Avoiding The Trap Of Extreme Perfectionism: Why You Should Stop Trying To Be Perfect With Petra Kolber

Welcome to the spotlight where we showcase phenomenal entrepreneurs and their stories. I don’t know about you, but almost every person I meet has this little inner critic deep down, this little voice that says, “You have to be perfect.” If you’re not perfect, then you might as well not do anything. Unfortunately, too many of us are suffering from this perfectionism poison. I get to sit down with a woman who is truly on a mission to break that perfection within all of us so we can thrive, show up confidently, and live the life that we truly imagine for ourselves. She is an award-winning author, an incredible speaker and an aspiring DJ. We got Petra Kolber in the house.

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Hello, Petra.

Hi, Keri. It’s good to be here.

I want to say DJ PK, but we’ll get to that later. I love your book, The Perfection Detox: Tame Your Inner Critic, Live Bravely, and Unleash Your Joy. Perfection is a bugger. A lot of people suffer from it. Why did you write this book?

Often, they say you teach what you need to learn. I call myself a recovering perfectionist. I’d like to say that I’m over it, but it’s tricky because it’s been with us for so long. For many of us, we feel that’s the thing we need to be successful. There’s a part of us that knows we’re working so hard but yet, there’s also a part of us that’s going, “If I’m working so hard, why do I feel joyless?” A lot of it is this idea that, “To be successful, I need to be perfect. To be a great mother, I need to be perfect.” We’ve set this barrier so high. It’s not that perfect. Even for someone we aspire to, perfectionism becomes the basement level that we are judging ourselves at the basement. If it’s not perfect, I don’t shift it, I don’t say it, I don’t do it.

We don’t do anything and we stay stuck. As someone who has had quite a career, many years in the fitness industry and one of the leaders in the industry, rumor has it that you have some DVDs that are worth going back to take a look at.

We couldn’t even go to VHS. Why should we, but we did.

You were huge and you still are a leader and idol in that industry. How did perfectionism show up for you? How did that hurt you in some ways? What was your experience?

I say to everyone that we have this idea of the disease of enoughness. I’m not at home enough. I’m not smart enough. My Achilles heel was I’m not smart enough because in my younger days I was told, “You’ll never going to make it. You’re not this. You’re not that.” I took on someone else’s false belief as my truth. What happened was I was a fitness teacher and then I became a fitness expert. All of a sudden, I believe that to be the fitness expert, I needed to be the perfect fitness expert, what I said, what I looked like, and what I eat. This is the beginning of this false idea that wasn’t sexy, so I put it into a box. I said, “What you don’t own begins to own you.”

If you think about that, that is powerful.

What you don't own begins to own you. Share on X

We try to bypass it. Why I wrote this book is because there are bumper stickers like, “Let perfectionism go,” but you can’t bypass this stuff. It’s years of layers of false ideas. What happened is that wasn’t sexy, so I put it in a box. I became a little anxious every time I stepped on stage, wondering if I’m going to make a mistake. It became bigger and it manifested itself into panic attacks. I’d be sitting here with you and I’d be two steps ahead of, “What if I say the wrong thing or I mess up?” I begin to sweat or whatever. I began this rabbit hole of never being good enough. Instead of something I aspire to be, it kept me small and away from the very work that could have helped others step over this gap between who they are and who they think they should be.

What’s interesting is you said, “I put it in a box,” and it starts out as a small little anxiety attack. It’s a small thing that you started to get these symptoms, then it started to become a big thing. Is that when you decided to look at the box and say, “I’ve got to open this up and start figuring out how to work with this?” As a leader and someone who is speaking and putting herself out there, it’s an oxymoron to try to do that and yet have this box over here and that anxiety.

That’s the challenge, Keri. We think we want to be the leader. Whatever that means. We want to be at service and an expert. If I’m the expert but I’m dealing with this, what does that say about me? One of my favorite sayings is by Steven Furtick, “The reason why we’re all struggling with our insecurities is because we’re comparing up behind the scenes, the truth of how we feel about ourselves with everyone else’s highlight reel.” We don’t relate to perfect. If I can say I’m a leader, I’ve been through this. I know what’s worked for me. Hopefully, it can help you. I’m not so far out of the game. I still get anxious being here with you, but it’s an excitement. One of my favorite sayings is, “Anxiety is excitement without the breath.” Perfectionism sucks the breath out of your life. I knew that if I was struggling with this, I had to think that the thousands of women I’ve met in the US and around the world were perfect, but they come up to me at the end of the day going, “How do I get rid of this part of myself?” All they could see was everything that was broken about themselves.

