Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - The Science Of Overcoming Perfectionism | Thomas Curran

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Actionable advice on working with one of the few socially acceptable vices.Whilst striving for perfection might seem logical on some level, it’s not actually attainable. And the research shows it can lead to burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, reduced productivity, and reduced resilience.Thomas Curran is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Science at the London School of Economics and is the author of The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough. In this episode we talk about:The definition of perfectionism – it’s more than just high standardsThe 3 flavors of perfectionismThe surprising findings on perfectionism and gender Perfectionism VS imposter syndrome The root of perfectionism The variables that lead to perfectionism Thomas’ critiques on capitalism and growth mindsetHow to actually implement mantras like “progress not perfection” and “embracing good enough”4 elements to combat imperfectionism The recipe for achieving inner abundanceHow to make good work without caring what other people think of you?And parenting and perfectionism Related Episodes:Do You Feel Like an Imposter? | Dr. Valerie Young (Co-Interviewed by Dan's Wife, Bianca!) How To End The War With Your Body | Sonya Renee Taylor.The Science of Failing Well | Amy EdmondsonDr. Mark Epstein On: How To Transform Your Neuroses Into “Little Shmoos”The Zen of Therapy | Mark Epstein Weird Dreams, Family Relationships, and Collective Trauma I Dr. Mark EpsteinSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/thomas-curranAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, how we doing everybody? I am not the first to make this observation, but perfectionism has become one of the very few socially acceptable vices. You can brag or humble brag about how you struggle with perfectionism, but it's one of those things that's not embarrassing and is almost like a badge of honor. However, it should not be, because perfectionism can be incredibly damaging. While striving for perfection might seem logical and laudable on some level, perfection is actually not attainable.

And the research shows that the pursuit of it can lead to burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, reduced productivity and reduced resilience in the face of life's inevitable vexations and vicissitudes. My guest today is Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap, Embracing the Power of Good Enough. He's a professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Science at the London School

of Economics. And in this conversation, we talk about the definition of perfectionism. It is, by the way, more than just having high standards. The three flavors of perfectionism, the surprising findings on perfectionism and gender, the difference between perfectionism and imposter syndrome, the roots of perfectionism, the variables that lead to it for ways to combat perfectionism, the recipe for achieving inner abundance, how to make good work without caring what other people think about you,

and parenting and perfectionism. This is a fascinating conversation and it has stuck with me in the weeks since we conducted it. I suspect it will have the same effect on you. Thomas Curran coming up. But first time for some BSP, blatant self promotion. There are still, I believe, a few more tickets available for the Meditation Party Retreat that I'm doing with Sabine Selassie and Jeff Warren at the Omega Institute, which is outside

of New York City. We'll be doing a weekend filled with meditation and conversation. There's even a dance party. If you can't make the event, coming up in May, we've got another one coming up in October. Meanwhile, I also want to point out that May is Mental Health Awareness Month and as we all know meditation is a great way to improve your mental health, which is why I co-founded the 10% Happier Meditation app. I highly recommend it.

You can start with a course that teaches you the basics and then build from there. Download the app for free wherever you find your apps. I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford. And we're the presenters of British Scandal. And in our latest series, Hitler's Angel, we tell the story of scandalous beauty Diana Mosley, British aristocrat, Mitford sister, and fascist sympathizer.

Like so many great British stories, it starts at a lavish garden party. Diana meets the dashing fascist Oswald Mosley. She's captivated by his politics, but also by his very good looks. It's not a classic rom-com story, but when she falls in love with Mosley, she's on a collision course with her family, her friends and her whole country. There is some romance though. The couple tied the knot in a ceremony organised by a great, uncelebrated wedding planner, Adolf Hitler. So it's less

Notting Hill, more Nuremberg. When Britain took on the Nazis, Diana had to choose between love or betrayal. This is the story of Diana Mosley on her journey from glamorous socialite to political prisoner. Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. And we're the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And we are really excited about our latest season because we are talking about someone very, very special.

You're so sweet. A fashion icon. Well, actually, You're so sweet. A fashion icon. Well, actually, just put this on. A beautiful woman. Your words, not mine. Someone who came out of Croydon and took the world by storm. Okay, Anna, don't tell them where I live. A muse, a mother, and a supermodel who defined the 90s.

I don't remember doing the last one. Wow, Emily, not you. Obviously, I mean Kate Moss. Oh, I always get us confused. Because you're both so small. How dare you. We are gonna dive back into Kate's 90s heyday and her insatiable desire to say yes to absolutely everything life has to offer. The parties, the Hollywood heartthrobs, the rock star bad boys, have I said parties? You did mention the parties, but saying yes to excess

comes at a price as Kate spirals out of control and risks losing everything she's worked for. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad free on Wondery Plus on Apple podcasts or the Wondery app. Thomas Curran, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure.

It's a very interesting subject. Why is it so interesting for you? You've dedicated a lot of time to perfectionism. Why? I am definitely a perfectionist. So I would say it's a bit of a research is me search in that respect. I think academia is a really challenging profession, just like any high level profession, there's a lot of hours needed to get to the top.

It's grueling. You have to work on your own and there's a lot of pressure. And when I was younger, I put myself under a lot of strain working evenings, weekends, Christmas day, just to try to climb the ladder. And that worked to a certain degree. I certainly did do well in my job, but at the same time, it came at a heavy cost of my mental health and I reached a point in my life where I was working too hard, things just got on top of me and I had a mental breakdown, panic, anxiety.

It really just came collapsing in very suddenly. mental breakdown, panic, anxiety. It really just came collapsing in very suddenly. And it took me many, many months to come to the realization that really that was just self-imposed, pressure self-imposed, trying to put myself well beyond comfort. It ultimately culminated in some really difficult mental health challenges. And that was when I started to think, actually, just high pressure, high expectation, perfectionism essentially. Is this something that's afflicting me?

Is it something I need to think twice about? So I did some introspection of myself and also introspected on what was going on around me and I saw perfectionism in quite a few, my colleagues and friends and family. So it was something that I saw that wasn't just something that I was struggling with, something that a lot of people were struggling with. And that really kind of sparked my journey into learning more about what perfectionism is and what it does to us.

Well, how would you define it? Perfectionism, I think you have to start with perfectionism as very root, and it's very root is a sense of deficit, a sense of lack, a sense that we really don't feel like we're good enough, and as a consequence, our whole existence really is to try and prove to other people and all around us that we're not flawed, that we're hyperfunctional, that we are competent, that we have skills and abilities, and that we matter essentially in the world. And so perfectionism is, yes, high standards, but it's fused with

insecurity, insecurity about how we're looking, how we're appearing to other people. So it's so important to start with perfectionism from that place of deficit because you can begin to understand why perfectionism can be so problematic if you start there. It comes down to insufficiency in some way. Yeah, a sense that we're just less than in some way. Deep down, we know in our interiors that we're imperfect, that we're a fallible and exhaustible creature.

We know that. But into the world, we're trying to impression manage all the time to try to disguise and conceal those shortcomings, mistakes from everyone. And of course, that's a really exhausting existence. It means we hide, it means we move ourselves away from people, which can create a lot of social disconnection. It means we hide, it means we move ourselves away from people, which can create a lot of social disconnection.

It means we're very hypersensitive to mistakes. And when we fail publicly, that can have a massive impact on our self-esteem. So it makes us quite defensive and avoid challenging situations. And over time, as was my experience, it can create some really quite significant mental health problems.

You talked about how deep down we know we're flawed, we don't want anybody else to see it. From a Buddhist standpoint, and this argument has been made best by my friend Dr. Mark Epstein, who's a psychiatrist and a Buddhist. From a Buddhist standpoint, he argues deep down we know there's nothing to us, that you can't find some core nugget of Thomas behind your eyes, between your ears, you know, you feel like a self and of course you are a self on some level, but deep down there is no self to identify and yet we look out at the world and everybody else seems pretty real and so from there you get this compensatory, performative set of behaviors that can lead to the deleterious physical and psychological effects that you're describing.

