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**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, what if that culture or expectation, once the company has been more established, it's established some degree of longevity, performance, but those expectations never go away. Or, you know, we say expectations as if people/our bosses are going to say that those are their expectations. But... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, that's just wrong. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[laughs\] Simple as that. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's just wrong. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** But it creates this conflict, because if you care and you have these high standards, to say "I want to perform well in my job, and yet the feedback I'm getting is I need to do more or do better, but at what cost? Is it costing me my health or other aspects of my life, relationships or other th... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. It's easy if you have a time-constrained job, I suppose. If your work is performed within an hour spectrum. The most standard way is 9:00 to 5:00 in terms of those hours. If you're doing your job or performing within those areas, then maybe the health constraints and the family life constraint... |
What if it's for mental health reasons, seeing a therapist? What if it's going to the gym at lunchtime because that's when you can fit it in? Everybody's an individual. Sure, you can maybe get up earlier potentially, but the point is what if you needed a more flexible schedule and your expectations at work were too rig... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, and what if, along with that, to say, "Well, I perceive, I believe that my bosses' expectations are that I have to keep churning and burning, just keep going." So I can't work out, I can't go to the doctor, I don't have time, I gotta eat my lunch at my desk, because I need to keep output... |
So it's interesting talking about this too from a research perspective. There's an article in the Harvard Business Review that talked about this, and this research asked the question - are perfectionists better performers at work? Do they, in comparison, output more, or in what way are they better performers? So there ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Gotcha. Yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[28:09\] So these studies took place from the 1980s to today, and examined the relationship between perfectionism and the factors that impact employees' effectiveness. These studies included nearly 25,000 working-age individuals. That's a pretty big sample size. So what they've found, the sho... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What are you really asking, right? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, right. Because somebody is trying to fit my response or feedback to them into their construct that they've already got, which is the other question leading their question. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Manipulation to some degree even. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, but not always unintentional. So with this research, what they've found is there's two distinct, but related sub-dimensions of perfectionism. See, so researchers tried to look at this construct from a number of different angles and go, "What can we find?" So they delineated between excel... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Got that? \[laughs\] So excellence-seeking perfectionists not only try to evaluate their own performance, but also - guess what - hold this high-performance expectation for others in their lives. So I'm not only talking about the workplace, but in the home too. Whereas failure-avoiding perfect... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** They sure do, yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Because if I'm trying to live up to a standard, this excellence-seeking, or avoid not quite right or good enough, I mean, I'm really going to struggle with putting any work out there. Ironically, some of these, like the failure avoiding perfectionism, could look like procrastination. I don't k... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Sure, everybody does, yeah. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, that's the awareness that comes into play. It's like, what is making me not do this? ...which can often define the next step towards doing it. You may not be doing something because of the shield we talked about earlier. You may be seeking to do it well, and maybe that's a variation of perfect... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[32:00\] Yeah. So I think about these-- I'm like, how can I make it even simpler? Excellence-seeking is the relentless burn; like, you've gotta go and go, and burning the candle on both ends phenomenon. Whereas failure-avoiding is the buffering from the bad. I'm always trying to buffer. So am... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I never considered the procrastination side being a dimension, as they say here, a sub-dimension of perfectionism... You know, like the opposite - you're not trying to excel, you're trying to under-excel by not failing, or avoiding failure, and that's an interesting extreme that you see on both side... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, these researchers didn't delineate between those, but that's an awesome question. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, because there's always extremes, right and left of a scenario of a spectrum. So what's in the middle ground? ...which might be a normal performing perfectionism standard, I don't know. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Well, so we can talk about it in terms of what is healthy, or healthier perfectionism, or normal neurotic... \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's funny. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** You have to look at what you're focusing on. So in this context, if I'm looking at whether I'm trying to burn something and do it to a high standard or buffer against, that focus is going to provide different outcomes. So the beneficial effects, like the good side of perfectionism, were strong... |
So that's the beneficial side, but the detrimental side was stronger for those who actually have this failure-avoiding, but also still had the excellent seeking, which makes a lot of sense. If I've got both sides, I want to buffer from the bad, but then I'm trying to excel; I mean, it's hokey-pokey. I take two steps fo... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Would it be then if you identify as a perfectionist, and to agree with what this research has said around excellence-seeking and failure-avoiding to balance those two? So if you have more of a balance of those aspects-- so recognizing that as a perfectionist, if this is how you identify, as a perfec... |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** \[36:20\] Right. What is healthy perfectionism then? If you've been listening like, "Okay, well, that's great. Now I know what doesn't work. Tell me what does." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yes, please. What does work? |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** It is really -- having these high standards is not a bad thing. You can have those and work towards them, because they're what motivate you forward. I mean, I am always considering this, and I think a lot of people who have goals and going, "I want to get better, I want to challenge myself, I ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I think for some reason because showing up pays in dividends. You need to keep showing up or-- I don't know, there's numbers in the fact that if you keep showing up and keep doing, that something will result of it. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah, and so this sense of focus on effort and opportunity. Does it matter to me? Is it worth it if I fail? I think I've shared this in other episodes about Brené Brown's work as it relates to daring greatly. It's the man in the arena who counts. It's the one who's willing to get dirty, experi... |
The University of Texas at Austin had specifics in regards to this, related to healthy striving. They said this - setting standards that are high, but are within reach. If I want to go, "How can I make mini-goals, so that I'm to some degree again buffering the possibility of threat or loss?" Enjoying the process. |
I tend to make sense of this so much in the lane of health and exercise, and going, "What am I trying to work on, what am I getting better at?" This is why people run marathons. This is why-- I mean, why do you ride your bike, Adam? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I like it. It's fun. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, it's-- yeah, I mean, that's a deep subject, but yeah, it's the process. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** And the outcome together, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Sure. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** The process that moves you towards where you want to get to. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. Now, you have to have some goals, but you also have to step in between there to get you there. That's the process. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** Yeah. And so with that, just like your son said, you've gotta bounce back. If you fall, you practice getting back up. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's right. |
**Mireille Reece, PsyD:** And look, if you put yourself out there and say, "This is what I care most about, and here's what I'm optimizing for", isn't it pretty normal to think you're gonna have some anxiety? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I would think so. Yeah, because you're gonna think about-- I'm not really sure how you even define anxiety, but let me take a stab at how it might manifest... If you are concerned about an outcome and you're carefully watching for its progress, the tension that you feel as that comes about or not is... |
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