think we feel like there's so much at stake and we have to get it right. And so many of us are responding to our experience of being parented.

And as you said, we have ideas or expectations of, and then I think sometimes in an effort to, to build confident children, we go the route of telling them they're great at everything or telling them that they're super smart or super wonderful or super whatever. And inadvertently we end up telling them they're perfect. And it can be really heartbreaking when they realize in life that it's inevitable that they're not. So I don't know, there's so much in what I just said. I was like, Oh, um, well we perpetuate, we almost perpetuate the perfection infection into the next generation when we do that. Right. Like, uh, because, and we don't even realize that we're

doing it. They need us as mothers. They need us to balance both parts of, of that. They need to know what they're good at. They need to also know what they aren't good at, which comes down to your, you know, what you talk about in your book, um, of confidence. Um, it's knowing who you are, knowing who you're not embracing both of those. And so I think that, um, as we don't realize as moms, the impact that we could actually have in helping our kids not deal with the perfection infection as much, if we could be aware of their need to know both of those things. Oh, yeah. Okay.

I want to talk about the marriage part. You have quite the marriage story and you have said how the perfection infection has played a part for both you and your husband. I want to add to you while you were speaking. One of the things I know I make the mistake of doing is I compare my husband to myself. This is what I would do in this situation. Why doesn't he do this? Why can't he just do it like that? Why can't he see it this way? And that has been problematic because he's not me and I'm not him. Thank God. Right. I would not be in a happy marriage if I would have married myself. Um, and that's what you want though, but it's what you want. Right. And I think what happens though is where this becomes an issue is when we believe that our differences are wrong,

because what, what happens is, you know, we, we do things, we think is right, because it wouldn't be the way we do things if we didn't think it was right, right? And so I think that oftentimes, and this is part of our challenges. So when my husband and I introduced ourselves, especially when we're speaking on marriage, we will often say, Hey, we're Mark and Jill Savage. We've been married 39 years, 29 of them happily. And, um, it's not that there were 10 bad years. There were just bad seasons. Um, there were hard seasons. There were hard circumstances. Um, and yes, our marriage went off completely derailed.

And we can talk about that in a little bit, um, 10 years ago, but we, one of the biggest changes. So now we call ourselves Mark and Jill 2.0. So Mark and Jill 1.0, uh, had a lot of challenges. And ultimately that came to a culmination when everything went off the rails 10 years ago, but Mark and Jill 2.0, who have rebuilt their marriage in a completely different way, 1.0 looked at differences as wrong. And we compared ourselves to the other person, just like you said. But Mark and Jill 2.0 look at differences as simply alternate ways of processing the world, alternate ways of doing things. And we allow each other to be different. And we've stopped labeling that as wrong. And honestly,

it's a part of kicking the perfection infection out of our marriage. It has been a huge gift to give to each other. And really it comes down to acceptance, accepting the other person for who they are, accepting them for who they're not being okay with both of those. And, um, it's a gift we give ourselves. It's a gift. We give our marriage, quite frankly, it's a gift we give our family. Um, because if you're married, then your marriage is like the foundation of your family. And so it's a beautiful gift that we give the family unit of acceptance. And when we do that, it begins to stop perfectionism and it increases contentment. Yeah. So I want to reiterate, accepting the differences, accepting the whole person for who they are and who they're not.

I think so often we try as, you know, like I said, I'm a recovering perfectionist. So as a perfectionist, I actually think I inadvertently created distance and problems in all of my relationships because I kind of sent the message that I had it all together. And in order to be in my space, you need to have it all together. And I didn't create any space for messiness, for celebrating differences, for vulnerability, for transparency. I guess for those of us who are achieving perfectionism, how might this be impacting the people in our lives? How might they be experiencing

us? Oh yeah. And they feel like they can, they're never enough. It feeds into you're not, you're not enough, which honestly they might already even have come into marriage or our circle of friendships or whatever with that message from their own childhood. That's often a message, you know, use our marriage as an example. So my husband was raised in an abusive environment. So his biological father and mother, they divorced at age two. He was the kid that would, you know, stand with his face against the window expecting daddy was supposed to come and pick him up and daddy didn't. So there was a lot of rejection in his childhood. Then his mother married a man that was abusive. And so he came from a traumatic childhood.

