145: How to break free from perfectionism and embrace harmony and joy with Gabby Pavlovic
This is for those who suffer perfectionism…
I have been there - but I have recovered.
While you feel it might be fueling ambition, it can often lead to burnout and dissatisfaction.
In this episode of The Essential Shift podcast, Gabby Pavlovic joins me to talk about her own journey with perfectionism but also how she now helps high-achievers find a deep sense of harmony and joy through the work she does as a Emotion Release Technique (ERT) Practitioner and Naturopath.
You will get some great tools and practices to help shift your mindset out of perfectionism behaviour.
If you LOVED the episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift and @revitalising.health.
✨READ MY OWN STORY ABOUT BURNOUT AND HOW TO LIVE YOUR LIFE THROUGH YOUR INTUITION IN MY BOOK LIGHT IT ✨
KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS
How to identify the signs of perfectionism in your life
Practical strategies to shift from perfectionism to harmony
The role of self-compassion and mindfulness in overcoming perfectionism
How to cultivate joy and contentment in the present moment
SHOW RESOURCES
CHECK out Life Beyond Perfectionism (starting August 24) - HERE
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CHECK out Gabby’s podcast - HERE
GET your copy of Light It - HERE
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FOLLOW me on INSTAGRAM - HERE
Find out more about how to WORK WITH ME - HERE
If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @essential.shift.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Gabby Pavlovic is a Melbourne-based Emotion Release Technique (ERT) Practitioner and Naturopath, supporting high achievers in navigating the many aspects of perfectionism in their busy lives, so that they can stop burning out and start feeling energised, fulfilled, and aligned.
Gabby’s evolutionary approach to health and wellbeing is informed by her studies in biology, naturopathy, her clinical experience supporting people to regulate their nervous systems in a busy modern world, as well as her own lived experience dealing with perfectionism, stress, and burnout.
Bless it be.
With love, Laetitia!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Laetitia Andrac 0:37
Gabby, thank you for being on the essential shift podcast with us today.
Gabby Pavlovic 0:41
Thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to be here.
Laetitia Andrac 0:44
Oh my goodness, this is going to be a wonderful conversation for anyone who is struggling with perfectionism and who isn't we have all a story rooted in our conscious or unconscious brain, in our body, in our soul, around perfectionism. So today I brought to you the expert around this how to overcome perfectionism, with Gabby. So before we get into the detail of this podcast, I'd love Gabby to ask you a bit more about your own personal blueprint. Do you know about your astrology sign? Anything that you'd like to share about your face or who you are as a human being? For our listener,
Gabby Pavlovic 1:24
yeah, I love this question. I feel like I'm always curious about, like, the human design and all that. All I know is that I'm a generator, I think, which makes sense when people explain what that is for me, also Gemini sun and the the rising and the moon are both cancers. So I don't know what take from that, what you will, but yeah, I feel like I'm definitely an ideas person, sometimes having trouble making the ideas happen. Sometimes I need help with that. But yeah, I just I'm very enthusiastic about things. I love communicating. So that's probably where the Gemini comes in love connecting. That's why I love podcasting so much. That's why I love doing group work so much. So that's probably a little snapshot there.
Laetitia Andrac 2:12
Hmm, I love it. Thank you so much. And definitely I see a lot of Gemini and Cancerian energy in you. It's beautiful cancer. People are very intuitive, very watery, and they have this shell around them to protect themselves, but inside this so, you know, soft and nurturing, which you are when we get to know you. You're such a soft and nurturing human. I'm really grateful for our relationship. So let's get into the next question. We're going to talk about perfectionism today, and I always love to ask, where is that coming from? What is your own journey with perfectionism? And when did you realize that actually perfectionism was something you were struggling with yourself?
