This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - VI4P - Perfectionism and Failure (Chapter 6)

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Click here for your FREE Confidence Building workbook. You will be added to our weekly communication for even more confidence building tips! You can unsubscribe at any time… but we hope you’ll stay with us for the confidence building journey. Every Monday I bring a chapter of my book, Validation Is For Parking: How Women Can Beat The Confidence Con) to life!  This week we work our way through Chapter 6 and talk about Perfectionism and Failure. Here’s what you can expect: We define what a “confidence derailer” is so you know what’s chipping away at your confidence I share why Perfectionism is not only a confidence derailer, but the ENEMY of confidence The Antidote to Perfectionism gets revealed… and it’s the most shocking confidence builder of them all! I share my favorite 4 step process for turning failure into fuel Like what you heard? Please rate and review

I am Nicole Kalil, and I am so excited that you're here because today we're going to build your confidence. Because the you living your best life trifecta, and I mean that in any and every aspect of your life, is when you know yourself, when you value yourself, and when you trust yourself. So we're going to build your confidence today by digging into part three of my book, Validation is for Parking, which covers the five confidence derailers and each of their antidotes, the confidence builders.

Today, we cover probably the biggest confidence derailer of them all. It impacts everyone, but ambitious high achievers at the most, and that is perfectionism. As a recovering perfectionist myself, I could have written a whole book on this topic alone, and I've actually learned a lot more about perfectionism since writing the book, so there will be more to come on this topic in the future. But the most shocking discovery of them all is what builds confidence in the face of perfectionism. The confidence builder that makes the biggest impact for letting go of and overcoming perfectionism is failure. Now, I know that sounds crazy to many of you, so let's dive in and learn more about that.

For those of you using the 40 plus page confidence building workbook to test and implement in your life, we are covering pages 14 through 16 on perfectionism, as well as pages 31 and 32 on failure as we go through this chapter. You can download that for free by using the link in show notes. Okay, chapter six on perfectionism and failure begins with a quote that says, there is no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections. I don't know about you,

but I am fed up with people telling women to be confident and yet never sharing how, or even worse, telling us that if we buy this product, invest in this course, or spend this outrageous amount of money on some quick fix that we'll somehow become confident. And when we do those things, the feeling we get is only temporary or it's contingent on us continuing to buy more. There will be none of that here. It ends now. I'm going to share five specific things that could be and probably are derailing your confidence. And I'm also going to share effective antidotes for

not only disarming them, but building, keeping, and growing your confidence for the long term. I use the word derailer because each of these problems is separating you from your trust in yourself. The derailers will chip away at, damage, and destroy your confidence if you let them. It might surprise you to see that the derailers are not external slights or attacks from other people. These derailers are habits we internalize as a result of the false and mixed messages

we've received our whole lives. Essentially, we do them to ourselves. The five confidence builders can all be beneficial and will work in any scenario, but I've paired each of the builders with the derailer it directly corresponds to and combats the most effectively. I found that in both my personal and professional life, if you start with tools to build confidence, but aren't aware or mindful of what derails it in the first place, you'll end up feeling frustrated and disappointed, feeling like you're on this

confidence hamster wheel. You'll be working, disappointed, feeling like you're on this confidence hamster wheel. You'll be working, running, and believing you're moving toward confidence, but not actually getting anywhere. You might end up thinking, I must be doing something wrong. Why isn't this working for me? So while I will indeed share what builds your confidence, I first have to make sure you're aware

of what's chipping away at it. It's hard to protect yourself from something if you're aware of what's chipping away at it. It's hard to protect yourself from something if you don't know what it is. And these confidence derailers are doing major damage specifically to women. I'll begin with the confidence derailer that oh so many of us know all too well and the one I personally struggle with the most, perfectionism. Every single time I speak on the topic of confidence and mention perfectionism, the vast majority of the women in the audience start nodding their heads. If you're a type A, a professional who stresses over delivering error-free work, a mom who loses

sleep over burnt cookies, or someone who believes at least some of your value is rooted in how you look, you've probably battled with perfectionism. Let's talk about its antidote so you can not only counteract this particular poison, but also know the habits that will truly build your confidence in the face of it. Perfectionism is the enemy of confidence. Read that again. Perfectionism is the enemy of confidence. If you want more on this, I'd highly recommend The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman. It was here that I first heard this wisdom and I am forever grateful for it. They also, by the way, have a version of this

book for girls. It's never going to be confidence building to aim for perfection. It's not even confidence adjacent. It's the confidence nemesis. It's the opponent, the bad guy. You will never arrive at confidence via the perfectionism highway. Think of perfectionism as your dream home on the outside, but down to the studs on the inside. There's faulty wiring, bad pipes, and joists need replacing, and the goddamn heat won't work. It's a facade, a big fat lie. It looks good to everyone else,

