How to Rewire Your Perfectionism with Audrey Holst

Kathi: Hi everyone. Today I'm with Audrey Holst, as you know, and we're going to be talking about perfectionism. Are you a perfectionist? Have you been a recovered perfectionist? Let's talk about that. So welcome, Audrey.

Audrey: Thanks so much for having me, Kathi. I can't wait to talk.

Kathi: I know this is going to be exciting. And let's not make it perfect. Okay. So talk to me about how did you get on this quest for helping people alleviate their perfectionism tendencies? Are you recovered?

Audrey: It's a lifetime practice, is what I would say. The perfectionist piece actually came later in my coaching journey. When I first started working with clients, a lot of my clients were burning out. I had a lot of clients who were trying to make career changes because they were burning out. And so that was what I focused on for a long time, this burnout aspect. I have done a lot of research on burnout. I've done a lot of work with burned-out folks. I'm actually on a burnout panel right now with other people who are working around burnout. But when I started digging into burnout and I started writing my book, I was like, burnout is not my forte. I know a lot about it. I've had a lot of experience with people that have had it, but there's something else, and there's something before. So when I started digging into the commonalities of the people I really enjoyed working with, this perfectionism piece kept coming up over and over and over again. And so that's when I started to hone in. I was like, oh, this is what I want to work with, this perfectionism piece, because it's part of the body. It's part of the nervous system. It's part of the human experience. It's a survival technique, right? And that was big in my background, the body and the nervous system and movement and yoga and meditation, the whole human being experience. And that's when I started to get really excited and really dug into the work that I do now.

Kathi: That's exciting. So what did you come up with? Do you think perfectionism starts from when we're very, very young, or do we grow into it? What's your viewpoint on that?

Audrey: Yeah. So I did a series of interviews with people who are self-proclaimed perfectionists. It was over 60 interviews with people who were like, hey, yes. I had actually just reached out. I thought I'd get maybe a few people that were interested in talking with me about their perfectionism. And 60 folks later, within the span of maybe two or three weeks of qualitative interviews, every single person that I talked to had some sort of origin point when they were younger that they could point to and say, oh yeah, perfectionism started here. And so through my research and through my clients and through my work, to me, perfectionism is essentially a survival technique that people get wired into their system, and it brings them through. And there are certain things that nurture that and amplify it, and things that start to diffuse it. With some people, you can see how their lives start to diffuse it, how it starts to become less prevalent as they get older. And then other people, depending on maybe the work that they go into. For instance, I work with a lot of people that are in law. That really amplifies perfectionism. There was not a single person that I talked to that was like, you know what, I hit age 30 and I thought, perfectionism sounds like something I haven't tried yet. Let me try that. Everybody had some sort of origin story about when they were little and had very clear memories of some original pieces that they were like, yeah, that's where it started. I'm very clear on that.

Perfectionism is essentially a survival technique that people get wired into their system, and it brings them through.

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Kathi: That's so funny. I'm taking a course right now on consciousness, and a lot of the stuff that happens with us happens when we're three to five years old, and it just gets ingrained right there. Like, okay, yeah, better be perfect this time. And I love the fact that you differentiate, though, people who get into the careers where you have to be by the law, so to speak. Dot the i's, cross the t's, right? In that type of business, you'd be scared into perfectionism, especially if you didn't have that tendency to start out with. It'd be really very scary to think, oh, I could really screw this one up.

Audrey: Totally. Yep. Absolutely.

Kathi: That's amazing. Okay. So what are the things that can help diffuse perfectionism? If anybody out there is struggling with this, which I know a lot of you are because you're my tribe, what are some of your tips, Audrey, to diffuse a perfectionism instinct?

