EP 38: Real Confidence- Perfection is Relative…Unless You’re Related

November 13, 2022

I go on about perfectionism a lot, I know. Someone out there is probably rolling their eyes and thinking, “Alyssa, you gotta get over this.”

My relationship with perfectionism and competition, well, it’s partly how I was raised and partly the educational and professional environments I put myself in. So needless to say, this expectation of performance, perfect performance, has been kind of drummed into me. And subsequently, I have a real dilemma with it.

I want to ask you what I’ve recently been asking myself:

Have you ever stopped to wonder if the high bars of achievement you set for yourself are really yours? Or alternatively, if your relationship with high performance is sending a message to your family members that they’re only as good as their last win?

Every day we send and receive signals about performance and productivity and our brains use that data to guide our decisions about education, career paths and even what we eat, where we live and how we dress.

I got to thinking about this on a recent vacation with my husband. We met another couple, both doctors, whose children were following in their footsteps. Were they proud parents? Of course. But when the wife/mother started wondering aloud what her life would have looked like if she’d chosen another path of study in life, it occurred to me that one day her children may be wondering that, too.

Is it bad to have high standards? To be driven? Absolutely not, but where we can get into trouble is when we reach a point where nothing is “enough”, that point where we say to ourselves, “You know what? I’m badass. I did it and I did it on my terms.”

We are perfect together when we make the decision that we – and our family members - are enough and that’s what I’m talking about in this episode of Real Confidence.

Episode Transcript

Ep 38 Perfection is Relative

If you're smart and work hard, but just aren't where or who you want to be, welcome to your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So, let's get to it.

Alyssa Dver:
Perfection I talk a lot about it, I, I'm sure that there's a psychoanalysts out there thinking that, you know, Alyssa, you need to, you need to work through this, hang up with perfection. But you know, high expectations is what I grew up with. I grew up in New York, very competitive family, very competitive school, went onto a competitive college, and so on and so forth. So needless to say, this expectation of performance, high performance, is been kind of drummed into me. And subsequently, I have a real dilemma with it. So, for example, I just got back from a spectacular trip, I was in Greece for about 10 days, and happened to meet a couple man and a woman married for 20 plus years, and actually, probably 30 plus years, because they have older kids. And they were telling us about the fact that both the parents were very accomplished, doctors, worked in a very impressive hospital, and their kids are all following suit. They're all doctors of different types, different areas, you know, tossing out all the names. One of them is at Harvard and other ones at Stanford, one of them is at Princeton. And they're all musicians and very successful on different levels. And, of course, you know, as parents, we like to cavil, as we say, in Yiddish, but brag a little bit about our success as a parent through the achievements of our kids.

And every time I hear somebody do that, you know, your reaction is, well, my kid, you know, get a little defensive, you want to step up to that bar, but I also then stand back and think to myself, I wonder if those kids really wanted to be doctors. I wonder if, if they were left to their own devices, they would have picked other things. And as I continued to get to know the parents, the mother said to me more than once, she wonders what she would have done differently if she didn't go into medicine, would she have had the opportunity to learn things like language and history and other things that would have really fulfilled her life? Because now in her 50s, she was burned out as a doctor, she had actually retired because she couldn't take it. And she says, yeah, it was COVID, but it was long before that. And so being in a career that maybe you kind of got into for reasons that, you know, family reasons or pressure or some other things that you realize somewhere down the path, it's not really rocking your boat, that you are like wounds, just not feeding my mojo, but it's too late. I've already invested all this time and energy. Well, it's not a great scenario.

Now, you know, in her situation, it wasn't that it was a toxic environment or anything like that. She's just like, oh, I don't really think I want to be an eye doctor. I don't think I really want to do surgery. And it was a little, “too late” for her to change directions in her mind. I don't think it's ever too late. I've reinvented myself a few times, probably will do it a few more. But you know, going to medical school and going through the years and years of training to get there. That's a big investment. So yeah, I will say that it might have been too late in the scheme of things for her to achieve the same level of accomplishment in another career track. But she continued to say to me, boy, Alyssa you do all these interesting things. You're into all kinds of different businesses, and you get to have all these hobbies and love. She's like, I'm very jealous. I wish I had the opportunity to do that. I wonder. And as she's going through that, she literally says, I wonder if I didn't feel like I had to become a doctor. What else would I have done? And I thought to myself, but I didn't say it. Yeah. Do your kids feel out that themselves because we pass that bar, that level of perfection, high performance on to our kids and sometimes we don't even realize it or sometimes we're doing it vicariously whether or not we've achieved that level or not. That makes me sad. That makes me depressed that we are bringing up another generation of high-performance burnouts.

