The Power of Non-Attachment

• Defining the Perfectionism Trap [00:00:45]
• Cultural Conditioning and Perfectionism [00:04:31]
• Impact of Perfectionism on Daily Life [00:07:20]
• Embracing Failure as a Teacher [00:08:36]
• Separating Self-Worth from Performance [00:09:30]
• Strategies to Ease Up on Perfectionism [00:12:15]

“None of us come out of the womb perfectionists. This is something that we learn.”

“Stop associating your performance in life with your success or failure as a human on this planet.”

“Perfectionism is brittle. It doesn’t allow us to be resilient. It doesn’t allow us to flex and move with the flow of life.”

“When you learn to become friends with your perfectionist tendencies, you can actually also become friends with failure.”

“If you don’t feel safe, secure, and happy, you don’t grow. That’s not how growth works.”

“It’s not about whether you get things wrong, and it’s not about shaming yourself or being hard on yourself for that.”

NICOLE

Hello, friends. Welcome back to the School of Self-Worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong. 

I’m starting off today with a question: Do you feel pressure to be the perfect leader, the perfect boss, the perfect mom? If you answered yes to any of those, you are in the exact right place, because today we get to talk about a topic that comes up all day, all the time for Asian American women—and that is perfectionism. 

More specifically, today we’ll be talking about how to exit the perfectionism trap. This is a really good, juicy one, so make sure you stay tuned. 

And if you’re an Asian American corporate leader who wants to come out of hiding so that you can own your authentic voice and get recognized at work without working more hours, DM me authentic @NicoleTsong on Instagram. I’ve got something over there for you. 

Okay, friends, let’s dig into this juicy conversation. 

Welcome to the School of Self-Worth—a podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth. 

I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a best-selling author of three books and a work-life balance expert. I help ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfillment and radical joy. 

Every single week, I will bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insights about what it takes to be brave, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered, with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough. 

All right, if you answered yes to the question about feeling pressured to be the perfect leader, perfect boss, or perfect mom, I am so happy you are here. This is the exact episode for you. 

This topic, not coincidentally, also came up on a call with my “Your Clear Calling” cohort. It felt really important to share with all of you some of the conversations that we’re having in there because this is something I find especially challenging for Asian American women. 

One of my clients last week brought this into our session. She has her own business, and she was struggling with the idea that she had to be the model, the example, the perfect leader. And she didn’t even think she was struggling with it; she just thought, “This is what I want. This is how I want to be in my business.” 

But what was happening is the pressure she was putting on herself was leading her to make decisions from a place of reaction. She was starting to try to please and make everybody happy instead of making decisions that were serving her and her business. 

We worked on this so that she could really start to recognize that she was trying to be perfect. She was trying to make the perfect decisions. She was trying to make them all think that she was the best boss they had ever had. And as a result, she was overcompensating. Internally, it was making her—let’s be honest—grumpy. She was staying up late, getting to work late, all because she was putting so much pressure on herself. She was feeling all this anxiety about her job and her leadership. 

If this resonates with you, let me know, because this is important for us to understand: the spiral that we can go down. 

I am a recovering perfectionist, and I have had perfectionist tendencies for most of my life—my entire life, I would say. When I look back, there is so much cultural conditioning that came into play that created these perfectionist tendencies. None of us come out of the womb as perfectionists. This is something we learn. 

If you’re Asian American, you likely have parents who wanted you to perform at the very highest level because if you did that, it would make the family proud. And within Asian culture, there is this constant focus on the whole and the collective. So when you made your family proud, that served the whole over the individual. 

So, this is less about you personally and more about how you could reflect on your family.

Probably what happened is that you got the best grades at any cost. You put pressure on yourself to get into the best college. You had to have the best job. You had to make the most money. And there was also probably a lot of comparison with other Asian families. What happens in this is that it can create a cycle where you are always trying to perform at the very highest level—no matter the cost to yourself.

Here’s what really happened when you learned this: you learned to box yourself in.

You learned to create situations where there is no alternative except to be excellent. And as a result, you work so much, you put so much pressure on yourself, you never let up off the gas of being a certain way—at your job, in your home, and in every part of your life as a friend. And now, all of a sudden, you feel like there’s no escaping that. You are living in this pressure cycle, which is overwhelming, really.

This all shows up in so many different ways. It could be working late to get that PowerPoint ready for the next day. You’re checking your email first thing in the morning to make sure you didn’t miss anything overnight.

You take feedback so hard. You relentlessly try to do better and tell yourself that it’s growth. But what you’re actually feeling is stress, pressure, and anxiety.

Let me tell you something: if you don’t feel safe, secure, and happy, you don’t grow. That’s not how growth works. Growth works when we are in a secure, solid, structured environment. When you pressure yourself to do better all the time, you’re actually only beating yourself into the ground.