Audrey: The first thing is just starting to notice. Just noticing that it is an aspect of your experience day to day. Starting to figure out what some of the so-called signs and symptoms of perfectionism could be. Because this is another conversation I have with people, where they'll say, well, I'm not a perfectionist because I'm not perfect enough to be a perfectionist. And it shows up different ways for different people. I've identified five archetypes, categories that people fall into in terms of perfectionism. So some people will say, well, my desk is a mess. And it's like, well, that's okay. But they're dealing with all of these other things: how they're showing up in a particular way, and their levels of procrastination around not doing things, because they want to do it either three million percent the right way, better than everybody else, or they're not going to do it at all. This all-or-nothing kind of thinking, this survival behavior. So once people start to notice it, that's the first piece, because they want to fix it. But first you've just got to look around and observe it. Just see what you're dealing with. And because of my understanding and my work with perfectionism, seeing it as being wired within the body, a lot of the work that we start doing is just noticing. Noticing the environment, noticing our physicality, starting to understand that there's this whole world inside of us that's always communicating with us. But perfectionism starts to put these very weird lenses on what our body communicates to us. And it starts to create these interpretations, meaning making, right? We start to think, oh, well, this feeling means this about me, or this sensation means this about me. And so starting to get people more plugged into what it is to be them and how it feels to be them, and starting to pull apart some of that meaning making, we call that noticing and discernment in the Fortitude and Flow process. That's a huge start to untangling and rewiring some of these things.

Kathi: That's really, really interesting. I find there's a lot of trigger points for people.

Audrey: Yeah, I think that's spot on.

Kathi: So talk to me about how you handle your week. As someone who works with people who, I mean, I have clients that, unless they can do it absolutely perfectly, they don't want to do it. Instead of how you handle your week, how do you have them handle their week, as far as the flow of their work and business processes?

Audrey: Yeah. When I'm working one-on-one with people, it's a very individual process. It's figuring out, okay, where do they have space, where do they not have space, where do they have to do their deepest work. A lot of people will try to get some of that deeper stuff done first thing in the morning before they dive into their day, because once things get going, it's very difficult to create that space for that deeper work. Figuring out how people's energy goes. Some people have more energy in the afternoon, some people have more energy in the evening. Figuring that out, figuring out the things that really create stress in them, and figuring out, are there ways to mitigate this? Are there tools? Is there technology? Sometimes people will try to willpower their way, and we'll just be like, hey, listen, there's a tool for that. I don't believe in willpower. I don't like that at all. So we always find ways to work with how somebody is built. And anytime we make change, it has to be small, doable, experimental and sustainable. That is the best way that I've found, especially when we're changing things that are in the body, to get it on board and keep it going in a positive way.

Anytime we make change, it has to be small, doable, experimental and sustainable.

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Kathi: I love that. Small, doable and implementable. You're talking my talk right there. If people don't see the path to do it in step one, two, three. And then especially if you're talking with perfectionists, they're like, wait a minute. I need to know step one, 1A, 1B, 1C. Then you can talk to me about two, right? And they're like, but what if two doesn't work? Then we have to talk about plan A, B and C that we might do instead, because the first one didn't work. And that's why nothing happens, because they've already made 15 different plans for when the first one, in their mind, doesn't work. That's exactly why I asked you about the calendaring, because I do time management a lot, and you run up against that. And I love the way that you also talked about the biological clock. I could never do a big project first thing in the morning. Forget about that stuff. I'm like a three-to-five big project person, and we're all different. So we need to give ourselves latitude to create our schedule based on our biorhythm. And so it sounds like you feel like perfectionism is also kind of a chemical reaction within ourselves. It's something that can be changed. Can you talk a little bit further about that?

Audrey: Yeah. So there's been a lot of research done, and a lot of the stuff that I like to talk about is the neuroscience around Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's work, and she will talk about how the brain makes meaning. Let me back this up. Okay. If we think about our body as trying to be as efficient as possible, right? Our body wants to be really efficient. It has limited resources, right? As much as we'd like to think of ourselves as robots that are just plugged into a wall and can do anything we want to do, the reality is we have limited resources. We have limited energy. We're going to have to sleep at some point. We're going to have to eat at some point. We're going to have to drink water at some point. There are things that our body needs in order for us to keep going. So the thing that's important to understand is that the body wants to be efficient, which means these habits that we have wired into us are our efficient habits. They may not be the thing that we want, right? Even the way we have reactions to stuff. Feeling guilty, right? People get into these little things of guilt when I start to talk to them about starting to take time. Oh, but I feel guilty. Guilt is actually an efficiency response. Your body has decided at some point, it's efficient here to be guilty. So this is the association. A plus B equals C. Here's the guilt. Boom. That's efficiency. So starting to get people to understand that a lot of this stuff is literally just habit that the brain and the body have put together. It doesn't mean anything. We don't have to make meaning. We don't have to put concepts on top of it. So let's break it down to its basic thing, where the body has decided, okay, this particular association. One of the things that perfectionists experience a lot more than the typical population is chronic stress, because they have these associations, these stressors. What ends up happening with chronic stress is you end up having cortisol, which we talk about as a stress hormone. What it really is is an energy hormone firing, because your body thinks, oh, last time this thing happened, we needed extra energy. So now your body is firing off this hormone in places that it doesn't need to, right? And that creates negative effects over time. So this is where starting to become a little bit more conscious of these efficiencies the body has built in comes in, and in the beginning being a little bit less efficient, because it's going to be uncomfortable when we start to make changes. But over time, rewiring that, so that, oh, okay, now your body has a new association that becomes the efficient thing, and now we're not firing off cortisol in places where we don't need to.

