Ellen Hendriksen
speaker
55 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Ellen Hendriksen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, absolutely. So I think, well, here, I want to make one more point, because again, you're absolutely right about how it feels really good to hit it out of the park. And it does get us positive attention. And so perfectionism is, this is what makes it so hard, I think, is what is called interpersonally motivated. So essentially, it's trying to help us
It's trying to help us belong to the tribe. But perfectionism takes us down the wrong path to get there. It tells us the lie that we have to perform as superbly as possible to get people to like us, that we have to be good at things in order to belong. But think about why your friends are your friends. Like, are you friends with them because they're good at things?
You know, do you like them because they're skilled at conversation? They always pick a good restaurant. You know, they always remember your birthday. You know, none of those things are bad, but I'm guessing that is not why you like them. You know, more, more likely you're friends with your friends because of how they make you feel. Like I'm,
When I'm with my friends, I feel connected, supported, understood, like I can be myself. But the lie of perfectionism makes us really double down on performance in order to earn our way into belonging rather than focusing on connecting or enjoying each other.
Yeah, we're trying to separate the overlap of our performance from our value, from our self-worth. So we're never going to separate those completely. Of course, we're going to be proud of the good things we do. Of course, we're going to be disappointed when the things we try don't work out. But if we can try to separate that over-evaluation That's what we're trying to do.
And to that end, I tell the story of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his time at UCLA under the legendary basketball coach, John Wooden. And the record of the team was so impressive that two researchers, so doctors Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore, sat in the stands for the 1974-1975 practices to see, like, what is the secret sauce?
Like, what does Coach Wooden do to make this team just hit it out of the park every time? To mix my metaphors. And what they discovered is that he very seldom raised or criticized his players. And that instead, as a former high school teacher, he did exactly that. He taught. He told you what to do and how to do it. So he would say things like, pass from the chest. Run, don't walk.
Take lots of shots where you might get them in games. Pass the ball to someone short. He was focused on information, not evaluation. And so we can take a page from that book. We can take the stance of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble and say, okay, what would be better for the work? What would be better for this task or this thing I'm doing?
And that can help us try to separate out our performance from our very character. If we shift the focus from evaluating ourselves, like, you know, I'm so stupid, to focusing on how to make the work better, like pass the ball to someone short. For example, I had a client who was a conservatory student. She was a violin major. And she would just mercilessly criticize herself in the practice room.
She'd say things like, oh, why are you so stupid? Why can't you get this? And so we tried to shift her over to focusing on the music and to say things like, okay, maybe I can try this slower. Maybe I can do this one measure at a time. It was about the work, not about her.
It certainly can be hard, but you don't have to completely separate this. We're not doing a 180. Just a little bit of being able to see our performance at a perspective, like 5%, 10% is really all we need.
Sure, yeah, I think we can take some of the eggs out of the proverbial basket of performance and leave some in there. Again, performance is important. I'm not saying it's not important or that we don't derive any of our self-image or self-worth from it, but we can distribute some of those eggs to things that are more qualitative, like connection. like enjoyment.
Like the people with perfectionism that I work with, often it's 110% all the time. And so I think the focus on perfectionism can sometimes edge out that we forget to connect with people. We forget to enjoy ourselves. We focus so exclusively on the performance. So for instance, maybe if we're part of a karate dojo, we only focus on working our way through the success of belts. We forget to
enjoy the camaraderie. We forget to enjoy the movement of our limbs or the joy of improving or learning new things. If we have spare time, we might think, okay, I need to always be productive. I should be watching a documentary. I should be reading history. And we forget that it's okay to... watch a grass out comedy or read a rom-com or just go hang out and connect with our friends.
There's an outsized importance on performance in perfectionism, sometimes to the detriment of connecting with others in our lives or enjoying ourselves. And I find it ironic because perfectionism, again, is trying to connect us, but it tells us that we have to perform well in order for people to like us. But that's not true.
We can instead focus on them, focus on our relationships, as opposed to trying to be good at things and earn liking and belonging that way.
Yeah, no, I mean, we, again, we absorb perfectionism through the culture. And if we're put in a situation where, you know, we are our grades, or, you know, our parents only notice us when we deliver as opposed to when we, you know, feel deeply or or notice us because of our personality or our talents, then yeah, absolutely. Every human reacts to the situation we're put in.
And so if we're put in what's called a perfectionistic climate like that, when we're defined by our performance, you know, think of the highest levels of women's gymnastics or like classical music orchestra auditions, then yeah, if there is no room for error, of course, we're going to respond with some perfectionism.
Yeah, but I think there is a difference between admiration and being impressive and versus belonging. So if we are impressive, if we're the top performer, then yes, we're singular, but we're also separate. Being at the top is pretty lonely. And so I think when we mistakenly double down on perfectionism, and again, the high standards are not the problem. Please perform well.
Like, please keep hitting it out of the park. It's that over-evaluation when we think that our self-worth, like our, to be sufficient as a person, we need to perform as superbly as possible. And so there, again, think about why your friends are your friends, or like think about the, when we, are trying to be closer to people, there's a difference between impressing them and connecting with them.
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