And so when you come out of trauma, there are, you talk about head trash, um, in your book, lots of head trash, right? And one piece of that head trash is I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not anything enough. Well, then he marries a woman who is, who is confident, who has a, um, high level of, um, or has problem with this perfection infection thing. And, um, I unknowingly send two messages to him. One, you're not enough because I have this critical spirit about me. I'm always pointing out how he can do things better. So I'm sending the, I'm not enough. The second thing though,

I'm sending him is I really don't need you because I kind of don't need anybody. You know, I, I, I I'm overconfident in that. And, um, I'm a strong woman, but that strong woman was sending a mess, an unintentional message to my husband that I did not need him. And quite frankly, part of my Jill 2.0 experience, cause you can't have a 2.0 marriage if you don't have two 2.0 individuals. So part of my 2.0 individual experience, part of my personal growth that I would say over the last 10 years has been learning that I do need people and I do need my husband and even coming to understand what my needs are and expressing those. Cause I grew up in a loving home and a loving family, but we were the buck ups. So you buck up. If life gets hard, you get strong.

You just buck up. And so I brought that into my mothering. I brought it into my marriage. And what I didn't realize is it made me not a very compassionate person. So part of Jill 2.0 has been learning to be compassionate first with myself, which is what you talk about in your validation is for parking book. You talk about giving yourself grace. And I really had to learn how to give myself grace. I had to learn how to be okay with failure. I had to learn how to be more compassionate with myself. And then the more I've been able to do that, it's made me a more compassionate wife, a more compassionate mother. And now I'm a grandmother, far more compassionate grandmother than I ever was a mom in my early years. But you know, here's what I've

learned, Nicole, it's never too late. Yeah. It's never too late to do the work, to do the work, the individual work, to do the relational work. It's never too late. My kids are grown and in their twenties and thirties, and I'm a different mother with them now because I've done the work and that's been redeemed in our relationships too. Well, the people listening can't see me, but I look like a bobblehead over here. I've been nodding so much as you were talking about how perfectionism played out in your relationship. I can see it so much in mine. In fact, I even said to Jay from like a point of pride, I don't need you. I want you. Isn't that so much better? I like, I choose you, right? I'm going to sit and think on that a little bit about how that message might be misconstrued and whether or not I like, I, I choose you, right. I'm going to sit and think on that a little bit about how that

message might be misconstrued and whether or not I do in fact need him. I'm going to, that's, um, no, it makes you kind of really have to think, especially for a strong women, right. We want to pride ourselves in not needing anyone, but I believe that we are designed for community and marriage is a part of community, right? Like we're wired for connection. That's what I always, we are, there you go. We're wired for connection. And so part of connection is we have to need each other in some way. And, um, even the tiniest things like for me, I'll tell you where it probably I had to work through it is emotionally. So, you know, when you operate out of a buck up mindset, part of my head trash was I used to say feelings don't matter. Only facts matter because I am a logical type A driven personality. I'm in our marriage. I'm the thinker. He,

my husband's the feeler. So, you know, oftentimes when, especially when a woman is a thinker, then she has put her emotions on the back. You know, she has seen emotions as being weak. And so what I had to come to grips with is my emotions are God-given. They are a part of me. And quite frankly, I had shut them down. And so the best Jill is a Jill that is strong and logical, but she's also values emotions. And so in the first 27 years of our marriage, before our crisis, if I was sad or I was upset, I would go to my bedroom and cry. I would never let my husband see me cry. I would never even give any opportunity for comfort because I didn't even know that I needed comfort as a child. I had learned to comfort myself. And so now Jill 2.0, if she's sad, she might say to her husband, I need a hug. This is a hard day. Um, or my dad passed away three years ago. And, and that's been hard for me because I was

very close to my father. And there've been times where, you know, I'll just say to my husband, I miss my dad and I'll just let myself cry. And that is, that's the both. And that doesn't make me less strong, but it also is a way that I do need my husband. Like I need him to be a comforter for me. Yeah. Okay. I have so many things, but I'm going to jump into this both and, because I think sometimes we wouldn't be perfectionists if it didn't work for us at some level in some way at some times. And I sometimes hear people go, well, but my perfectionist tendencies make me growth oriented. They make me stretch myself. They make me. And then like the opposite sort of like, if I trust and accept myself and love myself the way that I am, then will I just throw up my hands and not grow? And I go back to this both. And how do we

love and accept ourselves and be growth oriented or how do we be growth oriented, but not strive for perfectionism? Yeah. Oh yeah. That's such a good question. I think we want to pursue excellence, but the problem is excellence can easily, there's this, there's this little line between excellence and perfection. And we don't realize when we cross over the line. So I, I think that we can still pursue excellence, but stop short of perfection. Um, and so we have to, we have to learn when good is good enough. And that's, that's a message I say to myself, um, when I, especially when I'm, um, really going over proofreading something and it's just gotta be perfect. And everything,