Our lenses are so tinted and distorted. Most the time, we see only the things that bother us instead of seeing all the things that are wonderful. We put this pressure on ourselves. Working with many women and men, and teaching them how to be on camera and how to share their message, I say it over and over again that the P in perfection stands for poison. When I met you, I’m like, “I have to have you on this show,” because it is an epidemic. It’s something that everyone deals with to some capacity. If you are a perfectionist, it stifles you from your greatest work in the world and finding joy. In your book, you go through 21 steps. We won’t go through all of them but how did you uncover those steps? What can we expect in the book? Tell us a little bit more.

To me, it’s three main phases. The first one is awareness. If you’re not aware that there’s a problem, how can you address it? For many of us, perfection has been such a part of us. The self-judgment and self-doubt become such a part of our DNA that we don’t even notice it’s happening. It’s awareness first and then what do we do with that awareness. It’s acceptance. Acceptance versus self-judgment. Give yourself that level of kindness that we give to others versus that lens of judgment. What lens are we looking at ourselves with, and then it’s action. You can think this through but then here are the actionable steps. That’s what I’ve done here. Tolerant perfectionist to get over perfection is impossible. How do I do that perfectly in my overly busy life? I break it down into small pieces that you can do during your day and still strive to be the best that you can be and still be excellent.

There’s a difference between excellence and perfection. Whether you’re in leadership, aspiring author or whatever it is, people don’t relate to perfection. We don’t ever look at someone and go, “She’s so perfect. I want to be like that.” We connect more with people’s flaws because then we feel like we’re human. It’s why reality TV is what it is. We don’t want perfect. How do you help people? Give us a few tips for the perfectionist watching. What are some things that they can do that’s going to help them move beyond?

Perfection means different things to all of us. When you think of the word being perfect and whatever that means, does it bring more joy to your life or does it suck the joy out of you? Perfection is not always a bad thing depending on what label you’ve attached to it. If you say, “I’m striving to be the perfect singer or speaker in front of the camera perfectly” and that excites you, that’s fine. You haven’t attached this ideal to that word that it means flawless. It’s hard. It’s the difference between rumination and reflection. This is a big one. When we move into a spiral of self-doubt and self-judgment, we ruminate. We’re running over these negative tapes without an exit strategy so we’re going down and down.

It is on repeat over and over again. It’s like bad hypnosis or bad meditation.

It’s like meditation went wrong.

This is an intention you don’t want to listen to every day.

Perfectionism sucks the breath out of your life. All you could see is everything that is broken about yourself. Share on X

With that, the fastest way is to move your state. I have this one thing that I call STOP. Whenever you find this rumination, you’ve got to notice it first. S, stand up if you can. T, take a walk. You’ve got to move your body because that moves your thoughts. O, observe your surroundings, the sense, the taste, the sound. When you’re in the surroundings or in a sense, you’re in the present moment. P is pick. Choose to pick a positive thought or a mini mantra. That could be something as, “I refuse to beat myself up.” It could be, “I am enough. I am in service. I am grateful.” This little mini mantra stops this rumination of the negativity. Our brain loves negativity. It’s our default that sticks to us like Velcro and positivity slides off us like Teflon. How can we reverse that and make the good stick to us for good?

That is something we all need more of. How do people get a copy? I love the book. I love the feel of the book. I love nice things and the cover. All of it is fantastic. How do people get a copy of this book?

You can go to PerfectionDetox.com and it’s available everywhere books are sold. Audible, if you like to listen to your book. You can find it anywhere but the website gives you all the places you can find it.

You have to grab it. We talked about the highlight reel and this comparison analysis. It’s not a new conversation with social media. We all put out what we want people to see and all the best images. How do you think that impacts the perfectionist part on our humanity? Do you have any tips around that as well?

For many of us and the women that you work with, we do need to be on social media to spread our brand. The thing is we tend to also pop onto social media when we’re bored. The worst place you can be for your self-esteem and self-kindness is to pop onto social media when you’re being mindless. My advice would be, go on with full intention and full attention. Know why you’re going on. What message do you want to serve to your audience to uplift them? How can you separate yourself from the noise but only adding good, positive and as some of your struggles? We’re not putting more perfect out. We don’t need more perfect doing real stories. Notice when you step off social media, how do I feel? If the joy has been sucked out of you, what have you been posting and what have you been consuming? Maybe it’s time to stop micromanaging your feed and only follow people that inspire or uplift you so we cannot go on in a mindless moment.

That’s great advice. It might be time for a digital detox. You can go through the perfection detox and the digital detox at the same time. Talking about challenging times, you walk into a room and one of the things that I was so attracted to was your aura and your energy. You elicit joy and you could tell that you walk your talk. That’s something that in order to even be on spotlight, it’s important to me that the people we showcase are who they say they are. You’ve also gone through cancer. You’re a two-time cancer survivor. What impact did that have on your life and your need to be perfect? Did that shape the book at all?