Guilt is actually an efficiency response.

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Kathi: Wow, that's really interesting. Because I truly believe that a belief is only a thought that you keep thinking. So whatever your reaction is, it's something that's just been built into you over and over and over, and it's something you can change for sure. And I like your idea that you can't willpower into anything either, which is so true. A lot of people try to willpower into everything. And it's not water over rock. It's not going downstream. It's not even going with the flow. You're just like, I can power through this, because I can do anything, and it's going to be perfect, and it's going to get done. Whoa.

Audrey: And that's the mentality, right? I can, and there's pride. I can work harder than anybody else. I can push through. I can be the one that takes it on. And that attitude creates impact over time.

Kathi: So talk to me about one of your clients. When you think about your work, what's the story that makes you the happiest, something you can think of that happened?

Audrey: So I had a client that, when we started working together, would really go through some rough periods, especially when the winter started. They had these associations of stress in the wintertime, and that was something we were aware of. And I remember having these sessions, and this client was really good at just implementing, right? We would go over a practice, and they would just really dig their teeth into it and go with it. And I remember we had talked about what we just talked about there, where they said, oh, I've been feeling this particular way, and it sent them down a rabbit hole, this negative rabbit hole. I felt this way, and then I was trying to figure it out, and I was super stressed, and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it. And it was this whole narrative around it. And I was like, hold up, let's back up. What happened? Because you didn't just randomly wake up one day and all of a sudden everything went sideways. And so we backed it up to its origin point, and we basically went step by step to say, well, this is what your body did, right? This happened, and then your body did this, and now your body has this association: when I feel this way, it means this. I said, that's all. Your body is just making meaning of this thing. And they were like, oh my gosh. It was like a light bulb went off. And after having that little breakdown, not like, oh my gosh, there's something really wrong with you that we have to dig into your childhood story. No, we didn't have to dig into anything. I just had to say, this is what your body is doing, and this is why your body is doing it. Isn't that amazing? Doesn't that make so much sense? And they were like, bam. And it is amazing how well they've not only taken care of themselves, but the teams that they work on are extremely well taken care of, because they now know what it's like to be in them. They can see it in other people, and they are working with their teams as human beings. So that was extremely gratifying for me.

Kathi: What fun. What fun. What fun. So when these things happen, I'm on a big success kick right now on celebrations. How do you celebrate your successes? That's a huge win, to have someone's life completely shift under your guidance. What do you do to celebrate? I'm asking everybody this because it's the year of celebration.

Audrey: I love that. I think it's such a great question. Obviously, celebrating with a client, celebrating in company, is the best, right? Celebrating by myself is not really it. I would like to say, yes, Kathi, I grab a bottle of champagne and have a party. No, mostly I'll share with my husband: oh man, I had a really good client today. I had such a good breakthrough. Or tell a friend. I think the sharing of the success is really the thing that makes it exciting for me. It's nice to recognize it personally, but it's not as exciting when it's just me by myself having a party.

Kathi: I absolutely love that, and no one's really brought up the sharing part yet out of all these podcasts that I've been doing. Because yes, celebrating is sharing. Good job, girl. That's a good answer. And it is so very true, because celebrating yourself is like, okay, oh, good job, Kathi. You did such a great job. What does that even mean? It doesn't really mean anything. Of course, giving yourself a treat, allowing yourself to do a walk or a nice bike ride or something, giving yourself something. But I think actually expressing your gratitude for the good thing that happened and sharing it with someone is really the way to solidify that.

Audrey: Yeah, absolutely. And when it comes to client success, I come from the place where I'm really excited for the client. I celebrate them in those cases. I don't really get too much like, wow, Audrey, you really did it with that client. I always give the credit to them, because I come with my tools, but honestly, I could come with all the tools in the world, and the person on the other side could do absolutely nothing and get absolutely nothing. So always huge credit to the people that do this work.

