This weekend I worked LA Fashion week. If you have seen any of my stories or posts about the subject then you have seen I work with some pretty “flawless” looking people. The men and women are beautiful. Most of them are tall, fit, have nice skin, and gorgeous hair. Compared to them, I feel barely average but I love working with them because at the end of the day they are humans just like me.
It is a challenge to work at these events for several reasons. 1. I have to deal with the battle of inner comparison when I am surrounded by models and 2. I have to work on my own tendencies of perfectionism with my work because we work with some very demanding fashion designers who have certain visions that we need to properly execute. It is the perfect concoction of challenging my perfectionist traits. This weekend I set daily intentions.
Day one: I set the intention to be open to seeing where I have improved in my craft and see my progression and also being open to seeing where I still need to improve, keeping in mind that I am still not where I was a year ago and that I am still learning. I was challenged. I felt like pushing back when I received constructive criticism or help, but I reminded myself of why I was there and what my intentions were. I was open to learning and this openness helped me get out of my own way and receive new information, insight, and friendships.
Day two: I set the intention to be open to what came. No real intention other than to be flexible and continue learning, vagueness didn’t work as well but I still had a good day.
Day three: I set the intention to have a good time and just let myself enjoy being a part of the process, reminding myself that I WANTED to do this and I had the choice to leave at any point that I decided to. I feel like this gave me my power back and this day turned out to be the most fulfilling for me. I loosened up more and was less worried about any specific outcome. I was open to helping others and shared my strengths in certain skills that others struggled with. Helping others made me feel useful and valuable because I had knowledge to share. It felt good to help others and, like I always say, “you don’t know what you know until you teach it to others”.
The truth is we all have our strengths and we all have our areas of struggles. In the hair world, especially at fashion week, it becomes evident that we all have things to learn from each other and that we all have different strengths. One person can be amazing at one thing but struggle with another thing. NO one is better than anyone, it just brings us back down to a humble state of “we are all learning here”. Or at least that’s how I looked at it. It’s especially easy to see during these events because at the end of the day we all have the same goals, to help the designers achieve the looks they need on the runway. If we want to execute great work, we HAVE to work together. Egos get put on check because if we don’t, that’s the fall of the entire team. We did great. The host said this was our best year yet. And I could definitely see that.
Perfectionism can be seen as a gift or a curse. On the one side, we notice all the little details of things that others may not notice however sometimes noticing all the details can also prove to be a challenge. What inspired this post was this mornings webinar that I took on perfectionism. We talked about the ways that perfectionism shows up in our lives.
Here are the 5 ways perfectionism shows up in our lives:
Staying stuck and not taking action - in my life this has shown up as what some call “Analysis Paralysis”: Overthinking things to the point of procrastination because not everything is 100% perfect
Feeling dissatisfied - I’ve seen this show up as disappointment because things are not as perfect as I feel they should be or the high expectations that I had were not met and therefore I feel dissatisfied.
Black and white thinking - This is when we only give ourselves options A & Z and we forget the rest of the alphabet exists (metaphorically speaking). We stay stuck on our own ways of doing things and we don’t even see the possibilities of anything other than our own way and anything contrary to that is an undesirable outcome. Staying stuck on our one way of doing things does not allow us to see the possibilities and multiple solutions that could come about if we were to look at all the letters available to us between A & Z. In other words there are no gray areas, it’s only one way or the other.
Harmful Comparison - This could have been easily experienced by me this weekend when I was surrounded by beautiful, seemingly perfect people. If I had stayed stuck on “this girl’s skin is prettier than mine” or “why can’t I look like that” I would have never had a good time and I would have felt pretty down on myself at the end of it all.
Fear of Change - unknown areas and uncertainty causes us to keep doing things the same way because of fear of not being perfect. I could have ignored the insight of other stylists and my instinct was to do so, but I reminded myself of the challenge I set for myself to learn and it helped me be open to “change” or what I like to label as learning.
Once we can identify the things that are affecting us from living our best lives and being our best selves, we can do something about it. Awareness is key and once we have the key we can open to doors to new possibilities.
So how do we overcome the perfectionist tendencies that hold us back? I mentioned some of the ways I have handles it with my personal experiences, but here are a few more if you want to see what works best for you:
Challenge your Fear. - Adopt the idea that it is ok to be afraid and do it anyway. If the only thing holding you back is fear, build up the courage to take a risk and work with your fear. For example, when I quit my office job, I was terribly afraid, but I knew I had to do it because I had to think realistically: what was I going to regret more? Doing it and failing? Or never doing it and always wishing I had? For me the risk was greater because I knew at least then the choice was mine and the only way to know the outcome was to try it out. I then challenged the fear I had with the “student” mindset, reminding myself that I am still learning and that at least I was taking steps in the right direction. Fear of failure can make us want to stay where we are, but I like to challenge that fear by reminding myself of the reality of things. When you are new to something you aren’t going to do everything perfect because you don’t know everything, that is the reality of the situation. You don’t know what you don’t know so how can you expect to do it perfectly at the start?
If you are competitive and you beat yourself up because you didn’t win by a mile, remind yourself that even an inch is ok. There is no need to go to the extreme to make it count. Be proud of your mini accomplishments and remember we are all learning.
Set reasonable goals. It’s great to have big dreams, but make sure to break those dreams and goals down into bite-size micro goals to build up to the greater end goal. Essentially it is the idea of compound effect, each little step is a building block to the greater outcome.
Watch how you talk to yourself: add in more compassion and less negative self-talk. Be kind to yourself the way you would be to someone you care about. (I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog if you want to check it out.)
Be aware of the comparison tug of war. What I am referring to are those moments when we compare ourselves to others and either dismiss them or dismiss ourselves from interacting with them because they don’t meet or they exceed our levels of expectations. Adopt a curious mindset. I do this by asking questions such as the following: “what can I learn from this person” or “what can I find interesting about this person”? Instead of immediately jumping to a conclusion or assumption, allow yourself to actually experience and get to know others before you just dismiss their presence or influence.