my husband and I, we just released two books and I thought I was gonna drive myself crazy releasing these because we self-published them. So part of our story is infidelity and we have recovered from that and restored our marriage from that. My husband was unfaithful 10 years ago. And so we

have two new books that just came out. Mine's called my heart is broken. What to do when your spouse is unfaithful. And his is called, I really messed up your next steps to heal your marriage after infidelity. And, and so, you know, there were, I had to get to a place in, as we were getting these ready to get out there, I could have just kept working on them and finding things that we could make better. And it would have never gotten out there. And I had to finally say to myself, okay, good is good enough. This has got the information that the audience needs, the people that are in

crisis that need these books. It is more important that we get them out there without them being perfect than, um, and you know, obviously progress over perfection. So, um, that's, it was like, no, we need to make progress here and, um, because we're going to, we're going to never get them out. So I think that part of it is we've got to, we value the progress, but we stop short of the perfection. And we have to, we have to have some messages in, you know, that we kind of preach to ourself to help us to not go there. Cause I, I think, you know, especially when you are growth oriented, you don't want to stop that. And I never, I, I, I am to a place where I feel like I am very far in my recovery of, of being a former perfectionist, but, um, I am a growth girl. I am always reading. I may,

I never stop that. Um, you know, uh, because I, I want to grow as a coach. I want to grow in my own personal life. I mean, when I read your book, validation is for parking, I loved it. And I did many of the exercises in the book. And that was growth for me. And I've been doing this work for a long time. So I think that we can absolutely still grow. We just want to recognize that excellence is okay. Let's just stop short of the perfection. And something that you said really landed for me is appreciating or recognizing the progress. I think when I'm in perfectionist mode, I have no space for that. I'm either going to get to the destination. I mean, to get the results, it's going to look a certain way way or it's, you know, a massive failure, right? And what stuck out for me is maybe the distinction of being growth oriented is, you know, maybe there is a destination or achievement or result, but it's the appreciation, celebration, acknowledgement of the progress that you're making along the way, as opposed to making the destination, the end all be all. Yes. And I think that a part of this, I think we can't

have a conversation about perfectionism and even progress without talking about some expectations. expectations are, they are preconceived resentments. That's they set us up. And so oftentimes we have unrealistic expectations, whether it's of ourself, our spouse, our child, whatever it is, it's an unrealistic expectation. And what I like to say, and I know our listeners can't see this, but I'm kind of holding my hand up high. So this is like expectations. And then I'm holding one hand down lower, and this is reality. And there's a space between expectations and reality. And the space in between perfectionistic world, we believe that the way that this gets solved is for us to move the lower hand up for our spouse to move up to where we want them to, for our child to move up where we want them to, for us to accomplish the task the way we want it to be accomplished. We think that that's how you close the space and the gap in between. The truth is what needs to happen is we need to move the upper hand,

which is the unrealistic expectations down to reality. And that's how we get rid of the space, the discontentment that is there. And that's actually how we began to see the progress that we're talking about today. Yes. Oh God, that's so good. Okay. So, you know, I'm a little bit of a how-to person. Any tips on how we could move that upper hand, the unrealistic expectations, any actionable how-to tips of how we can move it down? Because it's a big fat yes. But I think a lot of us are like, okay, but I've been living this way for so long. Like, how do I begin? How do I start? Yeah. Yeah. So I would say the first thing is to identify where you have unrealistic expectations. And what I usually tell my clients is I want you to think about where you are

consistently disappointed. In whom are you consistently disappointed? In what circumstances are you consistently disappointed in? And that is usually your red flag of where you have unrealistic expectations. So that's going to be the first thing that you have to do is you have to identify where are you having unrealistic expectations. So a lot of times what people will say then is by moving from unrealistic expectations to reality, I feel like I'm settling. That's what they feel like, especially if it's in a relationship. So if I accept my husband for where he is, then I feel like I'm settling. If I accept my child for where they are, I feel like I'm settling and not, and they're not going to be motivated. I'm not going to be able,

