Perfectionism has been a big part of my story.
When I started my business in 2017, I knew I needed to market myself so people could actually find me and learn about my services.
Sounds simple, right? Not for me.
I could spend hours on a single Instagram post — agonizing over the photo, the wording, the graphic, whether people would even like it. And if I didn’t think it was good enough, I just wouldn’t post it.
Looking back, I can see how much that held me back. There were probably people who could have benefited from my services and never got the chance to find me, simply because I was too afraid to put something out into the world unless it felt perfect.
It wasn’t just the business, either. I noticed the same pattern with hobbies. I’d get interested in something and immediately want to be good at it — which isn’t really how learning works.
You have to be willing to be bad at something before you can get better.
The freeze cycle
For me, it usually went something like this: I want to do something, so I want to do it well, so I get afraid I won’t, so I overthink it, so I don’t do it, so I feel worse. The more pressure I put on myself, the harder it got to actually take action.
Eventually I started studying coaching and applying what I learned to my own life. One of the biggest shifts was realizing that perfectionism doesn’t create growth — it gets in the way of it. If you’re always waiting until you’re ready, confident, or good enough, you never actually give yourself the chance to learn.
So I started changing the question I asked myself. Instead of “how do I do this perfectly,” I started asking, “what’s one small thing I can do to move forward?” That shift changed a lot. I became more willing to make mistakes, more willing to be a beginner, more willing to try something without knowing how it would turn out.
Perfectionism hasn’t magically disappeared. But I rarely get stuck in that freeze cycle the way I used to. Done really can be regulating — taking one small action often feels better than hours spent thinking about the perfect one.
What’s on the other side of perfectionism?
Maybe it’s the hobby you’ve been afraid to try. The project you keep putting off. The room you avoid organizing because you can’t do the whole thing at once. The business idea you’re still sitting on. The conversation you keep rehearsing in your head instead of having.
What if you didn’t have to do it perfectly — what if you just had to start?
That’s a lot of what I love about coaching: helping clients put this into practice in real life. Challenging the all-or-nothing thinking. Changing the inner dialogue. Taking the next small step, and then the one after that, until there’s real momentum.
My hope is that you get to experience what I have — less overwhelm, less stress, more willingness to try, and more room to grow.
If perfectionism is something you struggle with, here’s your challenge: what’s one thing you’ve been waiting to do until you can do it perfectly? And what would happen if you gave yourself permission to do it imperfectly instead?
You might be surprised by what’s waiting on the other side.
If you want some accountability while you work through it, that’s exactly what we do together in ADHD Coaching.
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You don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to take the next step.