Yeah, and that's so important for us to recognize that perfectionism is really a relational trait. It's often thought about as very individualistic. I'm a perfectionist. I have high standards and goals for myself, but it operates in the social world, it doesn't operate in a vacuum. And the reason why we're setting those high standards and the reason why we're so fearful of making mistakes and failing is because we're worried about what other people will think, what they'll say, and how less than we might appear in their eyes. And that's why perfectionism, by the way, is way more than just high self-set standards. There's a very pernicious social imperfectionism whereby we kind of go through the world feeling that other people expect us to be perfect and they're watching waiting to pass if they're not. And we can also point those high standards onto other

people too, right? We can expect you to be perfect because I expect myself to be perfect. It's also the case that you've got to be perfect too. So this is very much a relational trait and it has big implications for the way we interact with each other. This is something I think about a lot and talk about probably too much, but if you talk about perfectionism as a relational issue, we think other people expect perfection from us so that we try to achieve this impossible thing and then of course we then turn around and expect it from others. It really speaks to the fact that our relational capacities

as a species, which is our biggest strength, is also our biggest vulnerability. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. I think it's true, particularly in today's society. You know, the last thing we wanna do is be excommunicated from the tribe. Conformity is a really important part of our evolutionary history.

And if we live in a world where everybody else is perfect, then of course, even though that's completely irrational ideal, we're going to start to think that's decidedly rational. And in this sense, I think this is why we're seeing a lot of perfectionism these days. This is why the data that we've collated over many, many years is showing that perfectionism is on the rise among people. It's because society in the world around us has come to expect more of us and all we ever see is perfection and as a consequence just to fit in,

I suppose, to feel connected, we feel like we must radiate perfection too. Can you say more about what your data has shown? I mean, I believe you've called perfectionism the hidden epidemic. That's right. Yeah, we think perfectionism is really something that's hiding in plain sight. I suppose disguised by it is very ubiquity. I think everybody out there feels, obviously some people are high on the spectrum, other people are low on the spectrum, but everybody out there can relate to that feeling of being in not enough, feeling like we're less than. It's a very common, I guess, feeling right now. And

what we've done over many, many years now is try to get a picture of what's happening to levels of perfectionism at a broad societal level. So are we seeing these feelings grow in intensity in more recent generations? And when you map levels of perfectionism across time, our data starts in 1989, you see a stark rise in levels of perfectionism among young people. But what's really interesting is we measure three types of perfectionism, self-oriented which is that inner drive, socially prescribed which is that social imperfection that everybody expects me to be perfect, and other oriented, that's perfectionism turned outwards onto other people. What we're seeing in the data is it's that social element of perfectionism that's going up exponentially right now. It's on a very, very steep curve and that's worrying because what we know about exponential curves is that they

grow really, really fast, way faster than we might imagine. And so if you project those numbers into the future, you see some scary levels socially prescribed perfectionism if this is unchecked. And I think that's really indicative of young people saying the pressures out there in wider society of growing and they find them really difficult to cope with. I want to in a minute get back into the three flavors of perfectionism. Kind of like a shitty version of Baskin Robbins, which probably you don't have over there in the UK, but it's an ice cream store with many flavors here in the United States. I want to get back into the three flavors in a minute, but you talk about the expectations from society and it getting worse.

What is driving that? Is it, I mean, one's mind goes directly to social media. Yes, social media is a huge, huge part of the puzzle. There's no doubt about that. We see levels of socially prescribed perfectionism start to really skyrocket around 2007, 2008. Now that dates, obviously, significant for a number of reasons, but Apple released the iPhone in 2007 and these social media platforms were basically put into our lives 24-7. And that's only intensified as we've gone on through the years. So social media, I don't think there's any doubt there's a

big circumstantial correlation between social media and the rise of perfectionism. But there are other pressures out there. Social media is one, but schools and colleges have become a lot more competitive. And I think young people really feel that parents, parental practices are changing too. Parents are seeing that it's becoming more competitive to get into college. And so they're passing that pressure on to kids in case of things like helicoptering behaviors and high expectations, jobs become more insecure and the hustle and grind culture that pervades the workplace right now is feeding perfectionistic tendencies too. So there are many I think different

factors that we can point to but overall I think it's fair to say that young people are telling us that these pressures are high and rising. I want to make a note that we're going to come back to parenting toward the end of this interview, but let's go back to the three flavors. You ticked them off before, but I think it's worth spending a little bit more time in them. There's self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed, which we talked a little bit about, that being on an exponential rise, and then other oriented perfectionism. Can you just touch on each of these in some greater depth?

Of course, yeah. So over many, many years, clinicians, researchers have been trying to figure out what perfectionism looks like, what's the etiology of perfectionism, and they've talked to perfectionistic people, mainly in clinical settings, but also in community settings, too. And what they see time and time again is perfectionism is much more nuanced than just high self-set goals. This idea that I need to be perfect and nothing but perfect. We also see perfectionism manifested in ways of thinking about other people and in particular, other people's expectations. So just as I expect myself to be perfect, that same expectation is what I perceive

to be placed on me by other people. So they expect me to be perfect. And if I haven't lived up to that standard, then they're watching the weight is what I perceive to be placed on me by other people. So they expect me to be perfect. And if I haven't lived up to that standard, then they're watching the weighting the pounds, you know, socially prescribed perfectionists hear snide remarks from people everywhere they go because they feel like they're being evaluated and judged. And there's a third element of perfectionism too, that perfectionist people tell us time and time again comes through in their narrative. And that's perfectionism that's turned outwards onto other people.

So I expect myself to be perfect and I'm really critical when I haven't lived up to those standards. So it's only fair that you're going to need to be perfect too. That's the standard I hold myself to and that's the standard you must hold yourself to as well. So this other inter-perfectionistic trait really is, looks like excessive burdensome expectations that are placed on other people. And they'll certainly let you know when you've put in substandard

performances. So these are the three types of perfection to see a lot. They make up a sort of broad multi-dimensional perfectionism characteristic and they all work on sliding scales. So you're not a self-oriented perfectionist or not self-oriented perfectionist, you kind of higher or lower up the spectrum and the same for others. So every person will have their own sort of constellation where they sit on those spectrums. Some will be higher in self, some will be higher on others, some will be higher on socially prescribed. But nevertheless, those are the three traits that we see time and time again in perfectionist

people. They seem really related. I mean, they're quite obviously related that the, you know, if you're self-oriented in your perfectionism, that might be because of the socially prescribed perfectionism. And then of course that all inexorably leads to, or in many cases, inexorably leads to expecting unreasonable things from other people. Absolutely. These things lead into each other. And so if you're high and self oriented,

you're likely to be higher on social and other two, there's a positive correlation we see time and time again, but it's not a perfect correlation. And there, there is some independence across these three factors. But nevertheless, you're absolutely right. Yeah, there's, there's high correlations. And if you're high on one, you're likely to be higher on the other, but there will always within that be differences from person to person and perfectionism will look different from person to person. So someone is really high on self-orientedness, for instance, is a quintessential over-striver that be really hardened and things haven't gone so well. Socially prescribed perfectionist looks like the quintessential, perhaps neurotic, who's worried about what other people think and

is constantly trying to chase high standards to please other people. And other will be the kind of overbearing boss, I suppose, you see in the workplace. Perhaps you just can't accept anything less than perfection from his team or her team. So it looks different depending on which form is dominant, but nevertheless, you're absolutely right. These three things are related. Is anybody not a perfectionist? I mean, are there people out there who just truly don't give a shit about what other people's

expectations are and are able to apply expectations to themselves that are reasonable? Yeah, I mean, you can point to certain examples where you would say there are people who are very low on the perfectionism spectrum. Again, I think it's really important we think about this as a spectrum, that nobody's going to be completely free of these tendencies. I think particularly in the modern society, we're going to feel at some level, there's a little bit of tension between, you know, that imperfect real self and however people expect us to look or perform.

