104: The Imperfect Clinician
The Imperfect Clinician
In today's society, we are often encouraged to strive for perfection in all aspects of our lives, including our careers. This pressure to be perfect can lead to unrealistic expectations and can contribute to burnout. In this episode, I invite you to embrace imperfection in nursing and in life.
I discussed how perfectionism could be harmful and how striving for perfection can lead to unrealistic expectations.
The beauty of life lies in imperfection, and embracing the ebb and flow of the human experience is what makes it valuable. Acknowledge and accept imperfection, and stop expecting perfection from themselves and others.
Key Takeaways:
00:43 Striving for perfection and expectations
01:30 Accepting the imperfection in life
02:25 The concept of B minus work
04:37 Imperfection is the beauty of life
05:11 Acknowledging and accepting imperfection
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
Liam Caswell: So for all of you that are sitting, waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect job, the perfect manager, the perfect team, the perfect pay, it doesn't exist, it's not available. Imperfection is the beauty of life.
Liam Caswell: Welcome back to the High Performance Nursing Podcast. Today we are talking all things imperfection. I know you already got your backup. How would your life change if you allowed yourself to be imperfect, if you're just fully embraced imperfection in all aspects of your life? I know for me, this has been a work
in progress. It is something that I constantly, daily, have to battle with. I expect the house to be perfect. I expect my washing to be perfect. I expect it to smell beautiful. I expect the weather to be perfect. I expect all of the perfection just to fall into place. I expected my job to be perfect, my manager to be perfect, my patience to be perfect.
And when you list it all like that, it's super unreasonable. It's almost like we have this expectation of the world and until it meets our perfection standards, it's gonna be hell on earth. But what if perfection isn't the goal? What if perfection isn't even attainable? In my efforts, I've found that to be true.
I've found that the more that I strive for perfection, the less I am happy in my life. The more that I have higher expectations of others and things outside of my control, the less content I. In my internal processes and and how I am as a human. So I want to invite you today to really think about what would change for you in your life if you just decided and consciously and intentionally practiced, accepting that the world is imperfect.
It is so imperfect in all the ways, and the imperfection is a beautiful thing. Many of us try to do a plus work all the time. Many of us nurses go to work. I know you because you're a high performer. You go to work and you go in and you're like, I'm going to nail it. I'm gonna do my absolute best. And that's a beautiful thing.
But what if your best is actually just be minus, and that's totally fine. What if it doesn't always have to be a plus? This is a really difficult concept for high performers to acknowledge and to even consider. I had never, ever thought about putting out work into the world that was B minus. I'd never thought about that.
What if it is B minus, but it still delivers. Here's what I've learned to be true. B minus work is still frigging amazing. It's still incredible. A plus is amazing. That's great. But to be at a plus all the time is totally unreasonable and irrational. It's not possible for us as humans to sustain that. And I think that this answer to our burnout narrative in nursing, because we're always like, but I'm doing so good and I'm trying to be the best, and our patients need us, and we've got all of these external pressures that one we buy into two.
Think should be perfect. And three, we are like, why have we got no staff? All of these things all come into this big pile of let's create this perfect environment. But what if it was never perfect? What if it's never gonna be perfect? How would that change how you approach your career and your life? What if you could just accept the reality for what it is that every human that comes into our contact as a patient and as a nursing colleague in any way, shape, or form, is an imperfect human?
What if you could drop the perfectionism so that you could go to work and you could be doing, be buying a spark, and you could be so proud of yourself? Trust me. In putting out lots of content podcasts posts, you know, I make mistakes all the time, and when I first started I was like super triggered by it, and now I put stuff out and it has a type one it, and I'm like, who cares?
Because B minus work is still valuable. Something needed to see that today. I might never even know who that person is, but just in me showing up and being willing to be imperfect. Is helping someone somewhere. And the same is true for you. So for all of you that are sitting, waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect job, the perfect manager, the perfect team, the perfect pay, it doesn't exist,
it does not exist. It's not available. Imperfection is the beauty of life. It is why we are able to be and to live and to have this human experience because if it was perfectional the time, how tedious would that be? We are meant to ebb and flow through perfection and imperfection. One day we do really awesome work and it's a plus, and the next day, maybe it's C minus, but that C minus work is still super valuable and we do not need to beat ourselves up for delivering less than work, less than perfect work.
We can just acknowledge it for what it's, it's part of the human rollercoaster of experience. Okay, so if you're a sum. They're thinking to yourself, I just can't let go of the perfectionism. I, you know, I can't even imagine going in and Liam's telling me to do less and not to do as much. That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is that it's unreasonable for you to expect perfection from yourself. You probably do expect that from other people, but how is that going for you? Do people mean up to your perfectionist standards? How much challenge and issue is that creating for you in your. When you're constantly expecting others to deliver, when nine times at a 10, we can't sustain that delivery for ourselves.
So I really want you to think about this week where my life am I do I have perfectionist standards where my life is perfectionism stopping me and holding me back from just stepping into my true, authentic self. That could be a point for a graduate program. Maybe you want to go for that promotion, but you don't feel ready cause your cvs not perfect.
P. Perfect. CVS don't exist. We can do incredible cvs, but Perfect doesn't exist. It's subjective right to you as an individual. Where in your life are you letting perfectionism stop you from moving forward? Or you know, I need to be the perfect weight to be able to do this. I need to look this perfect way to be able to have a social media channel, whatever that is for you.
I want you to challenge the perfectionism, and I want you to start embracing and finding opportunities to be imper. B imperfect. One of the best things that I've done in my nursing career is start my business. cause I've had to be imperfect publicly. And this podcast is imperfect. It's not a hundred percent a plus, like amazing, right?
And sometimes my podcasts are like killer. Sometimes they're not flowing. And that's fine because there is somebody that needs to hear this today that being perfect is not possible. All the time. possible. It's not even possible 1% of the time. Let's just remove it from the table. What if there's just beauty in you being imperfect.
Because I know my partner loves all the things about me that are imperfect. Loves all of them. I detest them, but I'm learning to love them and I'm learning to love those parts of me. And I'm starting to see that perfectionism is a condition, like, almost like a condition that I've introduced into my life and my career in order to prove to other people that I was good enough and.
And you know what, like I was pretty good at my job. I was pretty bloody good. And even at that level where I over-delivered and I over committed, still didn't matter. People still didn't see. People still don't care. So there's literally no benefit to being perfect, no benefit whatsoever. So I want you to remove that.
It comes up in our graduates all the time about being the perfect grad and being the perfect interviewee and being the perfect X, Y, and Z and start. The panel are not perfect. The humans that are gonna horror you are not perfect. Stop expecting yourself to be perfect and invite in all the imperfection.
That's what I have for you this week. I will see you next week and let me know. Send me a message. Tell me all the ways in which you're gonna start introducing and accepting perfectionism in your life. I'll see you then.