Gabby Pavlovic 2:56
It's such a good question asking, like, how did I like, get into the whole perfectionism space. Because if people experience perfectionism throughout their lives, it's not something you really particularly draw attention to. It just you almost like, see it as just like a part of who you are. You see it as almost like an identity. And that's something I talk about a lot in my podcast, the revitalizing health podcast, and and my content on Instagram and that kind of thing. But it's like, I don't know if there's any one defining moment I only very recently, by the time you put out this podcast, I've only, like, been doing, like, really talking about the perfectionism stuff very recently, but I am mental blank. You netted this out. I woke up at like 3am. Sorry. So so, like the perfectionism stuff, I think throughout my childhood, like I had, and, you know, we spoke about this on my podcast, which will probably be released after you do this one, talking about the, I guess, the educational system and teachers and the role that they played in kind of helping to shape, I guess, a high achieving, kind of like type persona, because I had a really supportive family I still do best, always supporting me in whatever I do. So I think there was just, like, growing up little things, like at school and that kind of thing that kind of funneled me towards, like, I've got to do better. I've got to be better. I've got to achieve better grades, or I've got to, you know, do better in this thing or that thing. But I think probably one of the turning points for me was a lot later in life, so when I was studying to be a naturopath. So that's not all that long ago. Now, I've been studying my whole adult life, basically. So straight out of school, I went and worked in Canada, had like a working holiday, worked on a ski mountain. But in between those kinds of things, I studied a Bachelor of biological science, and then halfway through doing the honors project for that, I actually was like, I want to study natural health. So then I really jumped from one thing to the next. So I've been in like that academic space for a while, but what I feel is something that really stuck with me was towards the end of my naturopathic degree. So I was doing like you do, like pre clinical subjects, where you like, kind of write up case studies where they give you a case and you have to explain. This is how I would support this person. This is what I prescribe. And I remember uploading my assignment for this particular case study. I think it must have been like, fourth year or something. And I wrote a little comment to the teacher, being like, look, this is the best I could do with the time that I had. You know, sorry, like, it's not perfect. And then a week or so later, I got the mark back, and she had a comment in there that said, it's the closest thing to perfect I've ever seen. And that was a bit of an interesting moment, because instead of me feeling like, this is good, like she liked the output, my first reaction was, Oh, she's wrong. She's missed something like, like, it's it's on her, because I can't possibly have done a good job, you know, and I think that was kind of like a seed was planted. Then for me to realize that this was not something that is going on according to, like, the outside impact. This is something that's happening within me. So I could, I could be, like, doing really well, which I am, and I do constantly to this day, but back then, it was just like this feeling of, I'm never going to be enough. And so now that's what I do in my work, is help people to understand that that perfectionism is insatiable. If you really like play into the maladaptive or the limiting traits of perfectionism, then it can really get the better of you, and you will never feel fulfilled. You'll never feel satisfied. And that's a really kind of like heavy thing to carry around with you, because you can't experience joy. You can't really connect with yourself, with people, with the work you do, with the things you do for fun, because you're never really in it. You're always trying to achieve. So I guess that particular story is one that comes to mind. I
Laetitia Andrac 7:29
love it, and when you shared about this, and I'm going to go into the next question in a second, but I just want to share something that came up that is, for a long time being a perfectionist was actually a badge of honor for me, and I had this memory sparking in my brain, which is when I was interviewing to get in one of the best business school in the world, the top nine where I studied. They asked you, what are your qualities? And I had said at that interview, I am a perfectionist. I am a chameleon. I am, you know, I'm not going to go through the different qualities that I mentioned when I was, you know, 20, and bless Laetitia, at her 20, she saw perfectionism was actually a badge of honor and something which got me into that top, best business school, along with other thing. Of course, it's not just the interviews that gets you in. You have all these intense exams and all of that, but I just had this memory dropping around how perfectionism, at the time was something that I thought was truly a big quality of mine, until I hit my burnout, which I share on your podcast. And I've decided to reframe all of this and create essential shift, which is focusing on what's truly essential, so that we get rid of all the perfectionist aspect and focusing on what's truly key and core. So my question to you is, what are the traits that you mentioned that are limiting us as perfectionists? For anyone who's listening to this, who's like, Oh my gosh. And now we are saying that being a perfectionist is not great. We're not saying that being a perfectionist is not great. There is nothing about good or bad. It's about knowing what are the the limiting aspect of being a perfectionist. So would you mind going in a big depth, a bit a bit deeper around this? Because I'm I'm sure everyone would be
Gabby Pavlovic 9:19
