What's your Method of Hiding? Part 1: Perfectionism

As I was preparing and planning for what I wanted to cover in this next season of 2022, I started thinking about some of the common things that are keeping us from building courage and being brave.

Through my work coaching women running businesses I’ve had a pretty good front row seat to all of the sneaky ways that I see fear showing up and keeping us from sharing our work, our ideas and our thoughts.

So I thought it would be a good time to dig into some of these common methods of hiding that maybe you can identify with. Some of them are pretty obvious, but today I want to start with one that I know all too well – it’s one of my most common methods of hiding that I use to protect me from vulnerability and it’s also a really sneaky one for women (I’ll explain in a bit) and that, my friends, is perfectionism.

I know are women listening to this podcast who have important messages to share but whose self-doubt and fear is keeping them quiet or hidden. I know there are women listening to this podcast who think maybe think that perfectionism doesn’t relate to them. 

I know that so many of us are caught up in the myth that we needs to be more something – more qualified, more prepared, more expert, more influential, more polished – than we are in order to share our ideas or work or to try and develop something that we really want to....

SO BEFORE WE TALK SPECIFICALLY ABOUT PERFECTIONISM AS A METHOD OF HIDING, LET’S GET INTO A LITTLE BIT OF BACKGROUND.

In historical patriarchal culture, down through the centuries: women have been excluded from political, public, and professional life. We have not (and continue to not be) considered in legislation/voting, policies, pay discrepancies, lack of legal protections, and the denial of women’s basic rights.

All of these external exclusions through the years has absolutely had internal effects in women. It has shaped how we think of ourselves and what we see as possible for our lives and work. It shaped our fears – fears of speaking up, of rocking the boat, of not pleasing others because often our livelihoods and safety actually did depend on us being small and quiet and keeping the status quo.

One of the mechanisms of actual protection for us has been hiding; whether we recognise it or not. We have hidden ourselves, our ideas, our talents for survival instincts. To avoid conflict, or criticism or any kind of emotional exposure that might cost us, we have hidden.

The result is we people-please, use language that is softer to avoid being singled out and essentially we have not felt fully free to take action in our own lives. The cost of doing this is really high.

So along with some of the more obvious ways we continue to hide in that hangover of exclusion and desire for safety, I want to also address some of the more evolved ways that we are hiding, the ones that don’t necessarily risk our physical safety any more, but that absolutely do risk our emotional safety.

I want to try to expose some of the ways that we might not realise we are hiding so we can start to think a little bit about how that is manifesting in our own lives so we can begin to come out of hiding and live a bit more freely and fully.

Perfectionism is the sneakiest of these – because on the surface, it actually shows up as productive. And productivity feels proactive. But often that acute sense of overcorrecting, overplanning, over editing, over attentive work is actually keeping us from letting our ideas or products or services out there into the wild to be seen, noticed and to breathe.

Adding on, overcomplicating and endless polishing perfecting can really be avoidance. Instead of putting something out there that is good enough; maybe it’s a website that we think needs all the bells and whistles. Maybe it’s a product we are making that we think needs professional photography before we share about it. Maybe it’s a business idea we think we need 3 offerings within before we launch it to people.

We can build as we go, start somewhere and take a small leap that can propel you into action. Beginning is better than perfect. Perfect never comes so we need to start somewhere and keep having a learning attitude, an evolving attitude to whatever it is we are doing.

Brene Brown talks about perfectionism being a 20 ton shield we lug around trying to protect us when in fact it’s really preventing us from being seen.

Perfectionism is an guise we often use to guard ourselves from all angles – covering all of the bases extra extra carefully by busying ourselves over minutiae, spending endless time agonising over how things look or sound and trying to combat any potential criticism before it comes.

It also leads us into a vicious cycle of shame, because it is positioned as a noble quality, something to strive for when actually it’s not only impossible to achieve, but if we fixate on it and inevitably find that no matter how much effort we put in, we are met with any kind of criticism or judgement, we tell ourselves it’s because it wasn’t perfect enough – and so the cycle of shame starts to swirl around. “I could have done more, made it better etc”

When really, the logic of perfectionism is actually the thing that is faulty and not one single person who is out there, doing the work, sharing their ideas is actually immune from criticism or judgement – no matter what the level of perfectionism they think might protect them.

What we can do instead of hiding by way of perfectionism is try to do our best. What we can do is be proud of how we show up for ourselves and our idea, despite any flaws that might appear or any judgement that may follow.

What we can do is put down the armour of perfectionism and allow our ideas to be seen and heard so that we can learn about them and go through the unavoidable process of our ideas becoming, rather than hoping they come out perfect the first time out the gate.

When it comes down to it, trying and having a go is really self-supportive and offers you compassion and curiosity. Perfectionism is centred around others and what they think, how they might respond and really takes you out of the equation of the thing you are working on – which isn’t a supportive or sustainable way to approach things.

Within all of this, I want you to know that it’s so understandable that we want to hide in this way. Risking being seen or judged is so viscerally scary, and our body knows it. So if you’re listening to this and thinking “this is me” please don’t double down into shame – but let it be a call to freedom for you to know that perfect isn’t really going to protect you and that you are more resilient than you realise.

And ultimately know that your hiding is a huge loss for the rest of the world - that so many incredible ideas/thoughts/wisdom/talents are not being seen, not heard, not shared because we are hiding or fixated on perfection as a form of protection.

When amazing women hide their ideas, thoughts, creations then the world misses out on expressions of goodness, of insight, of beauty, of honesty, of empathy and innovation. And we need you – we need your imperfect thoughts, ideas and creations to be out there in the world so we can find them and so you can enjoy the fulfilment of creating something of your own that feels important and true.