Coaching Corner: Perfection Paralysis – a tool to help you stop procrastinating
Written by Penina Taylor
Most of us are familiar with the concept of perfection paralysis. It’s the avoidance of doing something because we subconsciously (or consciously) fear that we won’t be able to do it perfectly. The reality is that we usually avoid doing things not because we can’t do them perfectly, but because they threaten us in some way. If we can get rid of the threat, we can overcome the paralysis and get those things done.
There’s a part of our brain responsible for most of the trouble in our lives and it’s called the amygdala. It’s the primal part of the brain that’s in charge of making sure we survive. But it’s not only in charge of making sure we survive physically, it’s also in charge of making sure that we survive emotionally and mentally. So, if our little amygdala senses some sort of threat, it will send us running in the opposite direction of whatever caused that threat, just as if it was a great big grizzly bear.
In this article I am going to share with you one tool you can use to deal with the paralysis that results when you’ve got something that needs doing but you just can’t seem to pull it together to do it.
Step 1: Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. On the top of the first column, write “What’s the worst that can happen if I do this?”.
Now, as you can imagine, that can take a lot of digging. I mean, why is it that I keep putting off calling back that client, really? Oftentimes our first reaction when we ask ourselves this question is, “I don’t know, I just don’t feel like it.”
The truth is, it’s rarely true that you just don’t feel like it. You may think you “just” don’t feel like it – like when I just don’t feel like taking that half-mile walk with my dog on a cold rainy morning. It doesn’t seem like there’s any deep-seated threat to my emotions, I just don’t feel like it. I don’t want to be cold, I don’t want to be wet, and I don’t want to exercise.
Well, it turns out that even something as simple as not wanting to go out for a walk, isn’t actually a matter of “just not feeling like it”. You see, that itty bitty primal part of our brain that is in charge of our survival has a really big job to do, so it has some shortcuts – kind of like hyperlinks on the computer – to increase the odds of survival. It’s called the motivational triad.
Just like we have autonomic functions that work to keep us alive without having to think about it – things like our heart beating, breathing, and even blinking, we also have three autonomic behaviors that increase the odds that we will survive.
They are:
- The avoidance of pain
- Seeking pleasure
- Conservation of energy
We are always motivated to do things that don’t hurt, feel good and are easy. If you think of it in terms of ancient man, these things motivated us to hunt, reproduce and seek warm shelter.
Unfortunately, while these motivations were important for the survival of our cave-dwelling ancestors, for the modern human they can be extremely detrimental.
For example, the avoidance of pain actually causes us to not want to take risks, to avoid venturing into the unknown, which had its place in a jungle or forest where dangers abound, but today it translates into avoiding conflict, staying in an abusive marriage, or playing it safe in a miserable and dead-end job.
The desire to seek pleasure means that we fall prey to the seduction of instant gratification, eating foods that are literally killing us, escaping emotional challenges through binge-watching Netflix or compulsive overspending.
And the conservation of energy? That means that we tend to live life on autopilot, never challenging our long-held beliefs about ourselves, or our world. And while autopilot is usually comfortable, even when uncomfortable, we continue because it’s the easy way, requiring no effort to enact change.
So, it turns out that there is a direct connection between the part of the brain that is in charge of our survival, and which activates the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism and the neurons that drive us to avoid pain, seek pleasure and conserve energy.
Because of this connection, the brain perceives potential emotional discomfort in the same way it perceives physical threats to our survival and sends the message to run the other way.
So even when we don’t feel like doing something just because we don’t feel like it, and no other deep hidden reason, our brain treats that desire to avoid the task as IF it were a threat to our physical well-being, and will assist us in avoiding that task.
This is reinforced by the language we use. The more often I tell myself that I really don’t want to go running, the more my brain perceives running as a threat and does everything it can to help me avoid running.
The famous therapist Marissa Peer says that your brain always does its best to give you what it thinks you want.
The words, “I hate” or “I don’t want to” should be used very sparingly in our self-talk because they send the message directly to the brain that this is a threat in some way.
I hate dieting, I hate exercise, I really don’t like the heat, I don’t like to talk on the phone, I don’t like traveling for work…. You can see how this goes, right?
Can you identify something that you regularly put off doing that you have spent time using the threat stimulus language about? In other words, what’s something you regularly say you don’t like doing and it’s something you regularly need or even want to do, and frequently end up putting off?
For me, it’s definitely exercise. How about you? What’s something you find yourself regularly speaking negatively about, but need to do and so end up fighting an internal battle about?
Step 2: On the top of the second column of your paper, write, “What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t do this?”
The good news is that in tests done on mice, scientists have learned that a mouse, and even more so a human, can ignore the drive to avoid pain when there is some reward in the offering. For example, it explains how high endurance athletes can push through the physical pain of their sport – because they perceive the reward to be greater than (or at least worth) enduring the pain.
So that’s where the list exercise comes in. You write out what’s the worst that can happen if I do this and then in the second column you write what is the worst that can happen if I don’t do this – most of the time the consequences of not doing the task are greater than the threat of doing the task and we can trigger that switch that suspends the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism and we can soldier on and complete the task anyway.
I call that switch the courage key.
When we tap into courage, we access the ability to override the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism, overcome the paralysis and conquer that task.
Imagine this scenario, thousands of years ago. You are out picking berries and a great big grizzly bear is headed straight for you. The only way to escape the bear is to run through an area with a massive wasp nest. Your dilemma – risk getting torn to shreds by a grizzly bear or risk being stung by a bunch of wasps – what do you choose?
What would you choose?
Most of us would choose the wasps – even though that option comes with its own dangers, since you don’t really know for sure that the wasps will sting you, and even if they do, the odds of that being life-threatening are somewhat less likely than the threat of the bear will tearing you to shreds, right? So you quickly weigh which is the bigger threat, turn the courage key and disengage the pain or pleasure – fight-flight-or-freeze – mechanism and you run straight for the wasps, right?
In a way, that’s what the list is doing. It’s helping us to see – in a concrete way – that the consequences of not doing the act are worse (a bigger threat) than any discomfort we may experience from doing the activity.
So next time you find yourself procrastinating, pull out the old pen and paper and write out the threats. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you don’t?
When we tap into courage, we access the ability to override the fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism, overcome the paralysis and conquer that task.
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