But nevertheless, yes, you know, I've met so many people who are very low on the perfectionism spectrum. And I'm very, very envious how they're able to just take setbacks on the chin. No problem. Keep moving forward. There's a real joy actually in their existence that they radiate serenity, because they just completely eased themselves. And it's a wonderful thing when you meet someone who's able to do that. But most of us are sort of in the middle, we're not quite on that end of the spectrum,

but nevertheless, we'll have certain hangups around displaying imperfection and worries about managing impressions. And then some of us like myself in the past, I would say we're on the very extreme end where it kind of comes to take over our lives completely. Are there gender differences? This is a really interesting question and we have done a lot of research and the data that I mentioned earlier we can also use to try to detect gender differences. Huge data sets, about 46,000 young people across 30 odd years.

And we have data on gender, so we can try to ascertain whether gender explains variability, so between person differences and levels of perfectionism. And what we find time and time again is they can't really do it. It doesn't seem to be much difference in mean levels anyway of perfectionism of these three forms of perfectionism

among males and females, which is a really interesting finding, one we didn't expect. What is the difference between perfectionism and imposter syndrome? They're very closely linked. If you think about perfectionism, there's a sense of not being enough, right? And I don't feel like I'm enough. And then so therefore I need to project into the world this perfect persona, this person that in my mind's eye, I want other people to see. Then of course you're going to feel a lot of imposterism because that's not you. Right? You know, it's kind of like, you can graph it as a triangle, where it starts with never enough, goes to perfectionism and then feeds into feelings of imposter syndrome, which goes back into feeling not enough. And

so this cycle of perfection, not feeling enough, feeling like an imposter and so on and so on. So they're very, very closely linked. I wouldn't say they're exactly the same thing, but if you're trying to project a perfect person into it, then you're going to feel like an imposter on a regular basis. So would you say the root of all of this is insufficiency, not feeling like you're enough? I mean, that's where it starts, 100. Bernie Brown describes perfectionism as coming from, you know, shame-based fears of not feeling enough. And I think that's a very eloquent description

of what perfectionism is and where it starts. And I think it's so, so important, Dan, that we start there because we can often confuse perfectionism with related characteristics, things like meticulousness, conscientiousness, things that come from a very active, optimistic place of wanting to grow, wanting to improve, wanting to do better. Perfectionism doesn't come from that place. It looks like those things because it has excessively high standards

baked in, but it comes from a place of insecurity, a place of lack, a place of shame-based fear of not feeling like we're enough. And that's the crucial distinction. And once we start there, we can really begin to understand why it is that we see imperfectionism time and time again people like me and others who have carried fiction around with them and Suffered incredibly in terms of their psychological health Do you have a sense of why you and others are and maybe me actually? I'm not quite sure rank so highly on the

Perfectionism scale as opposed to other people who we described earlier these mythical Perfectionism scale as opposed to other people who we described earlier these mythical Non-perfectionists who could take failure on the chin etc etc. Is it just factory settings? Is it parenting? Well, I don't know what the variables might be Yeah so in my book I try to describe the genesis of perfectionism and what I came to learn from The work I've done in this area in the work of others is perfectionism is an intricate blend of nature and nurture There will be some inbuilt predisposition to perfectionism, but unfortunately that's just the way the programs and I think, you know, there's something quite comforting about that,

actually, that there's nothing we can do about it. It's just the way we, and the way we are. And, and twin studies show that about 30 to 40% of perfectionism is inherited, it's genetic, and that's quite a lot, a bit lower than most personality traits, about half of personality, the way we turn out is genetic. Perfection is a bit lower, but it's still quite a lot genetic. So we'll be born with a certain predisposition towards these tendencies, but nevertheless, that still leaves a lot for the environment to explain. And when we're talking about environment factors,

we're talking about all sorts of influences, not just parenting, but influences in the social world, broader culture, schools, and our peer groups. And as we go to college and into the workforce, and of course, once we begin to consume types of digital and analog media, all of these things can feed on those basic underlying predispositions. So it's an intricate blend of both, but you can be genetically disposed to perfection. You've kind of touched on this, but maybe not explicitly, but your book contains a pretty pointed critique of capitalism as a contributor and exacerbator here. I want to be clear. First of all, a non-anti-capitalist capitalism has done an amazing job of bringing us to a point in time

where we enjoy incredible amounts of abundance. I mean, it's an incredibly successful system lifting billions of people out of poverty. This is not a critique on the system. This is a critique of where we are in the chronology of capitalism. What we have at the moment in time is a situation where increases in economic growth and that impact on meeting human needs have started to weaken. Since 2010, the US economy has expanded hugely, about $10 trillion of aggregate expansion. But at that time, we're seeing living standards among the poorest four. We've just seen the PISA results, reading and mathematics among children in the US is down. Life expectancy is down. And all of these human needs are not being

met by this growth that's occurring in the economy. And if the growth isn't meeting human needs, then it's empty growth. It's hollow growth. And so what I'm saying in the book is, in the final chapter is that we have to think a little bit more imaginatively right now in a world where what seems to be occurring is that we're finding high levels of anxiety, high levels of depression, and the imperative to push ourselves to continually do, have, and be more, to kind of strive from a place of scarcity, which is essentially what capitalism thrives on scarcity, is really having harmful impacts on people's psychology. And I'm not saying we should ditch the growth imperative,

but what I'm saying is I think we should become more agnostic about growth. And if the economy is growing, it's amazing, particularly if it's meeting human needs. But if human needs are being met, if life expects the increase in educational outcomes, or increase in poverty, decrease, and then the economy isn't growing, is that such a bad thing? I think these are questions that we have to address because perfectionism does not thrive under conditions of plenty and the conditions of abundance, it thrives under conditions of scarcity and scarcity is a rocket fuel for growth in the capitalist economy. So my critique of capitalism is really a critique of where we are in the point in

time. And I'm just asking us to imagine a different world where we don't ditch capitalism, but we become a bit more agnostic about growth and try to focus on economies that meet human needs instead. I want to talk about what we can do as individuals at some point, because this is one of these problems where we need to think about it structurally and individually. So I want to talk in great detail about what we can do about perfectionism in our own lives, in our own families. But since we're on the sort of bigger structural note, let's just stay here for a second. I don't know that I have a cogent thesis on capitalism. You know, it has somebody who grew up watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and, you know, MTV Cribs and I'm

conditioned to want and so it's hard for me to imagine a world, a good world in which there is no capitalism and, you know, and looking at some of the experiments in the last century around communism didn't turn out so well. Maybe I don't know enough about ways to do it better. Having said that, I can't imagine a kind of capitalism that doesn't require insufficiency as its rocket fuel, because in order for me to sell you stuff, I need to convince you that you need stuff and that what you have now is incomplete. Absolutely. I completely agree. And that's the central thesis of the book. But I think

we have to talk about it, because what's the alternative? The alternative is you talk about the individual. And we say to you as individuals to break free of the shackles of these shame based fears of never being enough. Now, there are many individual techniques that we can use and you're a proponent of one of, I think, the most effective, which is meditation and mindfulness. Absolutely don't get me wrong. But I think we also have to have a conversation about how structurally embedded these feelings are too, because I think awareness, understanding is itself a part of a rehabilitation process of healing. If we can understand and know that there's a broader context