but it's awful to live in. Perfectionism for so many women is the belief that we're supposed to do it all, have it all, be it all, and look good while we're doing it. It's an unrealistic way to live because, spoiler alert, nobody is perfect. Yet we apply this impossible standard to ourselves on a regular basis. The extent to which we torture ourselves over this unattainable goal is a little nuts. And I say that with so much love. In my house, we've replaced the saying practice makes perfect with practice makes progress because I want to do everything in my power to make sure that JJ knows there's nothing she can do to create perfection. I say it for myself too, because I

spent a large part of my life thinking that if I could just do it all, then I'd prove myself worthy and having it all would be the reward. I've tried it and it doesn't work. I tell JJ that I love her all the time as a reminder that she doesn't have to do anything to earn my love. And then we have a little fun with it. I'll say I love her all the time. And then I'll ask her like, even when I'm traveling for work and she'll say yes. Or even when you make a mistake? Yes. Even when I'm feeling frustrated? Yes. Even when I'm pooping in the bathroom? Yes. She was eight when I wrote this book and poop jokes were all the rage. So in doing this, my goal is for her to know that she doesn't have to perform or prove herself to be worthy of love. She just is. And the reality is we often connect most

deeply with other people through our imperfections. We bond with our friends, partners, and even clients by commiserating about our challenges and our pain. It opens up space for the level of intimate connection we seek with others, but none of that can happen when there's no realness, transparency, or vulnerability. We can actually drive people away when we broadcast perfection as our standard because what they see is that we're unwilling to make space in our lives for anything less, and that's daunting. We're all going through something all the time. As a recovering perfectionist myself, I don't trust people, organizations, or cultures that are always positive because it's not real. There's something being glossed over or hidden beneath the surface.

So if confidence is about trust, perfectionism ultimately works against us. It keeps us from fostering that deep connection with the very people who might actually be able to tolerate, support, forgive, and encourage us when we, oh my God, display our humanity by making a mistake. It also keeps us from fostering any type of real connection with ourselves. Many of us have become perfectionists in the first place in an attempt to avoid pain. We think that if we get everything right, we'll avoid criticism and people will love and admire us. We think that if we perform well enough and work hard enough, we'll get the recognition, lifestyle, and success we deserve. We believe that if we just look good

enough and manipulate ourselves just right, we'll attract the love and acceptance that we crave and never have to experience heartbreak. We imagine that if we just do and say everything right as parents, our kids will lead happy and fulfilling lives free of pain. In truth, none of us will ever completely avoid pain in life. And ironically enough, by making this desperate attempt to avoid it, we create more of it. We avoid taking bold risks for fear that somebody else might see us fail. We get into and stay in all kinds of relationships that don't serve us because we question whether or not we're good enough. On top of that, we're crushed when we do fall short of expectations because we think that

it proves there's something fundamentally wrong with who we are. And like other marginalized groups in society, women feel the need to perform at our maximum potential at all times because it feels like someone is always watching and waiting. And if we drop the ball even once, it'll shatter at our feet. We feel the need to do more so that we can be valued. And although there is some truth behind some of this, we'll never be able to eradicate sexism by striving to rise to society's unrealistic demands. Likewise, we'll never achieve confidence through perfectionism. When we step back and think about it, we can all see that there are consequences for the effort and energy we put into trying to make ourselves perfect, and they're exhausting. The avoiding risk,

imposter syndrome, and fear of being exposed, the anxiety, depression, stress, lack of sleep, toxic relationships, and the inability to learn from our mistakes and so much more. That's what perfectionism is costing you. Is it worth the price? At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what you want and how badly you want it. You want amazing, healthy relationships? You want a phenomenal working environment? You want to be confident? Well, you can't have any of those things and hold

on to perfectionism at the same time. The two cannot coexist, so you're going to have to choose. And I assume you wouldn't choose to suffer more than you have to on purpose. Sometimes people will tell me that they know that they have high expectations of themselves or others, but that it works for them. If it's working for you, that's awesome and I can relate. But if it's perfectionism that's actually at play, I promise you you're doing damage to your confidence. What about being growth oriented instead? That's an amazing quality and

it's not at all the same as perfectionism. Confident people are growth oriented because they trust themselves as they're growing. Perfectionists tend to feel nothing is ever good enough and that they need to achieve perfection before they can feel confident. You see the difference? So if perfectionism is the enemy of confidence and the biggest confidence derailer for most women, how do we counteract it? The antidote to perfectionism is failure. Yes, you read and heard that right, failure.