interested. Yeah, absolutely. And I do really appreciate that you've mentioned that it's not all bad, because the thing is, I in the philosophy that I have towards health, well, being everything, really, it's that like nothing is ever set in stone, and there's never like, there's always many sides and facets to something. And you know, there's a light and a dark, there's there's always a shadow to the other side. And so the shadow of perfectionism Are you have just framed it as the limiting traits, I like to say. So in the literature, if you look at perfectionism research, they describe it as maladaptive perfectionism. So an adaptation is something that your body, your nervous system, creates based on life experiences. It has to support you and adapt to the circumstances you're in when it's a maladaptive thing, it means that adaptation is no longer serving you. It's kind of malfunctioning. So the adaptation is no longer adaptive. It's maladaptive. Another word for this is limiting. I like to say that word because it's a bit more understandable, yeah. And so I like to say that there's limiting traits, but there's liberating traits. So speaking on those limiting traits, they are the things that really kind of like set you back, and the perfectionism that kind of holds you down and makes you, like I said before, make you feel like you're just not enough. You're never going to be enough, and it's really kind of beats you down. So those things, and there's a bit of overlap here between what is, I guess it's like a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. So it's like, did the perfectionism cause this trait, or does this trait manifest as perfectionism? It's kind of a bit of a cycle. So things kind of feed into each other. So when we're talking about the limiting aspects, setting excessively higher standards is probably the most common one. So it's like, you have really high standards of yourself. You can also have really high standards of others, particularly significant others. So in the literature, they talk about different types of perfectionism, and there's like, self oriented perfectionism, where it's like, I'm setting these expectations on myself. There's also socially prescribed perfectionism, where it's like, okay, it's based on the beliefs that I have that other people's expectations of me have, on the way I behave. And then there's other oriented which is where you actually force that perfectionism and those standards onto someone else. The work that I'm majority like that I do with in my clinical practice, is supporting people with the self kind of stuff. So it's like internalized from the beliefs that you take on from your surroundings, your upbringing, and then you kind of take that in and embody that in your life. So high standards, excessively high standards, though, I want to just mention that it's not a bad thing to have high standards, but having excessively high standards that you set and you never actually achieve, that's maladaptive. That's limiting. Because, like I said before, if you have those excessively high standards and you can never achieve them, you're never going to feel like you can accomplish anything. And so, like, despite having a fear that you're never going to be good enough, you always still somehow feel like you're never good enough, so it's like you can never win. And I think that brings up like, Maybe fear of failure as a big one, people have a massive fear that they're going to fail, so they're always doing whatever they can to not fail, but then somehow, paradoxically, feel like they're a failure anyway, they may have done the absolute best job in the world, but you wouldn't know it, because they don't feel that. They don't celebrate the wins. Perfectionists do not. They find it really hard to celebrate their wins. So if you tell a perfectionist they've done a good job, they'll probably like, just brush it off and be like, oh, you know, whatever. Like, I've done better, you know, so I don't know if that's relatable for people. So there's, like, the fear of failure, which is actually also closely tied to fear of success. So I've got a whole podcast episode on fear of failure or fear of success, because it kind of like, you know, they kind of shrouded in with each other a little bit. But as did I say, the first thing I said, excessively high standards, so a little bit too out of this world and unachievable, and then feeling, oh, there's just so many things like, I can really go off on so many tangents about the limiting aspects. But the thing I want to kind of maybe emphasize today is that it's not always necessarily like, what you see stereotypically is perfectionist behavior. So what we kind of see, like across the board, is that there is this over striving and this relentless like just trying to keep going, keep doing. You've gotta be better. You gotta do better. And so you see things like workaholism, that's really common for people to like work long hours. I know on my podcast, when we were talking about your story, you're saying, like, back in the day when you would get up really early, commute to work in the cab, and then stay at work really late, get home late, go to bed late, wake up early. Like, that's workaholism. That's very much trait of of perfectionism. There
Laetitia Andrac 14:42
totally with all the limiting traits that you're mentioning, I see myself 10 years ago when I was in this grind and really this perfectionism that was driving my whole life, and I had everything from the outside, you'll be like, Oh my gosh, she's having this insane carrier. She owns an apartment in Paris. She's like, you know, this kind of, go get girl ta da with, you know, all this beautiful outfit from very renowned designer and all of that. But inside, I was never fulfilled. And now I call myself a recovering perfectionist, and with all the things that you describe, I'm like, Yes, I celebrate every single day, even the tinier win. And sometimes my husband's like, this is not a win. This is just some things that happen to them.