to these feelings, that at some level, I'm supposed to feel like this. This isn't me malfunctioning. This is how I'm supposed to feel. And I think that takes an incredible weight of shame away and allows us to approach rehabilitation and methods and practices of coming through our anxiety, coming through our depression or whatever it might be that we're suffering from, from a place of informed perspective rather than a place of feeling like everything's up to me and I have to push through and I

have to control everything. I think, you know, I talk about radical acceptance in the book. I think this is really important. Once we understand that, we can radically accept that this is the way things are. And I think we're in a much better place to come through. That's why I wanted to bring this to the reader's attention

in my book because I think it's such an important part of the conversation that we don't have enough. Now, I just want to come back to this because I think I agree with you a hundred percent. It's not an ideal system, but it's the best system we know. Right. And what I'm saying is that I think it's important for us to recognize that, you know, you don't throw the baby out with a bath water, but I do think we have to have conversation about how we can make it better, how we can take the

capitalist model and make it work for people. And this is what we did, by the way, in the post-war years, right? We looked at building out the middle classes. We looked at using the growth imperative to make the limit standards of the every person, the average Joe better. You know, this is the golden year of the affluent society. We have done this before. This is not beyond the wit of our intelligence to be able to think about how

we can more creatively and humanely use capitalism to meet the needs of people. But at the moment, we have a very unchained capitalism that works for the very few and creating incredible inequalities, incredible poverty. At this moment in time, it seems to be zero sum. What's taken from one end of the spectrum is taken from the other. And we're finding that people are finding it more, particularly young people struggling to get houses because assets have been pumped up. For example, they're drowning in student debt because of the expense of college. They're putting off having families. All of these things, by the way, I think also a factor in terms of their perfectionism, because they're feeling like there's a disconnect between where they should be and where they actually are.

I just feel like we need to use capitalism more intelligently and think about how we can make it better, not throw it out completely. Let me say a bunch of words and see if I can restate through the lens of my own various biases and interpretations what you're trying to say, and then you tell me if I'm close. Okay. I'm doing this not because I'm trying to test my own intelligence, but I'm doing this just to make sure that I understand you correctly and by extension, everybody listening understands you correctly.

So, one of the critiques of what I do, and maybe this describes you as well, is you, Dan, are pushing mindfulness and other self-improvement techniques on people. But what you're really doing is making them more compliant players in a toxic system. The way I think about it is actually, and I think this is what I'm hearing you say, it's like both and. I think we should be thinking quite incisively and critically and pointedly about the structures of our culture and society. And also, there's a way in which if you go too far down that rabbit hole, that's

disempowering because, you know, there's only so much that we can do as individuals or even as communities, frankly. So, I think you should do what you feel comfortable doing on the macro issues. And you still have your own life where you have much more agency. And there are things you can do within whatever structure you find yourself to be a happier, better person. And finally, as it pertains to the system and the structures, even merely, and this is something you just said, merely understanding how they work can help you

on the micro level because you don't take your own stuff so personally. As Sonia Renee Taylor, the great proponent of self-love, says, and I've quoted her many times on this tip, as she likes to say, when I hear self-criticism, I recognize it as the voice of the system. Okay, so I said a lot of words there.

Did some or all of it land for you? That's so good. I love that quote. It's a really, really nice way to think about the interconnection between ourselves as individuals and what we can do, but also the way that we're conditioned on an almost minute-by-minute basis, particularly with the advent of social media. These things are in our lives 24-7. They're really difficult to escape.

It's lust for more, to have more, to be more, to look more attractive, fitter, healthy, and all the rest of it. It's really difficult to escape. I think it's really important that we recognize that there is a broader context. And as I said, I think that can be just as healing as any individual technique that we can apply. But it's so important that we don't just stop there, because as you mentioned, you can start to fall into the trap of feeling like a victim and blaming everybody and all around you. It can create a lot of resentment and ultimately make you feel worse.

So we have to make sure we don't jump out of one box into another, like the individual box straight into the social box. Like you said, we have to make sure that those two things are in alignment and that we're working on ourselves at the same time As we're recognizing that there are broader forces I'm just writing that down because probably gonna use a lot of these arguments in my own book

And I like the way you phrase it because it is both it's both and plus it's both you should pay attention to the structural and you should you know, pay attention to how you're living your own life and understanding the structural can help you lead your own life more seamlessly because well, a if you're doing something, it can give you a sense of agency and B because if you understand the structural, you don't take your own stuff. So personally, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it can be more distressing sometimes if we try all of these individual practices and at the end of them still find ourselves engulfed in this system. That can be more distressing than if we're able to understand and apply those practices at the same time as recognizing that we're still going to be bombarded with these pressures and that that's okay, that that's part and parcel of a process of getting better, of turning the corner on a mental health difficulty. Yeah, and it can be useful to remember that no human has ever existed in a perfect world.

Absolutely. Coming up, Thomas Curran talks about the four elements to combat perfectionism. life full of romances, sieges and tragedy. But who was the real Cleopatra? It feels like her story has been told by others with their own agenda for centuries. But her legacy is enduring. And so we're going to dive into how her story has evolved all the way up to today. I am so excited to talk about Cleopatra Peter.

Love Cleopatra. She is an icon. She's the most famous woman in antiquity. It's got to be up there with the most famous woman in antiquity. It's gotta be up there with the most famous women of all time. But I think there's a huge gap between how familiar people are with the idea of her

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Download the app for free wherever you get your apps. Okay, I do want to talk about what we can do as individuals, but before we get there, you referenced earlier that in your work you've looked not only at what perfectionism is, how widespread it is, but also what it does to our minds and our bodies. Can you just say a little bit more on that last score? So the first part of the book is trying to unpack what perfectionism is and importantly, what it does to us. We've covered what it is, but what it does to us, I think, is just as important. So perfectionism makes us extremely vulnerable to mental health difficulties for

two reasons. The first is that it disconnects us from people. So we move away from people because we feel like if we put ourselves into challenging situations and we fail or make mistakes publicly, that we're gonna be judged So that has a tendency to move this away from people as a tendency to block intimate honest and Reciprocal warm relationships, right? And over time that disconnection could lead to a lot of loneliness and significant mental health Problems is called a social disconnection model of perfectionism But there's a second reason why perfectionism is problematic for mental health. And that's because it makes us extremely vulnerable to setbacks, making mistakes,

failing, because our self-esteem is tied to how we appear. And once that perfect appearance is shattered in a moment of slip up or screw up or whatever it might be, we go in on ourselves, harshly self-critical, our self-esteem plummets, and we brood and ruminate over that mistake for a long, long time. And we see this time and time again in the lab, you put perfectionist people in stressful situations and you look at their shame, look at their guilt. It spikes way more than people who score lower on the perfectionism spectrum. So this built in vulnerability, again, left untreated, left unchecked, can lead to some really problematic mental health outcomes, not just, you know, one mental health, like anxiety or

depression, but a whole plethora of them. It's called a trans diagnostic risk factor. It can lead to anxiety, depression, body image related complications, self-presentational concerns. There's a whole plethora of negative mental health outcomes that we know are very highly correlated perfectionism, particularly socially prescribed perfectionism because of this built-in vulnerability. How do we know where we rank on the perfectionism spectrum scale, because you have emphasized that it is a scale.

I'll just talk about myself for a second, because I don't have access to anybody else's mind right now. I think I might rank quite highly, and I do have a lot of anxiety. However, when things go wrong, I do freak out, but I generally tend to have grit and stubbornness. Where I struggle much more is that if somebody is giving me feedback, I can be brittle and thin skinned because I hear it as, you're a terrible person. I've done a lot of work in this particular sphere, but I suspect this is all related I can be brittle and thin skinned because I hear it as you're a terrible person.