Before you break into a cold sweat, I'm not suggesting you go out and purposely fail at everything, but you will need to make mistakes, feel pain not suggesting you go out and purposely fail at everything, but you will need to make mistakes, feel pain, put yourself out there and get rejected in order to build your confidence. You'll probably need to fail in big ways, small ways, private ways, and public ways. Fail over and over and over again on a regular basis for the rest of your life. That's the answer. I know what you're thinking, Nicole, that is the craziest bullshit I've ever heard.

Or maybe you don't curse as much in your head as I do and you're just thinking, I hate failure. Of course you do. We all do. I feel the same way about failure as I do about working out. It sucks while I'm doing it, but I make myself do it anyway. I know that there are people out there who enjoy exercising, and if you do, God bless you, but I do it for the growth, strength, and health only. Enjoyment has never been a part of it for me, and it's not a requirement for doing it. It'll never be comfortable or fun and I'll never love it. When we exercise, we tear up our muscles and they become stronger as they heal. The same is true of failure. Rather than learning to love it, we must learn to accept it as a necessary part of our

growth and our betterment as humans. We can learn to accept failure by creating a more empowered and more productive interpretation of our mistakes, missteps, and imperfections. As women, we tend to personalize our failures at a far greater level than our male counterparts do. We view them as a reflection of our overall worth and value as human beings. A man might do a bad job on a presentation and think, damn, I didn't plan well enough or I didn't do a good enough job explaining my point. He might even think he did a great job when he didn't. As women, we'd be more likely

to let a bad presentation consume us and end up exaggerating to the point of thinking, I suck as a leader. My communication skills are awful. I don't even know what I'm doing and now everybody knows it. We need to shift our mindset by understanding that objectively speaking, failure is a neutral event and we're the ones who assign meaning to it. My coach, Lisa, says that we are meaning making machines.

Logically, we can see that this is true because something that you see as an insurmountable failure could seem easy to overcome by someone else. And something that seems like no big deal to you could feel incredibly damaging to another. For example, I know somebody who started their business year at a deficit of almost a quarter million dollars. They lost 250,000 before the year had even started and they were slightly uncomfortable. While for most of us, that level of debt would have been devastating. Another example is when we get our heart broken

for the first time, most likely as teenagers, an adult might look at that and go, no big deal, you'll get over it. You're too young for it to work anyway it wasn't gonna last you'll find the right person eventually right and while that might make sense to us having your heart broken for the first time is soul crushing when you're that teenager we all go through pain in life and it will never not suck when you're going through it but it helps to realize that our failures serve a purpose,

and they're mostly temporary, or at the very least, evolving. If we think back and look at the most life-altering events that completely change the trajectory of our lives for the better, chances are most of them come as a result of overcoming a failure or living through some kind of pain. It can be the hard times, the transitions, and the moments where we put our foot down and decide, I can't do this anymore, or I don't want to live like this, that change everything for us. A lot of us interpret our negative emotions during these experiences as a sign that there's something wrong with us. Let's take the expression quitting is for

losers and run it through the perfectionist derailer followed by our confidence builder. A perfectionist doesn't give up because they must get it right, thereby implying that all you need is to do better or do more and it will all work out. Yes, the expression is meant to be motivating, but really quitting can be for winners if it leads to better mental, emotional, or physical health. Quitting an abusive relationship, winner. Walking away from a job where your work isn't valued, that's a win too.

Giving up on a goal that was never your own and you were just doing it to please someone else, win. But in order to win in all of those examples, you'd need to give up, let go, admit defeat, or possibly experience failure. You'd also probably be better served if you chose to look at those events as opportunities, gifts, or lessons.

Sure, life would be easier if you met the person of your dreams as your first crush, started the career of your dreams right out of college, only ever achieved the goals that got you exactly where you wanted, and everything was perfect all the time. But that's not an available option for any of us. And frankly, without the lows,

we would never appreciate the highs. Letting go of perfectionism, biggest win of them all. Consider for a minute, if you were to quit on the expectation of doing, looking, and being perfect, wouldn't that free you up to listen to your inner knowing, live your life more authentically, and spend more time doing what actually matters to you? Ultimately, what I'm saying is that we have the opportunity to change our interpretation of our life events to create a more empowering, productive perception that honors our inherent worth. And since we're the one making up what our failures, mistakes, and pain mean anyway, we might as well make up a meaning that works for us. One note on perfectionism and failure

