Episode 148 Perfectionism Is Damaging Our Self Esteem And Cripples Our Growth (1) (1)

Perfectionism is Damaging Our Self-esteem and Cripples Our Growth

We live in a society that tells us it is not OK to make mistakes or show weakness. Perfectionism is our society’s favorite flaw and is celebrated, but it is really damaging our self-esteem because we will always make mistakes – we’re human! No wonder we have a common mindset of “not being good enough.” Perfectionism will have us hiding ourselves, not really letting people know the true versions of ourselves, leaving us unsupported and lonely.

Let’s begin challenging that unhealthy mindset and start looking at our weaknesses and mistakes as stepping stones instead of millstones.

The Greatest Showman Clip


Self-esteem Boot Camp

Your self-image affects the way you see the ENTIRE WORLD! Come to this boot camp and let’s take a look at how you’re creating some painful ways of seeing your own value.

We’re also going to talk about that mean inner critic who wants to tell you all the ways you aren’t measuring up. Learn how to talk to that critic more than you listen to it. You’ll leave this boot camp with some simple tools you can use every single day.

You are invaluable and your value never changes with your outside circumstances. You can start internalizing that infinite value.

August 6, 7, 8, @ 10:30 am MDT

Sign up for the Self-Esteem Boot Camp


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Full Transcript

Tina Gosney  00:05

Are your family relationships feeling disconnected? Maybe contentious? If you’re ready to begin repairing relationships, and connect on a whole new level, so that you can feel more peace and love in your family? Then come with me. I’m going to show you how. I’m Tina Gosney, a certified life and advanced relationship coach. And I’m so glad you’re here. Now, let’s get started.

Tina Gosney  00:37

Welcome to the podcast today. I’m so glad you’re here. This is Tina, I’m your coach for the episode.

Tina Gosney  00:43

 Do you know what the number one shame trigger is for women? It is not being perfect. That is what triggers us into shame. Not having the perfect looks, body house family career, life choices, relationships, you name it. If we can judge it, we’re going to try to be perfect. And if we aren’t, it’s going to send us into some shame.

Tina Gosney  01:09

Do you know what the number one shame trigger is for men. It’s not being seen as capable, competent or strong.

Tina Gosney  01:20

Shame is this feeling that you get when you think there’s something wrong with you? It’s like this deep, dark place that you go when you’re feeling all that just the depth of humanity and how flawed you really are. And we think that we’re the only ones that are fluid. And it’s going to keep us hiding who we really are our authentic self. It has is hiding our true self. And we put up a fake affront. We have this public front that we show everybody else. But deep down we know, we know that there’s really something wrong with us. And it keeps us from letting anyone else really know us in a true way.

Tina Gosney  02:06

But do you know what that is? Our that’s what our soul really wants. Deep down. That’s what our soul wants and needs is to be truly known for your true, authentic real self.

Tina Gosney  02:24

Have you ever seen The Greatest Showman? When that movie came out a few years ago we watched it so many times. And there’s this clip on YouTube that I love. It’s about how they when they were trying to get the green light to go ahead and make the movie. And the woman who plays the bearded she plays the bearded woman. Her name is Keala Settle. I probably didn’t say that. Right. But that’s her name.

Tina Gosney  02:54

And The Greatest Showman, if you’re not familiar with it is a movie about PT Barnum, about his life and about his work, how he created the circus. And he shows this in the movie, he exploited people who were different, who were not like everybody else, and for sure they were not what we would consider today to be perfect.

Tina Gosney  03:14

So at the reading of this movie, they all the actors, all of the the chorus, the performers had come in and they were going to perform the songs for the for the studio to hopefully get the green light to go ahead and make this movie. And like I said, Keala played one of the main characters, she played the bearded woman. And it was her turn to sing. The song called This is Me. And she was really nervous. You could see in this clip, how nervous she is.

Tina Gosney  03:53

She was standing behind the music stand. And she even talks about how that stand was her safety. And then she started singing, and she got past the first part. And she decided to step out from behind the stand. And she went out and she faced the rest of the chorus who was backing her up. And you can just see in this clip, how she comes alive. She gets her courage, she starts to belting out the music and man does she have a voice she has a beautiful voice. And she was feeling the words of the song.

Tina Gosney  04:29

These are the words of the song. Well, just the first part of it. It says

Tina Gosney  04:32

I’m not a stranger to the dark

Tina Gosney  04:34

hideaway they say because we don’t want your broken parts.

Tina Gosney  04:38

I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars

Tina Gosney  04:40

run away they say

Tina Gosney  04:41

no one will love you as you are.