I've done a lot of work in this particular sphere, but I suspect this is all related to perfectionism. And so I ask for your opinion and also some more thoughts on how we can figure out how perfectionistic we all are and how to figure out what kind of noxious tendrils it's sending out into various aspects of our lives. Well Dan, can I ask you a question? Yes. When you've done something well, we focused a lot on your setbacks, but what happens when you do something well? How do you feel? At my worst, I'm like devaluing it and worrying about the next thing, and at my best, I'm enjoying it and then devaluing it and moving on to the next thing and at my best, I'm enjoying it and then devaluing it and moving on to

the next thing. Yeah. So you might have a little bit of perfectionism. This is a real telltale sign because it's, you know, we all can feel a little bit shit in those moments where we've encountered setbacks and failures, but what really is distinctive about perfection is what happens when we succeed. There's a single inability to hold onto that success, enjoy it, take it in, drink it in, because of the reason he described. I'm very much like you, I downplay it, I put it down to luck or happenstance. I

prefer to do that because I don't want to feel like in this moment it's enough, that actually there's got to be more. The better I do, the better I'm expected to do. So the, when we do succeed, it's a bit of a poison challenge for perfectionist people because it sets a new floor. And so it doesn't allow us to enjoy to savor because there has to be the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. You know, and that's the really difficult and challenging thing about perfectionism. It has a lot of difficulty when you count as setbacksbacks, failures, a lot of ruminative thinking, a lot of shame and guilt. But also when we happen to have done something well, it doesn't allow us to enjoy that success. So it kind of holds us in a bind that makes us dissatisfied most of the time.

And do you think the root of all of that is perfectionism instead of the root of all of it being fear or anxiety? That below the fear and anxiety comes out of the perfectionism, instead of the root of all of it being fear or anxiety, that below the fear and the anxiety comes out of the perfectionism, not the other way around? I mean, my opinion would say this when I do research in the area of perfectionism, so I would say this. But nevertheless, it's my strong belief that what sits underneath that, like at the root, is a sense that I'm not good enough, I'm not perfect enough. I know in my interiors that I'm flawed, that I'm exhaustible,

but I can't let other people know that. And so all of that fear comes from trying to hide and conceal what we know deep down to be a fallible human being. And it's perfectionism that bridges the gap, right? Just trying to bridge the gap all the time between that fallible person we know we are deep down and that perfect person we're trying to project into the world. And

that's where the fear comes from. That's where the shame comes from. That's where the guilt comes from. Any time we've revealed a chink in the armory. That's interesting. So the primordial wound is insufficiency and that can create anxiety and other suboptimal mental patterns, but it's not the anxiety that gives rise to everything else. No, exactly right. And you're an expert in perfectionism,

would somebody who's an expert in anxiety say you've got it all wrong? Probably. But that's the beautiful thing about the social sciences. We're not physicists, we're not biologists. We'll deal with abstract things. And so at some level we have to make abstractions. And by the way, I think this is really important for listeners to know that when

we work in the social sciences, we interpret data, right? And our cognitive biases and the experiences we bring to the table impact how we interpret that data. I want it in my book to be really clear where I come from because it has a profound impact on how I interpret the data that I see. And it's the same for every single social scientist. And I think it's really important listeners to be aware that when you read these books, it's so important to think about where they're coming from and what background are they bringing

to it because it can impact on how we interpret the findings and the data. And I think we have to be really open about that social sciences. I don't feel we're open enough about it, but what I would say is that, yes, there will be disagreements to this, right? It going back to your original question, there will be disagreements to this, I'm sure. And I'm willing to have the conversation because I'm a very open person and I love to learn, but it's my opinion based on the data that I've collected. Other people have collected in my own experiences that perfectionism is really

Driving a lot of the anxiety that's young surface neurosis So we see on the surface the fear the shame and I think sits underneath a lot of the more Observable mental health problems we're seeing in broader society Do you agree with people like Dabor Mate that you know modern society is making us sick and that this is a big part of it? Yeah, I'm very much in the Gabor Mate camp. I loved your conversation with him. I don't really have words to describe how impressed Gabor. I think his knowledge and expertise and experience is really profound.

And some of the things he writes about, some of the things he says is extremely profound. I'm certainly in his camp of thinking that a lot of disease, mental health, neurosis, complications that we're seeing are very much down to a malfunctioning society, not a malfunctioning economy. Again, I want to go back to this. This is not me saying throw the whole thing out and burn it all down. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that we have reached a point in time where that growth is slowing, as I mentioned before, and we're meeting challenges now that we've

never met before. We've had it very, very easy for many, many decades. And now we're starting to encounter challenges where more and more growth isn't being met with better living standards, mental health and physical health, and I think we have to confront that. And I'm very much in the gable of Meth-able methicam when it comes to solutions to those problems. I'm trying to think about how I can look at this through a Buddhist lens of, you know, is it anxiety at the root of this or is it perfection at the root of this or insufficiency,

sorry, at the root of this? And you know, I'm probably going to mangle this, so please, Buddhist scholars, critique me. The three poisons of the mind per the Buddha were greed, hatred or aversion. So greed, wanting stuff, hatred or aversion, not wanting or not liking, and then delusion, which is confusion and just not seeing clearly what's happening and I believe that in Buddhism Fear is an aspect of aversion and I wonder whether maybe insufficiency That feeling of you're not enough is an aspect of desire or greed and so

In some ways there's a way to understand this within the Buddhist structure. And I don't know, maybe the Buddhists have broken this down in terms of links of causality, or maybe it's just enough to understand that there are these three poisons at play. To the best of your ability, if you can just be aware of what's going on, you won't be so owned by it. Yeah, I mean, all roads lead to Zen Buddhism. Yeah, I mean, all roads lead to Zen Buddhism. I mean, there's a very influential psychoanalyst called Karen Horne who's basically the pioneer in the study of perfectionism. She was talking about this decades ago, 40s, 50s. And she saw it in women a lot in her clinic who were struggling with a sense of internal conflict, conflict that arose from their own needs and desires.

And the fact that they had to mask those needs, bend those needs to conform to a societal ideal. This idea that she called it the tyrannies of shoulds. So it should be attractive, should be a good mother, should be a good partner and all the rest of it. These are very, so at that time, I mean, still we have a lot of hangover from patriarchy, but at that time it's very aggressive patriarchy and we were expected to be somebody or somebody perfect. And that created a lot of tension love in a conflict in which perfectionism to her mind was used to compensate for. And Karen Horne herself was a perfectionistic person. She had the same inner conflicts and tensions. And as she developed her thinking, she came to the conclusion that the answer

was wholehearted acceptance of who we are, contentment. And she became enamored by Zen Buddhism, mindfulness, and meditation as ways to really center ourselves and reflect on being content inside an imperfect, fallible self to kind of almost reconnect with our basic humanity, which is imperfect people. I'm not a scholar of Buddhism, but I know that in my own life, meditation and mindfulness have been very helpful in terms of my own perfectionism. And I would agree with everything you said.

I think there's a lot of teaching in Buddhism that we can apply to perfectionism, particularly when it comes to treatment. I always just the way my mind works, probably one of the more obnoxious aspects of capitalism. But you know, as I was preparing for this interview and thinking about my own work, I was thinking about what we're going to talk in greater tactical detail about what we can do to address this sense of insufficiency. I was thinking of like a title for some sort of course to counter program against some of the messages from the capitalistic striving world. And I was thinking that the course could be called slower, fatter and wiser. I mean, because that kind of is where this stuff for me has taken me.

It's like, on my best days, I'm not worried about how I look. I'm taking my time. I'm unhurried and I'm wiser. I love that. I actually think you should copyright that today. It's a book. It's a podcast. It's going viral.