Gabby Pavlovic 15:32
Yes, it is. Take it. It's a
Laetitia Andrac 15:35
win. I see myself so much into the other aspect now and being stuck in the other one before for a long time,
Gabby Pavlovic 15:45
yeah, and I feel like doing
Laetitia Andrac 17:01
So I really see myself shifting from the before and after, and this drives me to ask you the next question, because I know my own story, and I know how I've been navigating through, you know, reclaiming another part of my identity and honoring the recovering perfectionist in me and so on. But I'd love for you to share with the listener over here, we're like, oh my gosh, I'm so stuck in the limiting or maladaptive traits of perfectionism. What are some strategies or some things that they can start doing to help them move from to and, of course, you know, working with you will accelerate that. But if they're listening to this and really like, Okay, how, how do I, how do I start, like, what are some strategies, some things that you can share with them, that you've tried in the past, and that really works?
Gabby Pavlovic 18:01
Yeah, things, things that you can do, like right now, taking space, making space for space itself, because we tend to feel like we're not enough as we are. We have to pack so much into the day that's another limiting trait is like, there's this like, almost like, we thrive off the rush. We get a high off the rush. If we're in that maladaptive perfectionist state, it's like, because we're feeling like our nervous systems are like, Yep, we're in this like, adrenaline pumping, doing stuff, doing stuff, like, you've got to be busy. So if you can make space in your day, just for the sake of making space. And I say to people like, start really small. If you find that from the moment you get up you look at your phone, maybe just change that little thing. First off, put your phone in another room. And if your phone is your alarm, even better, you have to get up to go turn off your alarm. Yeah. Do not scroll on your phone in bed. First thing, like you're waking up. You want to get, like, sunlight in your eyes first thing. And you want to, just like, have some moments to yourself. Like, for me, I love to get up. I love to have some warm, hydrating lemon water and just like, go outside and breathe for a few minutes. Sometimes I'll stay there longer than others, and then I'll go and start my day. So like, making space. And I like to say, Make space between the tasks too. So of course, the way you start the day is important, but doing like, space in between all the different things that you're doing in a day. So rather than me like, Okay, I've done that onto the next thing. Give yourself a little like we're saying, we don't celebrate the wins. It can be a little win, like you were saying, really small win can be. I've just responded to these emails this morning. I'm going to have a quick little, you know, cup of tea. Or it might not even be that. It might. I'm going to go, like, stretch over there for a few minutes and then come back and do the next thing, just something that engages your body gets you out of that, like hyper thinking, like hyper arousal of the nervous system state, and get you into, like, I'm coming back into my body. I'm being present. So I think making space is probably one of the best things that you can do when you want to, like, get out of that, because it's very rare that, like I see perfectionist type people who do make space. I just don't think it happens. I've not seen it. Yeah,
Laetitia Andrac 20:30
and I I just love what you shared, because it's exactly what I was forced to do at the beginning of my journey of recovering from being a perfectionist, which was taking two weeks off from the most intense part of my career, when I was on top of of Mount Everest, you know, doing all the things and, you know, being on the road to become one of the youngest, you know, directors that they had in the firm and things like that. It's just this moment of running on adrenaline and just being like, let's do it. You know, this addiction. I love how you said, you know, the nervous system, arousal, I was really there, and actually then moving from that top to having two weeks off, and then an extra two weeks off, and having space on me, forced on me, imposed on me by the doctor at the time, was like,
Gabby Pavlovic 21:22
you know, sure, it was uncomfortable, too. Wasn't it
Laetitia Andrac 21:24
so uncomfortable? But it was the best thing ever, and from there. Now, I always prioritize space, and it's something that I always tell everyone. It's like, start with space. Without space, no other elements can move. If we look through the elements without space, air can't move. Fire can't be made. Water can go and earth can't be put. So we need space first. So I love that you start with this, and it's really actionable. And a question that's dropping in my mind as I was listening to you sharing that is, do you think we can become addictive to being a perfectionist? Is there, like, some things that happen neurologically, where we're like, oh my gosh, this is so good to be a perfectionist. Do we have this? Because I feel like I was there. I was really like, Oh no, this is the best way to be. There is no other way. Like, I get everyone praise. I am, you know, getting well paid. I am getting a promotion. I am traveling here. I'm traveling there. You know, it's like, as if I had this reward in place and this addiction to perfectionism. So do you find this? Because this is really just based on my own experience, and I've done zero research around perfectionist. It's just to ask you the question, based on your research and your experiences helping people, do you see that addiction towards perfectionism? Yeah,