To be honest, it did not shape the book. I did my most fearless living during that time. The last thing you care about when you have cancer is about being perfect. At my most imperfect, I had a bald head. I put on 15 pounds because of the steroids. I didn’t care what people thought of me. Fortunately and unfortunately, I was fearless. I was always there. For a while, we didn’t know if it was a melanoma that had metastasized, which I have about six weeks to live or luckily, it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I’m fine. I’m twenty years post-cancer. With that, thank you for reminding me, when you have cancer, you never take the gift of your extraordinary ordinary life until it’s gone. This is where perfectionism ruins the extraordinary ordinary of our days. I’m so happy that I’m so far out. The last thing you want to do as we’re going to our last few breaths on this life is to have a tombstone that says, “She died trying to be perfect. She died worrying what other people are going to think about her.”

It gave you permission in a way to be like, “This is me.”

You don’t get to hide a bald head or 20 pounds of added weight. I didn’t care and we shouldn’t care. We should care about the work that we’re doing, the words that we’re sharing, the impact you want to make. If we are so worried about censoring our posts, what we say, and how we show up, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you. There’s always something that could be more perfect.

We have a great book that people can read and you gave some great insights, but what would be that one piece of advice that you would give to someone who feels that perfectionism has taken over?

Our brain loves negativity. It's our default that sticks to us like Velcro, and positivity slides off us like Teflon. Share on X

The greatest thing you can do for this immediately is to be as present as possible because perfectionism doesn’t happen in the present. It’s only when we’re comparing ourselves to our past, our youth or whatever. We’re comparing ourselves or worrying about the future. We’re keeping up with everybody else on social media. The fastest way is to be mindful. It sounds so easy but we’re in a world right now where we’re going 100 miles an hour. If you find yourself going down that rabbit hole of comparison, the only person we should be comparing ourselves to is our yesterday to today.

How can I show up in a more fulfilled way and be of service to others? It is to connect with your breath. Deepen your breath and breathe in, and then make longer exhales than inhales. When we think of perfect, what happens without realizing it is we move into a fight, flight or freeze. You speak about that in how you coach people. Perfectionist sits on your chest. You could speak better to this than I could, but when you can move, live, speak and breathe from your belly, I would imagine, perfect has no room and your house.

That diaphragmatic breathing kicks up perfection right out. I love this conversation because it is so true. The fear of being judged, not doing it right, not knowing enough or this need to be perfect is false. It’s not even a real thing and yet, I know so many people suffer from it. Petra, I’m glad there are people like you in the world that can help us overcome and detox from that perfection that needs to be perfect in our life. Thank you for your inspiration, your message, the love, and confidence you share with many people and women around the world. You are one of those women. I hope everyone gets to meet you because she can throw it down. You’re an aspiring DJ, and back to DJ PK. How did that come about? I guarantee you, that is not a perfect process.

I always say when you want to get into the student’s shoes again, “A teacher sometimes is a student always.” When is the last time you did something for the first time? Perfection doesn’t like aging. My not enough move from she’s not smart enough to, “She’s not young enough.” I’ll show you an inner critic. One of the fastest ways is to get out of your head into the present moment. Music has been a part of my life. As a #FitnessExpert, music was such a part of who I am. Nothing moves an audience faster than music. I went back to school and I’m becoming a student of the Art of DJ-ing. It’s a great software that makes it much easier than it was on the vinyl days.

We don’t do that anymore but it feels cool.

I had my first physical appearance for quite a big event. Part of it is something that I love. We’re never too young to start. What can you do for the first time that you’ve never done before? If I can bring joy to my speaking also through music and also help others recognize that negative critique whether she’s saying, “You’re not young enough, fit enough, at home enough, smart enough,” you’re enough.

You are enough and you certainly are. Petra, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for reading this blog. I hope you are inspired. If you are, please take a moment, take that big deep breath and share this with someone. I guarantee you that there is someone that needs to hear about the perfection detox and how we can move through this need to show up in a way that isn’t real and not possible. The more we can all grasp that our imperfection is what makes us that imperfect perfect, the more we’re all be able to show up more confidently in who we are and what we do. Thank you so much. Please post your comment and share this. As always, remember to keep dreaming it, living it and being it. Until next time.

Important Links:

• www.PerfectionDetox.com
• https://PetraKolber.com/book-the-perfection-detox/
• PetraKolber.com
• www.Twitter.com/Petrakolber
• www.Instagram.com/petrakolber
• www.Facebook.com/petra.kolber

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