Yeah, okay, well, I'll reach out, maybe we can partner on it. We're not here to talk about my entrepreneurial ideas, we're here to talk about your ideas. And so I do want to, and obviously they're very closely linked. When you talk about your phrase here is the power of good enough. So you've referenced Buddhism and mindfulness. And so we can feel free to go back on that, but like what's in the list of tools for you to access this power of good enough,

which is your rallying cry, your antidote to perfectionism. Yeah, so I'm gonna give you another quote here from another psychologist, but I think he's a really good one. Carl Rogers. He said, what I am is good enough as long as I was allowed to be it openly. And this is I think what goes back to this point that we're just laughing about, right? Like, fat or slower. What was the other one? Wiser. Wiser. Yeah, it goes back to this idea that, you know, these are all part of my common humanity.

I'm not perfect. I have flaws. I have a shortcomings. There are things that I do really well, but there are also things I do really shit. Like I can't sing, for example, and my guitar playing is terrible, but nevertheless, these are things that I love to do. And why should the fact that I'm, I suck at them be any impediment to me enjoying them? Right.

This kind of seed of good enough really is in this idea that it's really good enough is really part of our, of our humanity. We are imperfect. And so in order for us to embrace that, we need to do a few things. First of all, I think vulnerability is really, really important. I know this has been done a lot. I've mentioned Brené Brown in this episode. I mentioned her, I am very influential in my own thinking, but her perspective on this is very important. Vulnerability has to be the first step in turning the corner on perfectionism. We have to be willing to

embrace all of ourselves and all of our feelings and go into the world and open ourselves up to a little bit of criticism and open ourselves up to maybe failing or doing something badly. Because in in those moments we learn a lot about what a perfectionism is really in its essence. And it's just a prop for our self-esteem. And so the more we can get comfortable with discomfort, the more we can put ourselves into situations where we might make mistakes, we might fail. Let's say you don't feel you're a very good public speaker, we'll put your hand up to do a talk at work. Let's say you don't feel that you have good management skills, we'll put your hand up to do a talk at work. Let's say you don't feel that you have good management skills. We'll put your hand up to lead on a project. Let's say you love listening to Bruce Springsteen or pick up a guitar.

You're going to suck, but at the end of the day, it's not about that. It's about putting something into the world, doing something, being brave enough to do it, being brave enough to show up. These are things that Brady Brown talks about a lot. That is so, so, so important. And if we allow ourselves to do that, we're going to have to do something else too. Because if we allow ourselves to show more of ourselves, put ourselves into a be brave, be vulnerable, we're going to make mistakes, going to hit setbacks. These things are just going to happen. We're going to feel discomfort and we have to allow that in. Don't try and push it away,

avoid it, or even in a kind of somehow rehabilitator on the redemptive arc of growth. You hear this a lot, right? You got to grow. You got to grow. Keep growing. Use that failure as a learning opportunity. Great.

Now just let it be for a moment. Just sit there with it and employ a lot of self-compassion and kindness to ourselves in those moments. Right. Just allow it in and say, it's okay. I'm an, you know, we're all fallible and everybody makes mistakes. Next time we will know what to do and hopefully we won't make the same mistake again, but if we do again, it's about kindness.

It's about telling ourselves that it's okay. And these are things that we have to practice and employ on a day to day basis, all the time, reminding ourselves that it's important we show up. And that when we think how they said, but it's important that we're kind to us, kind to ourselves and also others in that same situation. Right. And I think this is so important for a couple of reasons. One, because it liberates us from affection. That's like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism,

but also it brings us closer to other people because there's nothing more connecting than people who are real, the people that show their imperfections, the people are able to embrace all of themselves. Suddenly we breathe a sigh of relief when we meet those people because there's a recognition of common humanity there between me and that person that I know deep down in Floyd. And here is a person who's embracing those things, putting themselves out there and has, as I mentioned, right at the top of the show, you know, that kind of joy, that serenity that comes with just embracing all of ourselves and all of our feelings and all of our imperfections. It brings us together. It brings us closer. So not only do we get a grip

of our perfections, it also brings us closer to other people. And that's so important in terms of our mental health. And you just have to keep practicing. Look, that isn't going to be easy. There is no quick fix. There's no life hack. These things are just fruit practice and practice and practice and putting ourselves out out at letting things go. We've both written books, Dan. This is the most difficult thing to do as a perfectionist because suddenly you've got to let something go into the world and people are going to let you know right after you click submit what they think.

And it's going to be good. It's going to be bad. It's going to be indifferent. And as a perfectionist, we can record from this situation because we don't want to put ourselves in a situation where people could criticize us. But what we learn when we let things go and we show up is actually the consequences of somebody giving us a one star review are nowhere near as catastrophic as what we think they are. It teaches us something extremely

important actually about what's most important and that's progress, not perfection. So you have to practice these things. You have to let things go. You have to show up. You have to be brave. You have to be one of all these things that way more erudite writers than myself have talked about in a lot more depth. But those are so, so important. Vulnerability, self-kindness, keep practicing it, get comfortable with the discomfort and keep going. And that's really the roots of self-acceptance. And I also have mentioned it, but I think this is also important, radical acceptance, which is the other end of the piece, right? The societal end of the piece. We also at the same time have to be accepting of our

situation and circumstances. Right. That's also really, really important. We can want them to change. We can agitate for that change. Absolutely. I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm also saying it's also important to be recognized. There are limps to things we can control. Right. And that sometimes it just is shit. Do you know what I mean? Like I come from quite a poor background. This is something I've had to really try and practice because I've seen everyone and all around me grow up with less obstacles. But at the end of the day, it's part of the character. It builds us and accepting those things are just part and parcel of what it means to live in an unfair society and an equal society can really also help us psychologically that we don't grow resentment and that we don't grow a victimhood mentality. So on top of that vulnerability, on top of that self-compassion and kindness, it's so important to be radically accepting of our circumstances. And if we can employ those things in tandem, then we will find no need for perfectionism.

I have a million questions, but just to make sure I let everything you just said land, I'll start by restating it again. I'm hearing at least four elements in the recipe for combating perfectionism. One is mindfulness, which is often developed through mindfulness meditation, which allows you to sit and observe your thoughts without being so owned by them. So then you might see perfectionistic tendencies flip through the mind and you don't have to chase them or act them out like, as Joseph Goldstein says, tiny dictators. So that's one.

Two would be vulnerability or realness, the willingness to admit to yourself and others what your flaws are. Three that is often a great accompaniment. If you're a sommelier of the mind, a great accompanying drink with your vulnerability would be self-compassion. So the ability to not only be open about your struggles, but to talk to yourself about your struggles the way you would talk to a good friend. So to not wallow in them and to treat yourself like a coach instead of a Unrelenting unremitting drill sergeant and then the fourth is radical acceptance because a big element in this is understanding

What are the societal forces that have brought us to this state mentally psychologically? And yes, we need to be aware of them and do our best to vote and volunteer and be an activist But we alone cannot change them and even we and our best friends and everybody we know on the internet may not be able to change it. So some sort of radical acceptance of the fact that this is the way things are right now. I will do my best in this lifetime to change them, but I need to have some degree of serenity in the face of the larger forces. Am I restating your argument with some degree of serenity in the face of the larger forces.

Am I restating your argument with some degree of accuracy? Definitely. I think I needed you to edit my book, actually. That was great. I believe there's a special place in heaven for the heaven I don't believe in for editors. It's an incredible skill. I don't have those skills, so you would not have wanted me to edit it. Well, you did a really good job.

Summarizing my monologue there, I thought that was excellent. Absolutely. Couldn't agree anymore. Those are the touch points. That's the blueprint. And, you know, I think it's really important to say that it's not easy. This is the thing I think we also need to be open and honest about. You know, we do live in a society where managing impressions is really, really important and we're going to succumb all the time to our

perfectionism. It's just bound to happen. You know, we're going to put that mask back on again because in that situation, things are too overwhelming and we need it. I think this is where the self-compassion piece and the meditation is so important because in those moments we can go in on ourselves and almost castigate ourselves for not employing the right, for not doing it right, for not trying to do the self kindness right or not trying to do the vulnerability right. That's not how we should be. We should recognise that this is hard, that we are going to slip up and it's a jagged path, you know. And also that we may never be completely free and that is also okay. The journey is the most important thing.