Kathi: Yeah. And do you feel that your clients celebrate their successes?

Audrey: Yeah. And I actually have a series of prompts that I give my clients to look at and to write out. Some of them like to journal, some of them like to talk it out: what they're really proud of, what was difficult but they did anyway. So I have a physical card that I will send to clients sometimes. I'll put it in emails. People like to be reminded of it. So again, it's just that practice. And this comes to the point, Kathi, of that rewiring. Your system is wired to look at what's wrong, right? That's survival wiring, because it's much better to be terrified of a stick that might be a snake, because you stay alive, than it is to be like, oh, that's not a big deal. So giving the body places to see safety and what's good is actually a really, really good thing that moves towards further rewiring that perfectionism, that negative looking for what's wrong and trying to mitigate things.

Giving the body places to see safety and what's good is actually a really, really good thing.

Kathi: That's great. I can tell that you're an awesome coach, Audrey. So if you had to tell your 18-year-old self something, what would you tell her, after knowing that you've worked with so many people and with yourself?

Audrey: Buckle up, girl. I would say buckle up, because it's going to be a wild ride. That's all I have to say to her. I think she probably would know that, but I would just say, whatever you anticipate is going to happen, add like 50 percent to that. That's what we're doing.

Kathi: There you go. There you go. Now, how did you step into being a coach? What did you do before this?

Audrey: So I had over 17 years in the yoga industry. I was teaching yoga, managing yoga studios. I co-owned a yoga studio with a partner. So that was something that I spent a lot of my career in. And one of the things that I've always done, and I still do this, is I'm always looking to find ways to tie physical practices to practical everyday applications. So I was always in my yoga classes talking about what this has to do with your actual life, because it's great to have a yoga practice, but if it's not integrating into the rest of your life, then we're missing something. I think that's really important to me. So one of my yoga students after a class one day said, you should be a life coach. And I just laughed at her. I laughed at her because I had never heard of that phrase. But here I am, 11 p.m. one night, googling life coach, and I'm like, wow, actually, this is it. I think I'm going to do this. So I ended up getting my certification from iPEC.

Kathi: I love that. I love that. And that was a client giving you permission to bloom, right? Blossom. Don't you love that? I love that, when people help guide you down the path. That's what we do as coaches or organizers or whatever. We're guiding them as well. But when we get the guidance from an outside person, it's really, really cool. So, organizing. Talk to me about your favorite way to stay organized. What do you use? Your tactic or your trick or your practice?

Audrey: So I am a person that needs a combination of digital and also tactile. I've always been a writer, so writing is really important to me. I've got my little notebook. So two tools that I would say I use a lot. One is my Google Calendar. Literally nothing would happen in my life if it wasn't for that. I take all the stuff that my brain wants to hold, and I put it on the calendar. And I mean anything. If I need to go get my car inspected, any little thing that actually takes time to do goes on the calendar. Everything goes on the calendar.

Kathi: Got it. I love it.

Audrey: I had a paper planner for a while, but honestly, it just ends up being in the digital calendar. So that tells me everything: where I need to be, what is happening, what I need to be thinking about. And then I have this notebook I showed. It's called a Rocketbook. Speaking of paper, we were talking about paper before, having lots of paper. I'd be taking notes all the time. I had paper everywhere, and I hated it, and it was very disorganized, and it made me crazy. And so I ended up finding this product called the Rocketbook, which is essentially like a whiteboard, but the texture is like paper, and you use a pen. So I can just erase it, or what I do when I take client notes is everybody has their own little folder, and I take a picture of it, and it basically scans it in. It helps my brain, because I need to write down. But then it has a digital format, and then I just erase it, and then it's no more paper. Kathi, I feel like you love that.

Kathi: I love it. I love it. I love it. You do me proud, girl. That's awesome. Because we do need to take notes, and especially as writers, writing is very, very important. But not if you're going to end up piled with paper. Then you've got the equal stress factor happening in your life.

Audrey: Totally. Yeah.

Kathi: Good job, girl. Okay. So what's the valuable free resource? I know you have something that you can offer the listeners here. What would you like to provide for them?

