Lessons from my mentor, Kara

I am dedicating this week’s blog to one of my favorite lessons from one of my favorite people, my coach and mentor, Kara Loewentheil of Unfck Your Brain. 

I worked with Kara last year in a six-month super intensive group coaching program, and it was amazing. Before working with her, I'd also listened to pretty much every single episode of her podcast (her podcast alone can change your life completely). These days, I also coach in Kara's feminist coaching community, The Clutch, which is a total dream come true and sharpens my coaching skills every day. 

Kara's coaching has been extremely influential to me in both life and business, and I want to share some of my favorite Kara concepts with you. That being said, I do not want to post a million-word blog post, so I'll be writing about one concept this week and another one next week.

For this week, we're going to talk about the perfectionist fantasy. While I'd long known about the "I'll be happy when" trap, Kara's concept of the perfectionist fantasy is more subtle and more advanced. "I'll be happy when" is the idea that once you fix or achieve this one thing in life (once you get the perfect partner, job, body, pair of cowboy boots, etc), you'll be happy and things will be good. Of course, this does not work. For one, our brains like to move the goal post as soon as we arrive at the goal. For two, we are all living the human condition, and no matter how magical cowboy boots are, they will not fix all your problems and protect you from the realities of being a human being. 

Perfectionist fantasy is, as I said, more subtle and more advanced of a concept than "I'll be happy when." In a way, perfectionist fantasy is exactly what it sounds like it is: it's a fantasy about being perfect. But it's also so much sneakier than that. Because we aren't usually like, oh, if I was perfect, things would be so much better. That would be too obvious and we all know intellectually that we are not and cannot be perfect. 

Instead, perfectionist fantasy is when we imagine a world where we finally have our shit completely together. It's fun to fantasize about this and revel in the idea of finally figuring it all out, but we don't actually take any action towards creating it in our real life. Or we do take action and are immediately disappointed because this action is real and not the imagined perfect action with the imagined perfect outcome. 

This is the thing with perfectionist fantasy. It hinges on our imagined ideal in a way that makes that ideal seem tantalizingly doable when it is, in fact, not doable at all. 

In perfectionist fantasy, we are enjoying the idea of an imagined world or situation instead of doing the often difficult and unglamorous work of creating the changes we actually want to see in our life and enjoying them in all their imperfect glory. 

There is nothing wrong with a little fantasy now and then, but the problem with the perfectionist fantasy is that it inhibits our ability to enjoy the lives we actually have. Perfectionist fantasy either keeps us spinning in action, trying to get to a future that we'll never reach, or it keeps us stuck in inaction, unwilling to take imperfect action to create change because we'd rather enjoy the fantasy than show up to the real-world version, which is of course imperfect. 

In a world where so much is out of our control and our lives are crowded with competing priorities, it's understandable why we fantasize about a life where we have it all together. It's soothing. But when we indulge in perfectionist fantasy, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment. 

Because no matter how successful we become, no matter how many goals we hit, no matter how great we are at saying just the right thing in just the right way, we are still human beings living human lives.

I've spent a lot of my own life chasing perfectionist fantasies. Thinking if I only got the right job or the right partner or finally paid off my student loans, then things would be good and I would be happy. And y'all. I have the best job. I have an amazing partner. And I did pay off my student loans. And I'm still a person who laughs and cries and struggles and curses and figures shit out. Life is indeed good, but it's not that fantasy life where I have all my shit together and I never have to feel a difficult feeling. 

But here's the thing: I can actually enjoy all of that. Because now that I know that life is not supposed to be this magical perfect instagram post, I can focus my attention and energy on enjoying the life I have and creating the things I want to create. Not because it's going to magically save me from myself. (I no longer need saving. Actually, I never did). But. Just because it's fun. Just because it's meaningful to me. Just because it's what I want to create. 

And this is what's interesting and a little counterintuitive about the perfectionist fantasy. We like the perfectionist fantasy because it feels good to imagine that perfect world where we have all our shit together. But that doesn't actually lead to us 1. creating the life we want or 2. learning how to enjoy the life we have. And in fact, the more we indulge in perfectionist fantasy, the harder it is to enjoy the life we have and the harder it is to create the life we want. Because anything we have or do won't seem like enough when we're comparing it to perfectionist fantasy. 

The lie the perfectionist fantasy tells is that it will get us closer to the good life. The truth is, what will get you closer to the life you want is 1. learning to love and enjoy the life you already have and 2. being willing to take imperfect action to get or create the things you want. 

This is not how most of us learned to do things, but I promise you, it works and it will totally revolutionize your life in a very delicious way. Your brain will keep doing the perfectionist fantasy if that's a habit it's used to, and that's ok. But when it tells you that everything would be better with a different house, body, or commute, I want you to notice it doing that. Then ask yourself, ok, but what is going well now? Create a list of all the things that are working. And then ask yourself what you want to create and what imperfect action you're willing to take to create it.

Teaching your brain to notice and enjoy what is already working is an essential piece of having a life you enjoy, because joy is a habit, and if you don't practice it, you won't necessarily know how to do it just because you got a new job or partner or car. And anything you want in life is achieved through imperfect action (it's the only kind of action we have, y'all, because we are humans).

If you want to create the life of your dreams and enjoy it, this is how you get there. Not by expecting your life to be perfect, but instead by choosing to love it even when it's not.