That we're putting ourselves and pointing our compass in a different direction. That is the most important thing. So I think it's so important for people to recognize that it's also okay if they feel perfectionism is needed in certain situations and they succumb to it from time to time. It's just very normal. I do it. Many, many millions and millions of people all around us do it too. I totally agree with you. I think self-compassion is necessary on the road to self-compassion. You're going to fuck up self-compassion, so even if it's your goal. Coming up, Thomas talks about his critiques of the growth mindset, some practices to help you achieve inner abundance, and how to make good work without caring about what other people think of you. Oh and we also talked about perfectionism and parenting.

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now in hardcover or digital editions wherever you get your books. the White House now in hardcover or digital editions wherever you get your books. Okay, so having said that, you did bring me to one of the other questions I wanted to ask, which is you several paragraphs ago said something about, you know, kind of a gentle, good-natured critique of what is often referred to as the growth mindset. You go on about this in the book, too. The growth mindset is this idea that if you tell yourself that you're not a fixed entity, that you're always changing and you retain the capacity to grow, well, then somebody points out to you an area where you're struggling, you can take it in and handle it

appropriately because you define yourself, you anchor your identity to this capacity to grow. However, you've linked it a little bit to the infinite, gaping, insatiable maw of capitalism where growth is required at all costs and we might somehow channel this into our personal lives. And yet you did also say, well, it's not about the destination, it's the journey. So I'm just wondering, are is there any contradiction in your messages? Of course, there's always contradictions I sometimes joke when my wife says something like this to me. I say I never said that I wasn't a hypocrite Hey, look, we're all hypocrites and some of others and I think it's important to be self-compassionate about that

Look everything in moderation. I think, you know, the reason why I had to say something about the growth mindset was because, and I don't think how direct intended this to happen, but it sort of congealed into a little bit of a cliche. Every single influencer, public figure, politician, you know, sports star real off this idea that it's all about growth. You've got to keep growing. You've got to keep trying. You've got to keep working.

I've no problem with that. But what we have to recognize is that abundance, plenty, contentment, good enough is antithetical to growth. This is kind of the big contradiction at the heart of capitalism, that capitalism is driven by scarcity. It's not driven by abundance. Let's talk about capitalism, delivering abundance. It can never deliver abundance. It's not driven by abundance. Let's talk about capitalism, delivering abundance. It can never deliver abundance.

It's antithetical to abundance. And it's the same for a growth mindset. If you take this thing to the extreme, then we can never feel enough. We can never feel a sense of inner abundance because that's not what the growth mindset works. The growth mindset works on a deficit model and an idea that we always have to be improving, that we always have to be growing and turning our fairies and setbacks into learning opportunities all the time. And I have a big problem with that because sometimes there is no learning. Sometimes we

reach a point in our lives at a certain thing where we're as good as we could possibly be. And at some point we have to let that in, let that success in and realize that this is what I wanted. This is what I was going for. And instead of letting those dreams turn into dead ends, because there's something more that actually just allowed those dreams to be our dream. To say, okay, you know, I made it to a Russell group, which is the same as the Ivy League institution. It's a professorship. If you told me at 18 that I was going to do that, I wouldn't believe you. It would just be completely out of mind, me at 18 that I was going to do that, I wouldn't believe you.

It would just be completely out of mind, mind blowing that that would have happened to me and yet here I am trying to get the next grant and the next paper. And I'm trying so hard every day to recognize that that is way more growth than I would ever have imagined that I would ever make. And at some point have to let that in and instead of continually striving and doing more, they'd actually have to enjoy the success that I would ever make and at some point have to let that in and instead of continually striving and doing more, they'll actually have to enjoy the success that I've had. And so the growth mindset as a concept is not inherently bad, but I think

everything in moderation, when we're learning something new, we need a lot of the growth mindset, but when we've mastered something, it's important to sit back and recognize that we've become proficient and allow that success into our lives. So I think it's the same reason why I link the two is because the problem with growth mindset left unchecked and capitals and the growth imperative left unchecked is that we will never ever, ever be allowed to enjoy any success that we have. And so that's my critique of the growth mindset. Again, it's just like I said earlier, it's not throwing the baby out of the bath or it's not saying we need to dispense with this completely.

It's just about everything in moderation. Do you, Thomas Curran ever have moments where you feel enough? You feel inner abundance and do you ever fall into the related trap of striving for inner abundance and enoughness, which of course itself is the deficit mindset? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think as I'm getting older and I'm learning about myself and I'm learning about the psychology that goes underneath a lot of my struggles, I'm growing a family and all those things,

I'm realizing there is a place in my psychology for enoughness, for abundance, and that really it was there all along, but it was just untapped and never allowed myself to experience it. You know, I don't live in a nirvana of complete serenity. Don't get me wrong. But every day I'm experiencing more and more joy. I'm glimpsing more and more joy that comes from feeling like what I have right now, I'm so grateful for. And that actually there's something so intimately, I can't think of any other word, just joyous about those moments where you just kind of connect to your inner self and realize that what you have in this moment is good enough. And, you know, as I say, it doesn't happen all the time, but I'm experiencing it more and more because of the practices that I've described in terms of being vulnerable, letting things go, putting stuff out into the world and treating actually this is also important.

Treat my work as a vocation, not as a kind of personal crusade. And what I mean by that is that I'm putting things into the world for other people to use and appreciate. That's the motivation. My work is my vocation. So I live in this world. Other people can use and enjoy. Hopefully my grandfather was a carpenter.

People who make things for a living do. They don't loiter for recognition or a fire emoji. They just leave everyday things in the world for other people to use. And that in itself is something to be proud of. And so also at the same time, as all of these other things we described, trying to treat my work more as a vocation has definitely helped me on the road

to turning my back on perfectionism because that completely changes the meaning of work vocation has definitely helped me on the road to turning my back on perfectionism because that completely changes the meaning of work from something that you need to sustain your sense of self-esteem to something that allows you to enjoy and savor the things that you put out there. My grandfather was a carpenter too. Sam Harris, not related to the famous podcaster, he was an expert in circular stairs and he would show up at every job with a hammer with an electrical cord coming out of it and ask where he could plug it in.

So he was a jokester. Let me go back to the recipe, the practices that help you achieve inner abundance, mindfulness, vulnerability, self-compassion, radical acceptance. Is there any room in here for high standards, a desire for excellence on your part and the people who work for you or with you or around you? Is there any room in here for the desire to be successful? Of course there is, absolutely. Finding a place in your life for good enough does not preclude success, does not preclude high achievement, does not preclude high standards even.

These things are honorable traits. Talking about carpenter grandparents, let's stay on this theme. His wares are still in the pubs, by the way, in Northamptonshire where I grew up. And sometimes me and my dad will have a drink there and he will be with us in this place because his bar tops, window frames and stairs and banisters are still there. Right. To this day. This took the test of time. And so this is a guy who had really high standards, like really high standards,

but he wasn't a perfectionist because when he left those wares in the places that they were to live, he just went home, put on the kettle, had a glass of scotch and watched the football. The work was the vocation. And so, you know, yes, he worked hard and yes, he had high standards, but those standards didn't have to come with insecurity, right? About how we're doing, about how we're looking, about whether people like us or appreciate us.