Audrey: So I want to give people the Perfectionist Archetype Guide, because this will allow people to start to figure out, okay, if you can relate to this perfectionism concept, if you're starting to feel like, I don't know, this is hitting a little too close to home, you can check out the different archetypes that I pulled apart from all of the interviews and the research and the clients that I've had, and figure out, okay, where am I most identifying? Once you can figure out where your starting point is, then you can start to figure out, okay, so what steps in the Fortitude and Flow process? Where do I start? Where can I put most of my energy to start to unwind some of these things? And that just gives people, again, we talked about that, small and doable action steps. And it helps them understand themselves a little bit more in the context of the work I do.

Kathi: I love that. So if any of you have a sneaking suspicion that you might be falling under the perfectionism trap, go ahead and download the archetype guide. I'll definitely check it out. It sounds really interesting to see where I might fit. And also, I think we all have a little bit of it. Oh, there's your kitty cat. Okay, I'm seeing tails. Woohoo. Love it. She had to come make a presence.

Audrey: She did. She did. That's a cat for you.

Kathi: Well, listen. It's been amazing. Is there anything that I should have asked you that we haven't discussed, or anything that's on your mind that you really wanted to say during this cast?

Audrey: I think the biggest thing that I want people to understand is you can't BS your biology, right? I think that we try sometimes really hard to convince ourselves that I'm fine, or convince ourselves that… Hold on one second. I see her making some bad decisions right now.

Kathi: Chaos. Don't do it.

Audrey: I know. She's thinking about leaping off this desk onto a lamp. And so if chaos ensues, you'll all know what's happening. But let me see if I can finish my sentence and have my cat not destroy my desk. So I would just say, yes, you can't BS your biology. There she goes. Okay, folks. She did. She jumped to the top of the lamp. The lamp tipped over, and there she went.

Kathi: Wow. Well, your light didn't even change. And so I'm sure she's fine, because she's a cat.

Audrey: She's a cat. Oh my gosh.

Kathi: So you're saying you can't BS your biology. That's what you're saying.

Audrey: You can't BS your biology. The more we try to tell ourselves, I'm totally fine, no problem, I'm not angry, right, the more we do that, the more we are basically telling a fire alarm that there's no fire when in fact the roof has just collapsed, right? So we have to start to get on board with: I am a human being. I do have limitations. I do have needs. I do need resources. All of these things are very difficult to get on board with, but once you do, it's life-changing.

I am a human being. I do have limitations. I do have needs. I do need resources.

Kathi: Yay. I love the way you said she's going to make a bad decision. And I'm like, well, for who? Because I'm sure she had a lot of fun doing the leap and land and bounce. Telling cats they're making a bad decision is just silly. Well, actually, it was a great decision, because it gave us something to laugh at. I would love to have seen it, actually, because you knew she was going to do that.

Audrey: I could see the coil, the hind legs coiling. I'm like, oh, she's leaping. Here she goes.

Kathi: It's like when cats climb up Christmas trees. It's like, I don't think so. And they're like, but this is the best thing ever. I had a cat climb up my Christmas tree, and it completely crashed. Lights and everything. The cat was fine. One ornament was broken, and my life was shattered for about 15 minutes. I just sat there, and it's like, you've got to be kidding me.

Audrey: But it had to happen during the episode on perfectionism, Kathi. This is how we do a perfect podcast episode. Chaos and all.

Kathi: I love it. I absolutely love it. Thank you. That was a little gift from the universe for us. So there you have it, folks. Life's never perfect, and all you can do is laugh and just pivot, change course, and actually enjoy it.

Audrey: That's it right there. You got it.

Kathi: I love the fact that you were a yoga instructor, and then the integration, because I think the best yoga instructors or Pilates instructors that I've ever had talk about the mind-body, talk about more than just the movement. What's really happening with you when you're in this process, and how do you continue that flow forward throughout the week?

Audrey: Yes.

Kathi: Because that's super important. So it's been a pleasure. I've had so much fun. Everybody, make sure you download that little test and see what kind of perfectionist you might be, if any. Maybe you're not any at all.

Audrey: Maybe not at all. But maybe someone in your life is, and you can just pass it on.

Kathi: Exactly. I'm sure we all know a few of those. Anyhow, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, guys. I'm signing off for the week, and I will see you next week. Same time, same bat channel. And thank you, Audrey.

Audrey: Thank you so much, Kathi. This is a joy.

Kathi: Absolutely.