Tina Gosney  04:44

But I won’t let them break me down to dust.

Tina Gosney  04:46

I know that there’s a place

Tina Gosney  04:47

for us for we are glorious.

Tina Gosney  04:50

When the sharpest words want to cut me down.

Tina Gosney  04:52

I’m going to send a flood going to drown them out.

Tina Gosney  04:55

I’m brave, I’m bruised. I’m who I meant to be.

Tina Gosney  04:59

This is me

Tina Gosney  05:00

Look out, because here I come

Tina Gosney  05:01

and I’m marching onto the beat drum.

Tina Gosney  05:04

I’m not scared to be seen, I make no apologies,

Tina Gosney  05:07

this is me.

Tina Gosney  05:09

I don’t even do those words justice as I say them, I want to break into song, but I will spare you that part. Because she just sings this whole beautifully and the chorus behind it just, every time I watch it, I just get emotional. And watching her get emotional. And all the people that are singing with her are feeling it just like she is.

Tina Gosney  05:33

And then at one point towards the end of the song, you can tell she starts to lose her courage. And she grabs Hugh Jackman’s hand, and she holds on to it, and he holds on to her. That was beautiful, I have a link in the show notes. So you can go watch the clip. I’ve watched it so many times every single time, it just gets me when we show our true selves. We are brave and vulnerable. And then we get more healthy inside of ourselves.

Tina Gosney  06:12

Because self esteem does not come from somewhere out there. It doesn’t come from anywhere or anything outside of us or any even anybody. It comes from inside of us the very part that we are too afraid to embrace and to show other people.

Tina Gosney  06:29

We have this private self vs the Public Self. We have the person that we know we are inside, vs the person that we show other people. We have the person that we want to be vs the person that we know, we really are deep down. And the more all of those things match all of those different versions of us. The more in alignment they all are, the healthier we are, and the greater our self esteem.

Tina Gosney  06:59

I’m going to be teaching a bootcamp next week on self esteem. And we’re going to go into things like how do we give ourselves compassion for our flaws and our mistakes? How do we forgive ourselves? How are we honest with ourselves about our flaws and mistakes, and not pretend like we don’t have them?

Tina Gosney  07:22

You know, perfectionism, which is what this episode is about, but perfectionism culture, it invades our society. And there’s this feeling that no matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be good enough. In fact, I’ve done quite a bit of speaking. And I usually ask people at the beginning, what are your biggest struggles, and that is what they all basically boil down to, no matter how hard I work, I’m never going to be good enough. Let’s start challenging that. Let’s look inward for our worth and value. Instead of looking to what society in our culture tells us we’re supposed to look to, we don’t need to look to all those other things.

Tina Gosney  08:09

Now, this is a pivotal bootcamp that I’m teaching. We will never have healthy relationships with other people until we can step out that shield of perfectionism. It’s a protection, we use it as a shield. We can only have healthy relationships with ourselves by viewing our failures and our mistakes in a different way than we do now. There’s no getting around it. And there’s a link in the show notes. I would love to have you at that bootcamp.

Tina Gosney  08:43

Perfectionism is not a virtue. It’s a crutch. It’s something that we lean on, so we won’t have to be vulnerable. And we won’t have to show the part of us that. That isn’t perfect. It isn’t that this flood. In fact, this is perfectionism is called our society’s favorite flaw. We wear it like a badge of honor, like it’s a good thing. In fact, a lot of people will in job interviews, they’ll even say I’m a perfectionist. Like that’s like one of the list of the criteria that that makes them more desirable for the job. And we get immediate payoff for perfectionism too. We get to feel accomplished. We get to have other people congratulating us giving us accolades saying Hey, good job or what you did there. And for at least a moment or two, we have some relief. That Oh, finally I’ve arrived finally I am good enough.

Tina Gosney  09:48

But if you’re a true perfectionist, that moment doesn’t last long. All that praise fades quickly. And then there’s another challenge right around the corner. And we have to try harder even harder to outdo ourselves from No time the before. And if you’re a perfectionist, you are picking up that baton and you are running with it and you’re beating yourself with it. And you are trying to do all of that with no mistakes. Because mistakes, show weakness, mistakes, will they open us up to the judgments and the criticism from others.

Tina Gosney  10:24

Perfectionism hurts us. It hurts our children, it hurts our families.

Tina Gosney  10:31

Perfectionism is not about working really hard and trying to do your best. Perfectionism is all about working hard to avoid the criticism and judgment of other people. It is always looking out, thinking, what are people going to say about me? I need to control the way other people think about me and what they say. This is not the same thing as striving for excellence, which comes from a healthy place that comes from inward. And anything inside something inside of us that says I just want to do my best. And I’m going to make mistakes, but I’m still going to try and I’m going to I just want to do a good job. That’s what striving for excellence does. That is different than perfectionism.