But that's not what this podcast is about this podcast is really about the impact we have on our family members, doesn't have to be your kids, it could be our nieces, our nephews, our sisters or cousins, even our own parents, when we set these really high bars of achievement, these high levels of performance, how does it impact other people? And how does it impact us? Right? So, I really want you to scratch your head for a second and think to yourself, hmm, how has other people's expectations impacted your decisions? Did you go into a career? Did you decide to study certain things? Do you hang out with certain people because there's an expectation? Maybe it's the car you drive the house or the neighborhood you live in? The expectations that drive your decision making often are set by other people that you follow kind of as just part of living. Was it conscious decision that you made on all those fronts? Where are you like, you know what, I really liked this neighborhood, I liked this house, this is where I belong, this is where I want to be. And yeah, that belonging word, as you hear in almost every one of my podcasts, if not all of them, that is the driving force to motivate us to do anything, let alone make decisions, that we want to feel like we belong, that we fit in, that we're doing something that matters.

So, matters, when we talk about our kids. We want to be not only good parents just kind of as a reflective thing. But we want to know that our parenting is a reflection of us as people that our kids are the mirror back to us if we're actually succeeding as parents, maybe even as people. So, pushing them to become doctors pushing them to become successful in any stroke. Yes, we say to ourselves, it's, you know, we really care, and we want our kids to be happy. But let's be honest, a lot of times we're doing it to make ourselves happy, to make ourselves able to brag to cavil to other people on how successful our children are. Because it's a reflection of who we are and how successful we are without bragging about our own accomplishments. Hmm. That's me saying stuff the way it really supposed to be. We brag about our kids, our nieces or nephews, our sisters, our brothers, because it reflects well on who we are. Nothing wrong with it, just be aware of it.

So here was the bottom line for me after I traveled around with these people for a couple days, they happen to just be on the same itinerary we were and wildly successful on a lot of benchmarks, right. And they both very accomplished doctors clearly had enough money to travel, in good style, have kids that were seemingly happy and successful. But the more I got to know this couple, and the more I realized they were incredibly anxious, almost neurotic, not almost, they were neurotic, and a lot of levels. They had all kinds of issues, and concerns. I mean, even the wife admitting to me that it took her three weeks to pack, and she probably packed and repacked about a dozen times to me what a waste of time. That's not a success. That's a tragedy. But even her comment about the coffee, it was like, what do you mean, you don't like the Greek coffee? It's like, it's terrible. We have so much better coffee in the US. I'm like, wow, Turkish coffee, Greek coffee, which is one of the same really, it's like known to be the best in the world. But okay, you don't like it? That's a bummer for you.

So, I think that sometimes not just the facade of all this success is kind of false. But there is this question in my brain is, with all the high achieving people that I tend to work with is a coach is a pitch coach, I do a lot of pitch coaching at MIT and at Wharton and all these high performance people. You start to get to know them, and you realize they are not just insecure like the rest of us, but they're even more so because they're so worried about the high achievement that everything else gets less cognitive attention, everything else gets less processed, everything else gets less kind of tension, if you will, in their own set of decisions of what they want and don't want to do, how they want to interact and react to things so that in some cases we look at these high performance people and maybe you know one of the poster children is Elon Musk. And we forgive his asocial behavior. We say you know, he's a genius so we can act like an asshole Well, not really. Not really now for Elon Musk, maybe he's very comfortable and happy being an asshole. He's got all the money in the world. And subsequently, he comes and goes as he pleases, great, but the rest of us doesn't always support our need to be successful.

So, there is a balance here, there is a balance of high performance, even enough perfection that allows us to achieve the things that we want to do, whether it's a title, a job, enough money, whatever it is, and a balance between social fitting and social acceptance. And I'm not talking about being popular, I'm just talking about having enough connection with people that not only do they support and help you, but they can promote you that they can feel like you're somebody they want to be with so that they bring you onto their team. So, they recommend you to other people, so that they help you out when you need help. So, let's take a quick sponsor break, because when I come back, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna really challenge you to think about what is a perfect life? What is perfect, and why do family often screw that definition up? We'll be right back.

This podcast was sponsored by IT cosmetics. A makeup and skincare company committed to helping all women be their confident best. It Cosmetics campaign, Confidence at Work, provides free brain science based resources, including educational articles and videos developed together with the American Confidence Institute. It Cosmetics also partners with Kiva, an international nonprofit that directly empowers underserved female entrepreneurs. Please learn more at itcosmetics.com/confidenceatwork.