that's specific to women. I've noticed women's fear of failure is often more debilitating than any actual failure. We tend to focus on the worst possible outcome or think of the worst case scenario, especially when we're taking a risk. Perfectionism holds us back from even trying because we know subconsciously that we won't be perfect. And we let the fear of the unknown or that worst case life-destroying failure prevent us from doing anything. I know not only from personal experience, but in my experience with working with and coaching hundreds of women, that the worst case scenario almost never happens. Hardly anything turns out as bad as we think it will, but we get stuck imagining our

suffering as if it's a foregone conclusion. A better opportunity is to think of all the worst things that could happen and ask, how would I handle that? Confidence isn't about not facing or not having any challenges. Confidence is when you trust that you can get through the challenges. And if you're going to ask yourself about the worst that could happen, make sure you also ask what's the best thing that could happen and marinate on that just as much while trying to predict that future. By doing so, we view the whole picture of possible outcomes of

the risks that we're going to take rather than being blinded by incomplete information. And we actually better prepare ourselves because we're thinking about how we'll face and overcome any failures while simultaneously expecting that good things will happen. We'll explore this a little bit more in depth when I talk about overthinking in chapter eight. Processing our failures from a neutral perspective. So how do we reframe our failures into something that works for us? How do we begin to interact with the possibility of failure in a different way? How in God's name do we begin to think of leveraging failure as a confidence builder? The answer is practice.

Lots of practice. The same way you get good at just about anything. I'm going to share a tactic that I use to coach myself and pretty much every person I've ever worked with. I developed it after picking it up from my coach, Lisa, and it has now become my go-to every time I'm dealing with my own personal and professional mistakes. The step one of this is think about the situation, event, feeling, or freak out you find yourself in and ask the question, what are the facts? Think only about the objective facts related to the situation and write them down. To give you an example as we go through this exercise, I launched an online course on November

2nd of 2020, the same day of a rather well-known presidential election. Maybe you remember it. Anyway, I got exactly two people registered for my course in the first week, one of them being my uber supportive and thoughtful husband. Let's just say this was not quite the result I anticipated. It was worse than all the worst case scenarios I'd imagined. I'd invested close to $20,000 to create and market the course, had spent hours upon hours promoting it on social media, and felt great about what I'd created. My big goal was to sell 300 courses,

and while I didn't anticipate it all happening in the first week, I was shocked that only one person signed up who wasn't somebody I was sleeping with. Feelings of failure, embarrassment, fear, and doubt were circling my brain like rabid vultures. I knew if I didn't get ahold of myself and work through them, they would consume me.

I also had the advantage of having just built a confidence course. So I ended up taking my own course to work through it. So what were the facts? The facts were I'd never launched an online course before. This was my first one. So the entire thing was new to me. I had no data to rely on, no experience in that space, and I didn't do much research before creating it.

I released the course on November 2nd, 2020, which was the same day as an election, which in a historic turn of events wasn't called until several days later. The fact is that two people registered in the first week. And although I'd set an initial goal of selling 300 courses, I sold 68 courses in that first year. Those are some examples of the facts. Step two, ask yourself, what am I making up about the facts? What have I decided that the facts mean?

What is the story I'm telling myself? Or what is my interpretation of the event or situation? In my example, I was making up that I had failed miserably. Nobody saw the value in the work that I do. I'd made a bad investment and I was a horrible business owner. The story I was telling myself was that I'd be humiliated if anyone found out how severely short of my goal I had fallen, that I should have known better

because launching on the same day as a major election was plain stupid. What kind of idiot does that? I was telling myself that people didn't like my work or anything that I had to say. They all think I'm a hack and the naysayers were right. I could go on for days, despite the fact that outside of that online course,

I was still running a six-figure business and had achieved some major successes that year. We could all go on for days, making up all sorts of terrible things about ourselves. That doesn't mean any of them are true. Separating the facts from what you're making up about the facts can help you recognize the difference between reality and the story you're telling yourself, which is an incredibly powerful thing to do as we transition into the next step.

Step three, ask, what is a different, more productive, more empowered way of seeing this? This question is a game changer because it reminds you that you're the one in control of your perception and you have the choice to see things in a completely different way. You literally get to choose between beating yourself up or empowering yourself. This, by the way, is not the same thing as lying to yourself. I'm not suggesting you make up whatever feels good. I'm suggesting that you interpret the facts in a way that actually serves you.

