EP 253: Break Free from Perfectionism with Guest Expert Dr. Greg Chasson

The Bridge to Fulfillment

Raise your hand if you consider yourself a perfectionist.

This prompt likely pushes a lot of hands into the air, and it’s even more likely that this “perfectionism” has been touted as a badge of honor.

The truth is that perfectionism isn’t doing you any favors. In fact, it’s probably holding you back.

Today on The Bridge to FulfillmentⓇ, Blake welcomes Dr. Gregory Chasson, PhD, ABPP, an esteemed psychologist, board-certified cognitive-behavioral therapist, researcher, and educator. As an international speaker, he helps organizations, communities, and individuals address mental health challenges, such as perfectionism, using practical and feasible strategies.

In this episode, you’ll learn how perfectionism permeates corporate America, and why that’s not actually a good thing for workplace culture. You’ll discover the connection between perfectionist tendencies and the need for control. You’ll also understand how to overcome perfectionism by first identifying the five primary problems, and then working towards actionable solutions that will help you finally break free.

What You’ll Learn:

• What studying OCD taught him about how he was living his own life (4:59)

• Why perfectionism is the ultimate irony (11:33)

• How the technology feedback loop is affecting our mental health (21:00)

• The five primary perfectionism problems (31:20)

• Why you should ditch list-making (36:08)

Favorite Quotes:

1. How I was approaching the world was not sustainable. It was very difficult to try to please everyone to not try to live your life by your values but by other people's values. –Gregory S. Chasson

2. I had this lightning aha moment of like, ‘Oh, these cycles of burnout, some of the problems I had actually weren’t other people. The only factor here is me. –Blake

3. People are trying to control everything, and they can't, they just can't. They have this illusion or fantasy that these things are all controllable. But they just have all these variables, you end up getting burnt out, and you can't control it all. And it ends up controlling you. –Gregory S. Chasson

4. Mess up quick, move on, and learn from it. –Gregory S. Chasson

5. I call perfectionism the ultimate irony in this a self-fulfilling prophecy of epic proportions. Because you will try to do something so perfectly that you actually undermine yourself to the point where it makes it highly imperfect. –Gregory S. Chasson

6. You will be far more successful when you trust that you don't have to figure it out. When you approach things with flexibility, when you don't feel like you have to plan everything out, but can really focus on the next one to two things that matter. –Blake

Additional Resources:

Connect with Dr. Gregory S. Chasson:

Website: https://www.gregchasson.com

Flawed book website: https://www.flawedbook.com

Get a sneak peek of the first two chapters of Flawed by going here: https://flawed.gregchasson.com/

Resources from the book: https://www.gregchasson.com/flawedresources

For programs and opportunities to work with Blake, go to www.BlakeSchofield.com