here's what I've learned. Acceptance is motivating. Acceptance is very motivating. So what you're doing is you're choosing acceptance. You're choosing to move from that unrealistic expectation to better match reality. And when someone feels accepted, they actually feel safe for growth. That's what they do. They feel safe. So you actually, and it may take some time, okay, but they actually feel safe to begin to experience some growth. And so I think from a practical perspective, we have to first identify where are, do we have unrealistic expectations? Secondly, we have to move our expectations to matter match reality. So, um, let me see if I can give you, um, a really practical one. So my husband, um, I'm a high capacity gal. He's a low capacity guy. Um, we, we actually offer, um, something called the, um, no more perfect

marriages challenge. And it's a free four week challenge where people take like some, um, temperament tests that help them to better understand who they are and how they're different and how they're wired differently. And one of them is on capacity. And so, um, so what that means is I can spend a lot of plates before i get overwhelmed he can spend only a few plates before he gets overwhelmed it also means that i like to travel at a fast pace in life he likes to travel at a slower pace in life so we're opposites opposites attract right so um i used to be frustrated that after we would get home from a trip, he needs a day to recover. For me, I get home from a trip and man, I just hit the ground running. And it's

like, I've never been gone. I just jumped right into things, but he needs a day to recover. I used to criticize that. Okay. So now I accept it, embrace it. And so I no longer have an unrealistic expectation of him that he can hit the ground running. No, I accept that he needs a day to recover, but in that acceptance. So I block out, we get home from a speaking trip or even a personal trip. And I block out a big X on the day after. And that's primarily for him. We don't take any appointments. We don't see any coaching clients, marriage coaching clients. But as I have accepted that in him, he's also begun to realize, oh, I don't know that I need a whole day. I think a half day works for me. And so he has gotten to

know himself a little bit better. And so it's been almost a meeting in the middle. So you could say I settled or I, you know, that acceptance was in some way going to be maybe not driving my husband to be the best that he could be. But in acceptance, he actually kind of figured that out on his own. Yeah. Well, okay. So I love that you addressed the, well, you know, am I settling? Because I'm sure there are some listeners that would be thinking about that. I want to just point out something that I'm afraid maybe some listeners might be saying.

You're talking about unrealistic expectations and lowering down to realistic expectations. That doesn't mean no expectations, right? So I'm afraid somebody will be like, well, I just need to accept my spouse or partner or husband the way they are. And that's just what it is. And it's like, well, no, if there is abuse of any kind, if they're, you know, like, no, there's no expectations. There's just realistic ones. And when we're talking about perfectionism, what we're talking about is unrealistic ones. And that's where we want to pull down from. Yeah. And here's something else, Nicole, when we sit in that unrealistic

expectations place, we do a lot of indicting. When we sit in the reality, we do a lot of inviting. That's great. And so, and this is where it happens in, in parenting relationships and marriage relationships is when we're always disappointed in that person, then we are, you know, we might get into the, you never, you always, um, and we're indicting, like we're criticizing and indicting them. And man, that doesn't feel good. That doesn't feel good from a relational perspective. And that's when that critical spirit that most of us who sit in perfectionism naturally have. And so, but when we sit in a place of acceptance of where people are, and yes, it's not that we don't have any expectations at all. We certainly have, um, we expect responsibility

within a, uh, a relationship, but when we can accept them where they are, um, when we can understand that maybe they're on a different growth path than we are, maybe even a different pace of growth than what we are, especially for those of us that are growth minded, we can feel like, you know, gosh, my, my spouse is like 10 steps behind me. So when we can accept them where they are, though, we get ourself in a better place to invite growth rather than indict them that they're not growing. Right.

And that makes all the difference in the world sometimes. And everything you just said can be applied to the relationships we have, the relationship we have with ourselves, right? So we've been talking about this in a marriage relationship, but everything you just said about lowering from unrealistic to realistic, indicting versus inviting, this is something that can be applied to our own self and to all of our relationships. So Jill, I could talk about this forever. Thank you for putting perfectionism in a way that I think not just myself, but everybody listening in is nodding their heads, but at the same time,

thinking that we can let it go and thinking that we can do something about it and we can still be growth oriented. I so appreciate our conversation. If you're listening and want to learn more about Jill and her work, you can visit her website at jillsavage.org. She's on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok at Jill Savage author. We'll put all of this in the show notes. Jill, thank you so much. Oh, thanks for having me, Nicole. All right. I'm going

to close this out by giving it to you straight. You will never arrive at confidence via the perfectionism highway, grace, kindness, messy, imperfect action, trusting yourself, even, or maybe especially during the hard times. That's the stuff of real confidence. Confidence is a choice. It's your choice to make anytime you want because that is woman's work.