How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism

by Stephen Guise

when it comes to making decisions and taking action, quantity wins.

When you can refine something over many attempts, improving it more with each iteration, you’re bound to have greater success than if you meticulously planned out the perfect first try.

Solutions Summarized

Never use guilt as motivation.

individual occurrences of perfectionism (and its subsets) don’t matter—your response to them matters.

General Perfectionism (2 Solutions)

1. Change what you care about action: For one minute each day, reflect on and imagine caring about w...

Don’t care about results. Care about putti...

Care less about doing it right. Care more about doing it at all.

2. Imperfectionist process action: For one minute each day, consider the imperfectionist process in terms of your plans that day.

1. Imperfect thoughts and ideas. 2. Imperfect decision. 3. Imperfect action. 4. Imperfect adaptation. 5. Imperfect, but successful result.

Unrealistic Expectations (4 Solutions)

1. Adjust your expectations action: For one minute, check your expectations.

2. Decide what’s “enough” action:

3. Lower the bar

4. Focus on the process action: Look at your day ahead, pick your most daunting challenge, and break it down into a process you can follow.

Rumination (5 Solutions)

1. Accepting the past action:

For one minute, reflect on the permanent, unchangeable n...

2. Replacing rumination action:

Take action directly against your rumination

3. Understanding chance and failure action: If you’re ruminating about a negative outcome or mistake, take one minute to determine if it was because of a chance result or failure.

4. Change your self-talk action: If ruminating on a topic, remove “should have” from your mind and substitute “could have” in the sense of another possible option.

5. Timer hacks action: At least once per day, use one of these timer tools to spark yourself to action on a task that will directly improve or take your mind off of your rumination area(s).

Need for Approval (4 Solutions)

1. Chemical confidence boost action: For two minutes before any situation requiring confidence, stand in a “power pose.”

2. Faking confidence action: To make this specific and actionable, commit to act confidently (even if you feel otherwise) in at least one situation per day.

3. Change your benchmark action: For any task that intimidates you or that you feel you don’t measure up to, lower your benchmark to something you know you can do.

4. Rebellion action: Perform an act of rebellion against social norms or expectations once per day.

Concern over Mistakes (4 Solutions)

1. Accomplishment journal action: Decide where to write your accomplishment journal (notepad, computer, cell phone) and write at least one thing you’ve accomplished (or a positive trait you have) once per day until you can’t think of any more.

2. Binary mindset action: In an area that you fear making mistakes, create a binary perspective.

3. Easier success action: Create and pursue daily mini habits to make daily success too easy to turn down. Make success easier than failure, and you’ll succeed.

4. Modular success action: When your day begins, don’t aim for success, aim for progress, and accept it in any size. Think about this idea for one minute per day.

Doubts about Actions (3 Solutions)

1. Anti-projection action: When you’re doubtful of doing something and projecting negative scenarios, write them down in detail. Have

2. Faster decisions action: Once per day, present yourself with four options relevant to your plans—such as what to eat for lunch or dinner, chores/tasks you could do right now, people you could call on the phone, etc.—and write them down quickly on a piece of paper. Take your time to formulate the ideas, but once they are all written down, circle one of them as fast as you can, feeling at least reasonably comfortable with your choice.

3. Outcome analysis action: For an action you’re doubting, run it through this easy analysis:

Worst case severity: Think of the worst thing that could happen and rate the severity 1-10.

Worst case likelihood: Rate the likelihood of your worst-case scenario happening

Best case benefit: Think of the best-case scenario and rate its impact.

Best case likelihood: Rate the likelihood of your best-case scenario happening

Most likely case: Think about what’s most likely to happen and how you’d feel about it.