🙋‍♀️ Guilty as charged. I totally used to wear my obsession with productivity and perfectionism as a badge of honour. That is until I realised that this wasn’t actually coming from a healthy place or really serving me as much as I thought it was.

“Perfectionism is a fear of failure in disguise”.

I’m not sure who the original author of that statement is, but it certainly resonates for me. For the longest time, it hasn’t felt safe to fail, and so naturally I strived for perfection.

Productivity to me at the time meant staying busy and squeesing in work or other ‘accomplishements’ into every hour of my day. Being a good person meant getting a lot of things done. As I’m sure you can imagine, that’s not a super healthy belief for anyone let alone a sensitive person like me, already prone to overwhelm.

I know now that I was leaning in to my anxious overachiever energy rather than confronting and processing what I was anxious and insecure about. Constant productivity acted as an excuse to not think tooo hard about my relationship to myself & my body. Eventually I shifted my obsession with productivity and perfectionism into a bit of an obsession with personal development. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the healthiest approach, but it has certainly served me a lot better!

Now I don’t tie my sense of self-worth to my productivity or my ability to be perfect, and it is liberating. I still feel the pull to be productive and perfect, only now I can notice it and not let it take over. I remind myself that I’m doing enough, there’s no such thing as perfect, and that done is better that perfect.

So, while productivity can be great and perfectionism can drive you to do your best work, be wary of how far you take it. Notice whether you’re doing more as a way of feeling less and overcompensating for your insecurities. Don’t let fear run your life. Instead, imagine what your life would look like if you approached it with love - unrestrained love for yourself!