Tina Gosney  11:17

Perfectionism cripples our growth because it faces outward. And when we’re a perfectionist, we are avoid the growth and development of ourselves. Because we’re purely trying to avoid making mistakes. Mistakes bring us the criticism and judgment of other people. And we’re afraid of what other people will think of us. So we sacrifice ourselves and everything in us to look good in somebody else’s eyes.

Tina Gosney  11:46

Now, I might know a thing about perfectionism, a thing or two, I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist. I know how hard it is to live with that perfectionist mindset.

Tina Gosney  12:01

But why do we even get it in the first place? What drives a perfectionist to become a perfectionist? It is our society, and it is our culture. But there’s something even behind that. And we call this a reflected sense of self. So there’s three parts to this reflected sense of self. And this is really one of the parts of differentiation, which is what I help my clients with. To improve their relationships, we have to have a solid sense of self rather a reflected sense of self.

Tina Gosney  12:35

Okay, so there are three main parts to our reflected sense of self.

Tina Gosney  12:40

First, we imagine what other people are thinking about us. And that’s usually coming from some thing we have in our head that we just imagined that that’s what they’re thinking about us. We tell ourselves that it’s true that they are thinking that we think that we know what other people are thinking. We don’t We but our brain will tell us that we do.

Tina Gosney  13:06

So first we imagine, oh, this person is thinking that about me. And then we imagine from that thing that we think that they’re thinking about us, that they’re judging us, either good or bad. So that’s step number two. Step number one, this is what they’re thinking. Step number two, this is they’re thinking that it’s good or it’s bad.

Tina Gosney  13:34

Number three, we take that judgment of what we think the other person is thinking. And then we internalize that as our worth and our value. We get our own sense of ourself, according to what we think their judgment is that we made up.

Tina Gosney  13:52

This is a reflected sense of self. This is not being solid in your skin.

Tina Gosney  13:58

We all start off life with a reflected sense of self. We are too young, to know who we are. We are trying to figure out who we are. So we’re looking to other people to tell us who we are, especially our family, especially our parents. And hopefully, our parents reflect back to us that we are so worthy and so valuable, and that we don’t have to be perfect to be loved and accepted. And we develop that solid sense of self as we go through our childhood.

Tina Gosney  14:34

And hopefully, our love and acceptance in our home wasn’t tied to our accomplishments and our performance. And if we didn’t perform appropriately, then love and approval was withheld. But if we performed correctly, then we got the love and approval we needed. We’re supposed to grow out of this reflected sense of self. We’re supposed to grow up and start look Being more inward and less outward, and and find our value from within instead of outside of us. But if no one shows us how to do that, we’re probably going to stay in a reflected sense of self for the rest of our lives.

Tina Gosney  15:16

Most people do not come out of childhood with a solid sense of self. Most people don’t have a set of parents who will properly reflect back the worth and value that is not tied to your performance or your accomplishments. So then we look to society, we keep looking, we leave our home, we we look to society, we like to friends, and we look to whatever social media and society holds up this unrealistic view of what we’re supposed to be like that standard that we see that perfect standard is unrealistic. And so that’s how we’re measuring ourselves.

Tina Gosney  15:59

And that is the, when we have that reflected sense of self. That’s step number two, that’s the judgment we think that other people are looking at us with. So no wonder, we think that we’re never going to be good enough. Even though we’re practically killing ourselves to get there. Many people live their entire lives in a reflected sense of themselves. They never feel solid in their own skin. They don’t ever get to a point where they know their own value and worth. And they. And they just keep living into the judgments internalizing the perceived judgments of others. And this feels terrible, and it’s not healthy.

Tina Gosney  16:39

If we are looking outside of ourselves for our value, and that measuring stick is perfection, then we will always be lacking. And just think about if you’re feeling this right now, everybody else is feeling the same way. But we think we’re the only one. So we go around trying to be better than everybody else thinking, I just need to be better, I need to do better, I need to work harder, I need to do this because I am not good enough. So no wonder we are feeling terrible about ourselves and more disconnected from others at the same time. It is not written into our DNA to live like this.

Tina Gosney  17:17

Because perfectionism keeps us separate from other people. It keeps us at arm’s length, it does not allow us to truly connect with another person.