Sometimes it helps to ask somebody that you trust how they see it, like a coach, mentor, friend, or partner. So in my example, I could have also said any of the following to myself. It was the first time I launched an online course. Of course, I was going to make some mistakes and not get it all right. I'd never expect anyone to crush something the first time they did it. I learned a ton from the experience and figured out many things that I won't do again and some things that I would do exactly the same. 68 people did register

for and take the course. So not only did I cover the investment that I've made of money, time, and energy in creating it, but I actually made a small profit. The people who participated in the course got to experience it and came out with a greater understanding of confidence. I got to interact with them, get their feedback, and hear their amazing stories. If someone thinks I'm a hack because one launch didn't go as planned, that's a them problem, not a me problem. This particular risk didn't pay off the way that I'd hoped,

but it did pay off in many other ways. And if somebody finds joy in my mistake and wants to gossip about it, that's okay. I love when assholes make themselves known as it makes it easier for me to sort them out of my life. That's an example of more productive, more empowering things I could be telling myself, and that list goes on and on. And frankly, while I'm just telling myself a better version of the facts, it actually feels truer and more grounded in fact than the other story I made up. From this experience, I also

discovered that online courses weren't what I wanted to be doing with my time. It ended up distracting me from other things I was more passionate about. None of these benefits are exaggerations. They're just a different perspective of the same failure, but this new perspective will build my confidence while the others won't. Step four, ask yourself, what's next? How do you get into action from here? The importance of this question will become clear in chapter eight, but now that you've chosen a more productive and empowered interpretation of your failure, mistake, pain, or fear, what do you want to do about it? What's the next best thing you can do? What action will get you closer to what matters to you? What's something that you can do that will make you feel proud? If you trusted

yourself, what would you do next? I could laundry list all the things that came after my foray into selling online courses, but you're literally holding one of them in your hands, or in this case, listening to one of them in this podcast. This book is what I did next. I didn't start writing it immediately, but I did start putting one foot in front of the other, and those action steps are what got me here. That failure led me to this bucket list moment and increased my confidence so much that I literally wrote a book about it. The next time you're stuck in the muck, give this exercise a try. It has been truly life-changing for me and so many women that I work with, as it's an opportunity to build the habit of seeing failure from a more

productive, accurate, and empowered place. This exercise works for men too, by the way, but I find it particularly impactful for women because we tend to internalize our failures, mistakes, hurt, and fear at a greater level than our male counterparts do. I'm generalizing here, but women tend to jump from I failed to I am a failure way too much, way too fast. We let our failures define us, but those experiences say nothing about our inherent value or worth as a human. Men tend to bounce back and get back into action faster, and they tend to not avoid taking risks as often because they don't walk into those scenarios thinking the outcome of this is going to say everything about me. And my observation,

men have certain areas where perfectionism does play out like success, income, providing and protecting, but they don't hold themselves to the expectation of perfection in all aspects of their lives so they don't put so much weight on every single decision. We don't have to either. We can fail and we can see those failures as something we did, not something we are. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back into action toward what matters most. We call that failing forward. The only real failure is to stop trying. What will be, will be. Failure will build your confidence and lead you to greater success if you let it, if you

allow it, if you choose it. Failure builds confidence because it builds trust in yourself. You begin to have confidence that you can survive hardship and come out the other side better and stronger having learned something. You collect evidence that you can overcome those failures, mistakes, fear, and pain. The next time you face a tough challenge, risk, or big decision, you'll know from experience that you can make it through no matter what and that you'll come out the other side better if you choose to.

I'm willing to take uncomfortable risks and fail at a higher rate than most people. Why? Because I know in my heart of hearts that it will all work out one way or another. And as Jay often tells me, what's the alternative? Give up? No, thank you. I will not be giving up on my goals, passions, and dreams. What will be, will be. There's no sense in robbing ourselves of opportunities to do amazing things for fear of outcomes we can't possibly predict. You deserve better. So there you have it, friends. Your first confidence derailer is perfection, and its antidote is the most surprising confidence

builder of them all, failure. This leads us to our next derailer because perfectionism is an extra special brand of destruction. It not only sets us up for unachievable goals, it's a one-two punch that also has us beating ourselves up about it. I call this internal dialogue head trash, and it's crushing our confidence. Okay, there you have it, friends. Failure builds confidence, and perfectionism is the enemy of it. I'm guessing that's pretty contrary to what you've been told. So it's going to take some time to reframe your brain and practice to allow yourself to take those risks and those chances and to let yourself fail. But your confidence is depending on

it. I'd encourage you to spend the time noticing all the ways perfectionism is costing you using pages 14 through 16 in the workbook and practice the four-step failure reframe. It's the actual process of turning failure into fuel and it's on pages 31 and 32 of that same workbook. Again, you can access it for free in show notes. So let me leave you with this one final thought. Confidence is firm and bold trust in self. And validation is for parking.