They don't have to. Only perfections and graphs, those two things together. So I think it's so important that we recognize, just as we're saying, it's important to reconnect with ourselves. Just as we say, it's important for us to feel that sense of enoughness and go out into the world embracing one another. So that doesn't preclude us from doing exceptional things because you don't need perfectionism to be successful. You need passion, purpose, and some form of inner meaning that drives you forward. Those are the things that we should be reconnected with and we should be

dispensed with our perfection. You and I are not carpenters and we make products that we want people to respond to positively books, in my case, podcasts and whatever else. So how can I do that? How can you do that? How can anybody do that without caring what other people think of us? I'm saying my grandfather didn't care if he did, but it just wouldn't have impacted his life. You know, it wouldn't have impacted the quality of his evening.

It just let it go. Bad feedback is a sure sign of his fallibility is his wrinkles or his sciatica. That is the difference, right? And that's so important for us to hold onto. And by the way, carpenters, builders, plumbers today are under just as much scrutiny as we are down as authors, because you know that the jobs are going to get rated on Google or wherever straight after it's been done. And if someone doesn't like it, they're going to put a shitty rating online. So, you know, this goes to everybody right now.

It isn't just us who get evaluated, criticized. It might be more public that we get evaluated, Chris. I absolutely don't get me wrong. But nevertheless, everybody's inside this information age is getting evaluated, judged all the time. So I think if my grandfather, your grandfather patch were around today, they would be, uh, they would also have a lot of affection because I don't think it's really avoidable in this culture, which goes back to the culture. But nevertheless, it's so, so important that we recognize that yes, we're going to get feedback. Sometimes it's going to be negative feedback, but that's okay. That's, that's the palm parcel of living in an imperfect world. Some people are going to like what

you say. Some people aren't going to like what you say. They're going to vehemently disagree with what you say. And I've had a lot of that from this book, just as much as I've had some very positive feedback. And it's all part of the mix. It's all part of the beautiful variants of life. And I think it's important we embrace that. A couple more questions on a practical tip. We've talked about some of the less awesome aspects of social media, and yet social media is a part of many of our lives, most of our lives. How can we navigate it sanely? Well, it's important that we use it responsibly. I think that's the first thing to say. Social

media isn't inherently evil. If you think back to the original, the reason social media was even invented was to bring people together on campus, right? To cement offline relationships, to tag each other in embarrassing photos from the night before. It was all about cementing and building community in the first iteration of this technology. Now, you know, several iterations later, it's an advertising device. Right. And just like all other advertising devices, it wants to capture our attention and spending. However, I think if we can take it back to where it started,

then social media can be incredibly empowering. If we can use it to cement offline relationship, we can use it to build communities, we can use it to share interests, right? And stuff that fascinates us with other people. That's a very positive tool. And the way that I think the technology is now moving to being used by the way, I think young people are starting to use it for those reasons. And that's a very, very positive step in the right direction.

So I'm not an anti-social media advocate. I don't think we should be banning the platforms or whatever, but I just think we should be educating young people in how to use it for the right reasons. Final question, speaking of young people, and you referenced growing your own family for people listening who are parents. And I guess this would apply actually in some ways to anybody who's in

a leadership position professionally and you've got people looking up to you. How can we be a leader either in a family or in a workplace who straddles the line between wanting excellence and having high standards while also not provoking a sense of insufficiency and perfectionism. I'm led very much by Amy Edmondson in this respect. I think psychological safety is a huge part of the thriving workplace. Now, what is psychological safety? Psychological safety is basically providing a culture and environment of inclusivity, whereby if people make mistakes or they slip up or or they just screw up, that it's okay. Like it's normalized within the workforce.

How do we do that? Well, as leaders, we have to lead by example. We're going to make mistakes too. And it's so important we talk about those mistakes, that we normalize them, that we laugh about them maybe in meetings and let our colleagues know that it's just part and parcel of developing something new. You know, trying to build a product or work with some code. There's always going to be instances where things don't work out and that's okay.

You know, this is just part of the iterative process. And sometimes also it doesn't have to be perfect for us to put it out into the world. Sometimes, you know, we can iterate later, but the most important thing is finished. These are really, really important messages for managers to instill in their teams because that creates a culture of safety whereby people feel it's okay to slip up, it's okay to fail. And importantly, have clear lines of communication. Because what you don't want is people to slip up and try to hide it, because you find out later down the line that can impact the bottom line.

Whereas if people feel confident to put their hand up and say, look, I screwed up here, but we can put it right, then that's going to have a massive impact on the efficiency of our teams. And that goes the same for parenting. Parents too need to lead by example and let their kids know that failure is humanized and it's not humiliating. If you've had a bad day at work, talk about it around the dinner table, laugh about it, joke about it, normalize it again with your kids. And I'll say one thing on parenting that I think is also important. I don't have like here's five parenting tips for perfectionism, but I do have one very

important philosophical message. It's so important that you're consistent in your love and approval for your kids. So, so important. I can't emphasize that enough. When they've done well, it's really important to tell them that's an amazing achievement well done. You know, enjoy it. Don't think about the next test.

What you've done right now is amazing. Enjoy it. Don't think about the next test. What you've done right now is amazing. Enjoy that. But at the same time, if they have had a bad day or didn't get the grade they wanted, treat them with exactly the same effusers and put their hand on their shoulder, tell them it's okay. It's just one grade of many other grades. It's not an indictment on you. It doesn't say anything about how much your parents or your teachers think of you, right? You've got so many other opportunities to show all sorts of different skills and talents in school. And so this one setback isn't the end of the world. That's an important message.

That consistency is so important because once you start to qualify subtly your approval on the idea that kids have to keep working harder, or perhaps if they've come with a bad grade and you subtly just defer that love and approval, what children learn is that they're only really worth something, they're only really worth love and value and that they matter when they've done things well and that those things are deferred if they haven't. And so that can instill in young people a sense, well, I need to be perfect because then people will recognize and appreciate me. And so consistency of love and approval is so, so important. This is very specific to parenting. That's not necessarily a case in the workplace, but nevertheless, psychological safety and consistency of love and approval is so, so important. This is very specific to parenting. That's not necessarily a case in the workplace, but nevertheless, psychological safety

and consistency of love and approval is so important. That's great. I sometimes say to folks on my team, and please tell me actually, I'd be interested in your feedback on this, whether you think I'm talking about this correctly. I say to folks on my team, I expect excellence of myself and of you,

and I expect you to make mistakes. Yeah, that's the message. That's the message. So we were striving to do things well. And as I said, feeling like we're good enough feeling that we can make mistakes doesn't preclude remarkable things. But we have to make sure that that isn't the be all and end all of our existence.

That isn't the be all or end of all why we turn up to work that we know that we're also going to make mistakes. And those things are just as important in the grand scheme of things as the wins. Thomas, this has been a pleasure. As you may know, I have these two questions I habitually ask here at the end. One is, do we miss anything? I think we covered a lot of ground there, Dan. So I'm really happy with the conversation. Great. Me too. And then can you just please remind everybody

of the name of your book and anything else that you've made? Yeah, my book is called The Perfection Trap. It's available in all good bookstores. And you can find out more about me if you Google Thomas Carr and The Perfection Trap. You'll have links to my website and social media accounts. This has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Tom. Big thanks to Thomas Curran. If you want to hear more episodes that hit on these themes, I've dropped a bunch of links in the show notes. My wife, Bianca Harris, and I spoke to Dr. Valerie Young about imposter syndrome. There's a link to that episode. There's also a link to an interview

I did with Sonja Renee Taylor about how to end the war with your body. Amy Edmondson on psychological safety. And a couple of episodes from my friend, the great Buddhist psychiatrist and author, Dr. Mark Epstein. Before I go, don't forget to check out danharris.com, my new website. You can sign up for the newsletter

where I talk about the best takeaways from the show every week and you can go to our new merch store and buy 10% happier merch. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson and we get additional production support from Colin Lester Fleming, Isabelle Hibbard, Carolyn Keenan, and Wanbo Wu. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production. DJ Cashmere is our managing producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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