Tina Gosney  17:28

I taught music for over three decades, I saw so much evolution in what children were internalizing and how they were approaching their lessons, and how parents were doing the same thing. Especially the last 10 years, I saw young young children putting so much pressure on themselves, that by the age of seven, the pressure was too much. And they wanted to quit at the age of seven. That’s the age I started playing the piano. I saw parents putting so much pressure on their children properly, I’m sure they were such good meaning parents wanting to help their kids improve. But the way that the pressure was put on was not an always in a great way.

Tina Gosney  18:18

And there was some of the joy that was lost in music. It wasn’t so fun anymore. Music was used to be you could approach it from many different angles. But now it has to be serious. And it has to be competitive, and you have to have a talent and a passion for it. It doesn’t feel like there’s a choice anymore for kids and an option for kids who just want to learn how to play because they like it. And they think that it’s fun. Everything has to be a performance now. This affects our self esteem.

Tina Gosney  18:57

And our self esteem affects our relationships. When relationships break down, everything breaks down. Now Keana the woman who sang the song in the in the video clip, she had to grab Hugh Jackman’s hand, towards the end, she had bravery, she had courage and then she started to lose it. She needed a support from another person. And we can get that when we grab on to each other. And we can stand for each other. Even after she came out from behind that music stand. She was feeling the courage and then she was feeling shaky, and she needed a support. That is relationship. We need to find our own value and worth internally. But then externally, we need each other we need to support each other. And perfectionism keeps us from doing this.

Tina Gosney  19:55

It just says you can’t make a mistake it’s going to affect your worth and then people won’t like you, and they will judge you and they will criticize you. And so we put up this big, giant, strong, thick brick wall that keeps us climbing that insurmountable perfectionism, and isolated from others.

Tina Gosney  20:19

So let’s start using this sentence instead.

Tina Gosney  20:22

I am enough, and I matter despite, and then you finish the sentence.

Tina Gosney  20:28

I’m enough and I matter despite I just yelled at my kid.

Tina Gosney  20:33

I’m enough and I matter despite I’ve been unemployed for six months.

Tina Gosney  20:38

I’m enough and I matter, despite I’m 100 pounds overweight.

Tina Gosney  20:43

I’m enough and I matter despite that I’m divorced.

Tina Gosney  20:47

How do you finish that sentence? Whatever it is, however, you finish that sentence is important. Because how do you matter? What are you judging yourself? Now? What are you trying to keep yourself protected from so that no one else will find out. That’s the way you feel in that end of that sentence with. And this is just the start, that sentence is just the start of how we begin breaking down that shield, that big shield of perfectionism and moving into a healthier version of ourselves.

Tina Gosney  21:26

At this self esteem bootcamp, we’re going to do that, or we’re going to do so much more, we have to challenge that inner critic inside of our head, that tells us that we have to be perfect, or that no one is going to like us, we need to start talking back to that inner critic, more than we listen and believe what it says. This is not positive affirmations. This is putting our focus in a way that is healthy for us. That will give us a healthy sense of our own failures and weaknesses. And look at them as stepping stones that we can learn from, rather than millstones that will drag us down.

Tina Gosney  22:06

It takes courage to look at your failures as stepping stones, especially when you try and you’ve been trying to hide them for so many years. And you’ve been trying to even avoid having mistakes. And so living into that perfectionism. Like that is so hard to start having courage to look and be honest and look at yourself. But we can’t do it without compassion for ourselves, that we’re flawed, and that we do make mistakes, and that life is hard. And being human is hard.

Tina Gosney  22:42

Here’s my takeaway for today. Perfectionism is not healthy, it’s a cancer. But that cancer has spread through our entire society. It is celebrated. We’re celebrating the cancer of perfectionism. You can’t tell society to stop all this madness and start doing things differently. But you always have a choice. To decide what you are going to do with what society gives you. You can decide to start dropping that perfectionist mindset and living into a more authentic, flawed, 100% worthy version of yourself. And that will be very uncomfortable. But being uncomfortable is the price that you pay to have the life that you want.

Tina Gosney  23:31

That’s my takeaway for today. What is your takeaway? Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram. And is there some way that you can share your takeaway with someone that you love and impact their life today?

Tina Gosney  23:46

If your inner critic is loud, and you want to begin learning how to stop the noise, you want to start recovering from perfectionism. Then I will see you at the self esteem boot camp next week. Check the show notes for the link to get registered.

Tina Gosney  24:03

Having a bunch of knowledge inside your head doesn’t produce change.

Tina Gosney  24:08

If you’re ready to move your knowledge into action, then let’s talk set up a free 30 minute consultation with me by going to Tina gosney.com. Click the work with me button on the main menu. I’m looking forward to having a conversation with