I go over more of the other types of pressure that Asian American women experience in the Asian pressure cycle in Episode 97, so if you want to go back and listen to that, I get more into the other types of cultural pressures that you might be experiencing.

But today, I’m going to stick with perfectionism. That’s part of the reason we have perfectionism, but today I really want to talk about its impact. Because once you get stuck in the cycle of perfectionism, it doesn’t ever end. It will show up in so many areas of your life: the way you are as a mom, the way you are as a partner, the way you are around money, the way you are around what you wear, and what you look like.

I still sometimes get into this cycle. Today, I feel like I have to get things exactly right and that I’m a total failure if I don’t. And so, yes, now I’m bringing in something really important: the fear of failure.

Because fear of failure is driving so much of the perfectionism. But here’s the truth, and this is what I told my client last week: nobody is actually perfect. And if you try to think of somebody who you think is perfect, do you even really like that person? The truth is, that person is not perfect. They’re just giving you a veneer of perfectionism. They’re not actually perfect.

The truth is, we’re human. Every human makes mistakes.

It is how we learn. It is how we grow. But if you are constantly telling yourself that you cannot make mistakes, you live in a heightened state of anxiety and stress that will never go away.

Here’s the coolest thing: when you learn to become friends with your perfectionist tendencies, you can also become friends with failure. That’s right. You don’t have to see failure as this horrible thing you can never handle in your life. You can actually start to learn to cozy up to failure—to have failure be a teacher instead of something to avoid.

You can stop associating your performance in life with your success or failure as a human being. I’m going to say this again: you can stop associating your performance in life with your success or failure as a human on this planet.

Because you—who you are as a human, your self-worth, your value—does not depend on how you perform in your job, who you are as a mother, how you are as a partner, how you are as a daughter, or any of those pieces.

Maybe as a kid you were worried that you wouldn’t be loved if you brought home a bad grade. Or maybe you got yelled at or scolded. And that’s the program that got installed when you were little: shame, failure, and the sense of “I don’t want to ever do that again.”

But you can change that programming. And I would add that it is actually vital to change that programming. It’s why I have “Your Clear Calling.” So much of this is about changing that internal programming. Because when you change that programming, that is when your life opens up. When you’re willing to fail and own up to mistakes, you stop taking things so personally. You become so much more resilient. You know that no matter what happens in life, you’re going to be okay. 

How would that feel? To feel confident that no matter what occurs with your job, your partnership, your house, or any part of your life, you are actually going to be fine—no matter what. Because you know and trust that you can pick yourself back up when things get tough. 

Perfectionism is brittle. It doesn’t allow us to be resilient. It doesn’t allow us to flex and move with the flow of life. It requires everything to be a certain way. But when you can really move into this place where you become friends with failure, you can give up the perfectionism. Now, you can start to truly be in life. 

In the case of my client, she can now be a relatable leader—someone who messes up—and it’s okay if you mess up on her team, because everybody does. 

Like, my team knows, it’s not about the messing up. It’s about the rebound. It’s about the ability to come back from a challenge that matters. It’s not about whether you get things wrong, and it’s not about shaming yourself or being hard on yourself for that. 

So, this is the question for all of you who are like, “Yep, Nicole, I totally get stressed out and really anxious, and I feel like I’m always holding myself to an unattainable standard.” 

Today’s question for you, if that is you, is this: How can you ease up on yourself today? How can you acknowledge the good things you’ve done and the things you’ve accomplished—big or small—instead of just beating yourself up for the things that didn’t go exactly right? 

If you can spend some time with this today, how can you ease up on yourself? 

That is what’s going to open the door for you to give up that perfectionism, to start recognizing that there are other ways to operate in your life that are so much more powerful than just being hard on yourself and trying to exact that perfect outcome all the time. Because when we can really loosen our grip on perfectionism, that’s when things start to get really cool and exciting. 

Okay, so DM me your answers to the question: How can you ease up on yourself? How can you acknowledge the good things you’ve done? DM me @NicoleTsong on Instagram. I really want to hear where this goes for you. 

And if you’re an Asian American corporate leader who wants to come out of hiding and step into fully owning your voice and being recognized at work, DM me authentic @NicoleTsong on Instagram. I’ve got something over there for you. 

Okay, friends, thank you so much for being part of this powerful conversation. I’ll see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. 

Before you go, don’t forget, if you are a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots preventing fast, intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you. So make sure to DM me “quiz” on Instagram at @NicoleTsong. 

Thank you for being here and for listening. We read every note we get from you about how the podcast is making a difference in your life. Please know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. 

Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong, and this is the School of Self-Worth.