Gabby Pavlovic 22:40
it's really interesting. And I feel like perfectionism is glorified in the very busy, urbanized, capitalist cultures. It's very much like you said earlier, like it was something that was encouraged, you know, we spoke about that on my podcast too, like it was something that, like is, it's fuel, you know, and we get validation from that. So I think people can very definitely get addicted to it. And it's not a conscious thing. It's it's not always a conscious thing. Sometimes people will make jokes about it and say, you know, like, oh, you know, I have to do things last minute, because that doesn't get me in that adrenaline rush and it gets me going. I think people do get accustomed to it. And I think there is a level of changing that neurophysiology and how our body is kind of fun functioning on the inside at that level of the nervous system. And I do start to actually see that change. When I work with people using emotion release technique, we actually start to see those nervous system changes, and they start to get out of that, what's called, like the sympathetic nervous system state, that hyperactivity, that switched on, fight, flight, freeze, appease mode. And we move back into a bit more but I actually can feel safe to rest now. People do get addicted to that. But just when you said, like the word addiction, in the research looking at perfectionism, what can happen is, you know, if it kind of goes on for a little while, and if it becomes quite, I guess, prevalent in somebody's life, in certain people, it can actually contribute to addictions. So what I see a lot of clinically is things like emotional eating and like kind of eating disorder type pictures, and I see other addictions, you know, addictions to substances, addictions to particular, I guess, tasks that people like feel like there's a certain element of needing to control, and people will often gravitate to an addictive behavior, or kind of thing that they latch on to because it's something that they can control, because at some point in their life, they couldn't control What was happening. And so that's often where that addiction comes from. There is a connection with perfectionist tendencies, and that can lead to addictions later in life. So that's just something I thought I should mention that's actually mentioned in the in the literature when we look at perfectionism. So that was a very good question. Thank you for asking that.
Laetitia Andrac 25:21
No, I just, I was just reflecting back on my own story, and you know, as an individual, how I felt, it was addictive. I didn't know until I had this burnout and this forced time of making space and reconnecting with what I truly wanted and who I am truly at my core, to change that pattern. So some things that may come to mind to anyone listening to this with like, oh goodness. So how do I deliver an amazing business, an amazing service, amazing results, amazing experiences. How, how I am an amazing leader if I don't strive for perfection or excellence. So what would we tell them,
Gabby Pavlovic 26:11
you can still get excellent results, but it's your perception of those results which is subjective, right? So going back to what I said before, when people give us praise, like when my teacher said, This is the closest thing to perfect, so, like, that's subjective, her thing was like, Yeah, this is really good. But I was like, No, it's not. You're you're wrong, right? So it's like, what, what we need to understand is that it's coming from our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs about our ability, our beliefs about the world around us and how people perceive us. So it all comes up, comes back to that belief system. And so that's, that's exactly the place where I work with people clinically is, yeah, we go straight for the guts, right? We go, like, what are those beliefs? Okay? And if you don't know what they are, we can, you know, use this amazing tool of ERT to actually figure that out. Good thing is, we also don't have to. We can just process any unprocessed emotions in the body that are actually contributing to those feelings of I've got to strive. I've got to do this. It's got to be done this way. I can't ask for help. I can't trust anyone else to do it. I've got to do it myself, because I'm reliable, even though, when I get the results never good enough anyway. So it always comes back down to that level of the belief. And I would say, like, that's, that's something that you need to start working with. So if you want to actually start to traverse this stuff, and actually get to the the good juicy stuff, you know, the liberating aspects of perfectionism, you need to clear this other stuff first, because it's yucky and it's kind of holding you back, and it's exhausting you, and it's resulting in things like mental fatigue, which can also contribute to physical fatigue, burnout, all those kinds of things, health conditions. So yeah, I actually forgot your original question.