Alright, so we're gonna get kind of deep now. So, strap on because I really want you to be honest with yourself. And don't do this as you're driving, obviously. But if you are in a place that you can write some stuff down, I think it really helps process and connect and then you can reflect later to on some of your thoughts. But I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions. And I really want you to think through your honest answer. Nobody's listening to you. Nobody's gonna read your notes except you. So just be honest with yourself. Well, what is a perfect life to you? What's a perfect life? Is it being or having stuff? You know, cars, fancy cars, you know, the best of everything great clothes? Is it having stuff around you that makes you feel like you're accomplished all kinds of electronic gadgets? The latest iPhone, whatever it is, is that make you feel like that's a perfect life. Is the perfect life having kids that are really successful? Is that perfect? That they are doing something that is honorably breakable, right? Is it taking great vacations, like I just went to Greece, I will tell you that it was the perfect trip. And for me perfect was I didn't have to worry about going from place to place somebody escorted us everywhere there was people are waiting for us at each terminal point. That was the perfect thing as I reduce the stress that usually ruins my vacation. But also stayed in some beautiful hotels, it was just the perfect balance of history and, and seeing things and going to museums, but also then really relaxing, getting some sunshine, seeing some beautiful sights doing some shopping. So, for me, that was perfect.

But for you, maybe you don't like traveling, and a lot of friends who hate traveling, they don't want to deal with any of the hassles. Okay, what's perfect for you? What's perfect in terms of the way you live your lifestyle? Is it getting up really early in the morning? Or sleeping late? Is it being able to watch television every day? At the end of the day? Is it to pour yourself a beautiful cocktail sometime after five? Like what's perfect for you? And not everything's gonna be perfect? Please, please, please. But like some of these things that really make it perfect living for you? Is it the people you know, knowing people that are genuinely like you or that are genuinely interesting and that are genuinely helpful? Or is it having a lot of friends? I've written in other books that you know, when we're in our 20s you know, the benchmark that perfect is having a huge bridal party. And yet most people when we surveyed them by the time, they're 60, they only have two really good friends. And the reason they quote only have two good friends is because they know that those two people really are the ones that matter. So, what is perfect for you and of course your answers will change over your lifetime because your needs and values change over your lifetime. But take this moment right now to think what's really making life perfect for you or could make life perfect for you.

Now, as we're recording this, the Ukrainian war is still going on. So as an example of circumstance, very extreme circumstance, being perfect, having a perfect life may just mean, having a place that's safe to go home to. Maybe a perfect life is not having a partner, a spouse, a relative, that is abusive. Maybe having a perfect life is having the ability to go to bed in your bed at night and sleep through the night. So, again, you don't have to be grateful for each and everything that you have in your life. But maybe take a moment to think about the things that make your life perfect today, and the things you'd like to add to them to make it more perfect going forward. And yes, I said, more perfect, because there's no such thing as perfection, there's no such thing as the absolute level of performance that we all kind of keep striving to like on a hamster wheel. They're always you're always gonna want more as I continue to earn more and more money, I keep saying I got to do more, I got to earn more. As I continue to earn more popularity, there's always more likes, more shares to have. But there's a level that I feel is enough to make me feel that I'm doing things perfectly.

That my friends, is something that I wish I knew a long time ago. It's not a compromise is not too much self-compassion. What it is, is a reality check that you know what we're doing a really good job. We're doing enough of a good job. That's perfect. So why last part, I promise is to say why does our family taint that? Why does it seem like we're never doing enough? And I shouldn't say never. But oftentimes family are the ones who are the hardest critics, even maybe more so than ourselves, that we're not doing enough that their expectations are higher. Well, it could be vicarious it could be that they feel that they haven't achieved enough and they're looking for you to cheat achieve on their behalf so they can brag about it. Right. I know. A lot of my relatives right now are very excited to tell everybody else in the world that I'm the L’Oréal spokesperson for IT Cosmetics. It's a big deal. It's not their achievement, but vicariously it is. That's awesome. And it gives them something to feel good about. I'm happy about that. But again, is that perfection? For them? I don’t know. Does it mean that I have to continue to achieve that level of things going forward? I don't I'm sure they would like to have continuous things to brag about. But for me, I've kind of like yeah, no, I did that. It's cool. It's really awesome. Yay. Yay.

So, is it bad to be driven? Absolutely not. What's bad is to be driven to a point where there's really no level of enough where you say to yourself, you know what, I'm good, I did it, or this is what I really want. This is what I really need. And not let the family factor drive that. So, my friends, you are perfect. We are perfect together when we make the decision that we are enough. And we are indeed. And I think there's enough of this podcast for now. So, see you next time. Thanks.

So, before we completely wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other episodes can be found on the website, www.AmericanconfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again, that the best way to get confidence for yourself is to give it to others and you can do it so easily just by liking and sharing this episode on your favorite social media channels. You can even give me some confidence fuel by sending in any comments about the topics I've covered, or ones you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver, thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.

EP 38: Real Confidence- Perfection is Relative…Unless You’re Related

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