Does any of this sound familiar?
You spend 2 hours (or more) creating a blog post, and then when you read it back you hear that little voice in your head saying “it’s just not right”
Or you record a video to use on your website, or to promote your coaching programme, and when you watch it back all you can see is the little mistakes you made, or how bad – insert in here whatever you always fret over about your appearance – looks, and the voice says “you can’t use that, it’s awful!”
You have done most of the content for your on-line coaching programme, but you haven’t promoted it yet because “something’s missing” or “it’s not quite right”
This is the voice of the little devil that is perfectionism!
Listening to her will seriously damage your business, and your confidence.
Perfectionism holds you back and slows you down.
[bctt tweet=”Perfectionism holds you back and slows you down.”]
While you’re faffing over a blog post or a page on your website, no-one is reading it and getting to know what you can do for them.
While you’re constantly re-visiting and tweaking your freebie before you promote it, you’re not building your list of subscribers.
While you’re busy getting your products and programmes just right, you’re not making any money, and your potential clients are not getting the benefit of them.
And all the while, you’re constantly questioning yourself and your ability to build your business!!
There’s no doubt about it, perfectionism is not a virtue, it is a mind mischief devil that needs to be flicked off your shoulder every time she starts chattering in your ear.
So how do we deal with her?
As with any kind of mind mischief, awareness is the first step. You need to identify where you are listening to her, and how that’s preventing you from getting stuff done, and letting it go.
It also helps to understand why you listen to her, why stuff has to be ‘just so’ before you’re happy to let others see it or hear it.
It is, of course, another form of fear. Fear of having your stuff, and therefore YOU, being judged badly by others. So you re-do it over and over, trying to get it perfect, to get it so good everyone will love it, and there can be no room for criticism. But while you’re doing that, no-one is seeing it and your business stands still (but hey-ho at least nobody is saying anything bad about it!!)
You have got to start accepting that good enough is good enough!
Here’s the thing, the only way you can know whether something is good enough, is to put it out there and let your clients and potential clients give you feedback. Then based on that feedback, you can tweak it if you really need to.
The more you practice doing that, the easier it gets, because you will soon realise that your ‘imperfect’ content is actually more than good enough to get the results you want.
Here’s a couple of questions you can ask yourself to help you to decide whether to listen to the perfectionism devil, or to give her a flick.
“What is it that I am trying to convey here, what is it that I want my clients to get from reading this, listening to this, or watching this?”
“Does this piece of content get my point across?”
If the answer to this second question is yes, then it’s good to go, and you can release it and move on to the next thing you need to be doing.
I dare you to try it, and let me know how much more you get done
Karen x
Would it help to have a group of other lovely Coaches you could bounce your ‘stuff’ off to get some honest feedback and reassurance that it is more than good enough?
You can as a member of th Coaches’ Zone Facebook Group – click on the button to Join Us