Laetitia Andrac 28:21
That's okay, you answered it. I wanted to also ask you to finish this episode on a high. What are the, you know, the exhilarating aspect of being a perfectionist, because as a recovering perfectionist, I know I still have aspects of perfectionism which I keep on check. So potentially, I'm harnessing, you know, the exhilarating factor of perfectionism. So what are those? What are those that we can look for on the other side of the journey, on the other side of working through our belief, working through the different techniques that you bring in your work, or personally, it was a 10 year journey. So if I had known about you before, maybe I would have accelerated that. So I'm not saying go down my journey of 10 years of, you know, recovering. Maybe there is an acceleration here that Gabby can give you. But what are the accelerating part of perfectionism that we can look for? Yeah,
Gabby Pavlovic 29:16
so basically, like I was saying before, there's, there's always like, a like different facets to a trait. So perfectionism is no perfectionism is no different. There's I did a podcast with Joanne macus, who you work with, as well, and we were talking about perfectionism in the creative process, and she used the analogy of the shadow and the light of perfectionism. And I love that way of looking at it, because it's, you know, it's like our the day and the night, the sun and the moon. So the the limitating, the limiting, the limiting, the opposite of those are the liberating. So before I was saying how we have excessively high standards, liberating is we have high standards, but it's not excessively high. It's like we have a high like, it's we value what we're putting out there. You know, there's that attention to detail. So that can really come in handy in a lot of specific roles. What I love is that, like, when you actually start to have the high standards and know how to get them or achieve them in a way that's not going to burn you out, that those people can be real assets in a team situation. So it's like, if you can have like someone who can harness those liberating aspects of perfectionism works really well for everybody else and for them as well, and when they can actually learn to celebrate the wins one thing we see that as a really liberating trait, and probably one of the the best things you can experience is increased life satisfaction. You have this sense of fulfillment and purpose and joy in what you're doing. I think the joy is a massive thing, because, like the other side of that is, is feeling like you just can't enjoy life because nothing is ever going to satiate or satisfy that hunger for something that is unachievable, whereas when you feel joy and fulfillment and you feel satisfied with what you're doing, the purpose behind what you're doing, you feel satisfied and you feel happy, you feel contentment. So it's really all the things that you everybody wants, yeah, like you want to actually feel like you're doing things that you love, you are content with who you are. You're having fulfilling relationships, rather than energy sapping relationships where either you're doing the sapping or, you know, other people are sapping it out of you because they're taking advantage of the fact that you know you're the perfectionist they can rely on you to get it done. There's so many different facets there. But I think probably the most liberating things are that the high standards, the attention to detail, the being able to be super productive in a way that's not going to like, create too much doing it's like you can still lean into the being aspect and still actually be quite productive increased focus, because you have that purpose and that ambition. So life, ambition, life satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, purpose. I think they're the ones that really resonate with me, because that's kind of like, the more I do this work, obviously on myself. I'm the best guinea pig, because I'm I do everything on myself before I work with people. Because the you know, I think that's the best way to do it is to live, live that experience. I feel like the more I lean into the purpose, the easier things around me get. So there's this level of ease that comes rather than like when you're striving, you're there's this belief that everything has to be hard. So on the other side, the liberating side of that, is, well, everything's everything can be easy. We can still be challenged, we can still be stimulated, but things can have a level of ease that they didn't have before.