Part 2 of 2: Dr. Greg Chasson: "Breaking the Chains of Perfectionism"
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Do you find yourself driven to pursue perfection? Have you ever considered how shame may be driving you to the brink?
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Join us in part two of our enlightening conversation filled with strategies and insights with Dr. Greg Chasson, a renowned expert on perfectionism and fear of failure, who delves deeper into the drivers of perfectionism, such as shame and rigidity.
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Dr. Chasson shares personal anecdotes and practical strategies for overcoming perfectionism, making mistakes on purpose, and fostering cognitive flexibility both individually and within organizational cultures. Learn how to shift from rule-based living to principle-based thinking and why understanding the difference can transform both personal and professional life.
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Dr. Greg Chasson, a renowned expert on perfectionism and fear of failure, takesus deeper into the drivers of perfectionism, such as shame and rigidity. Dr. Chasson shares personal anecdotes and practical strategies for overcoming perfectionism, making mistakes on purpose, and fostering cognitive flexibility both individually and within organizational cultures.
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Learn how to shift from rule-based living to principle-based thinking and why understanding the difference can transform both personal and professional life.
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Website https://www.gregchasson.com Social Media https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregchasson/ https://x.com/GregChassonhttps://www.instagram.com/gregorychasson/
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- 00:00 Introduction and Recap of Part One
- 01:19 Understanding the Drivers of Perfectionism
- 01:36 The Role of Shame in Perfectionism
- 03:40 Personal Story: Overcoming Shame
- 09:15 Exploring Cognitive Flexibility
- 11:39 Principles vs. Rules
- 15:23 Strategies for Leaders to Promote Flexibility
- 18:03 Personal Reflections and Conclusion
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(upbeat music) Welcome back to part two of our delicious conversation with Dr. Greg Chassen. He is a noted perfectionism and fear of failure expert. He does work with organizations, with individuals. He runs clinics. He directs the behavioral interventions for obsessive compulsive related disorder program. He's at the University of Chicago. And in part one of the show we were talking about, of course he's book, flawed. As a leader, you might wanna grab all of that because we're talking about perfectionism and really understanding how it shows up in leadership, how it shows up in management and how is actually, even though you might think it raises the standards, how it can be detrimental to that and how it can actually destroy it, the culture of your organization. So there's a lot to consider in that. Part one is really packed with understanding of what's driving perfectionism. And we wanna go further and deeper into that. We're gonna get into some of the strategies for dealing with it and where it comes from. In part one, we talked about imposter syndrome and how imposter syndrome is something that comes back and why it comes back. So if you didn't catch bar one, go back. There's a ton of goodies in there. Get out your pen, get out your paper, hit pause on your treadmill so you can take some notes 'cause I promise you there's some really great stuff in there. We're gonna go deeper into that right now in part two. So Greg, let's talk about the drivers of perfectionism. We've talked about this sense of being an imposter but there's also a primary driver which is shame. How does that work? How does shame drive perfection? - Yeah, I think shame is so integral to the concept of perfectionism and performance. And the problem is, especially in the West, I think we have a hard time recognizing it when we're experiencing it. I think we end up having anger outbursts or we avoid. And we sometimes don't even know that we're doing it often because of shame. And I think it's a huge part of perfection. If we don't do something right or we feel like we're gonna fail or we feel like we're an imposter, perhaps we're letting someone down or a mission down, the shame can be absolutely palpable. - So do you see that as an internal mechanism shame or is that something we've taken on externally and made internal? - Yes, I think both. I think there's absolutely forces that are all around us that shape the way we have our expectations of ourselves. And I kind of think of this as the should universe. As Clayton Barbo once said, "Stop shitting yourself." Or as Albert Ellis once said, "Stop masturbating." These are classic terms and the reason they exist is because the world thrusts shoulds on us. And those shoulds are in my mind a reflection of those expectations and that shame that's being put on people. And then of course, I think we derive it from within ourselves as well. We hold these beliefs about universal expectations of how the world should operate, our own should statements. And I think those are a problem as well. - So that's interesting, you said universal, but are they universal or do we make them universal? - I think they're perceived as universal, but they're not. - Right. - I should go to the gym every day, right? That's your belief, not mine. I can tell you that's not my belief. - It's very interesting because I will hear people say, "Well, everybody knows." And I'm like, "No, they don't." Well, she shouldn't have spoken to me that way. Why not? There's a set of standards inside of your coconut that don't exist in the universe. They just exist in your universe. And that's a very different place. Give us a personal story around shame so that we can understand how it plays out. - Yeah. I could give you a personal experience around shame and even have a little bit of shame describing on the show. And I think that that is an example in and of itself of how shame operates, is that on reluctance. I am from Southern California and we do not have snow. Or any snow that we do have is a little bit of dust on the lawn. When I moved to Boston and then to Baltimore and then to Chicago, I had to encounter snow, which was a foreign concept to me. Now, after 15 years of doing this, you would think that I had some skills and some knowledge. But unfortunately, that's not the case. When I was snowblowing a couple of years ago, I had the bone-headed move of trying to clear out the shoot that was jammed and I had my noise canceling headphones on and didn't realize that the engine was still going on this gas-powered snowblower. And I'm pretty sure a lot of you guys can know where this is going. But I did, I lost a finger as a result of this. The first thing that happened as I took my hand out was the shock and then funny enough, my next thought was, does this count for accidental death and dismemberment? And will I get an insurance payout? The answer is no for those that are listening. - So don't put your fingers in the boa if you're looking to get any payout. - Don't do that. But the next sort of experience, interestingly, after the shock wore down was this overwhelming sense of shame, like how big of an idiot could I possibly be? I am that guy that chopped off his finger in a snowblower and I've lived up to every California stereotype of living in the snow. And I am this professor at the University of Chicago and I was dumb enough to stick my hand in a snowblower. And the amount of shame that comes with that is very strong to the point where I don't tell anyone this and I will hide my finger in pictures. My whole body will respond when I have to go get someone a handshake thinking, are they gonna notice that I chopped up my finger? I don't even care if it were a congenital thing, right? If it were just, I have a stud finger as a congenital problem, I probably would be much more okay with that than the symbol of the shame that comes with how it happens. - So you've given it a category of stupidity and that's the shame 'cause you said that, right? How stupid am I? I have often said some of the dumbest people I've met, I've got PhDs. And it's not that they're dumb, it's that they did something dumb. For me, it's more, do you repeat something? So you're not dumb if you cut your finger off on the end of a snowblower, you're just dumb if you keep doing it. Now, oh, you're elbow deep. - Hey, it's nine more times and we'll see. - Then your classifier's dumb. We talked about perfectionism and overlay. And so I'm really smart is the other side of that. I'm really smart, I'm a prof, I lecture at University of Chicago. I'm the head of the Dingle, Bungle, Dingleberry section. - Right. - So obviously I'm smart, therefore I can't make a mistake. So now all of my degrees and all of my studies and all of my students and all of the impact that I've had is canceled by one dumb ass move. - Right. It's an all or none thinking, which is 100% correlated with perfectionism. It's discounting all the positive stuff that you've done, all the bright, brilliant moves that you've done. And it basically identifies you and your meaning in life and it boils down to one moment that was less than a split second that cost me a finger. - Right. And that brings us back to something you talked about in part one, which is rigidity. And I really wanna dive a little bit deeper in this second half into understanding that because maybe it's my illusion, but I don't think that rigid people see themselves as rigid. They see themselves as having a good set of principles, a good set of rules that they run their life by. I personally think those things are different, but talk to us more about that rigidity. - Yeah, so the rigidity is on a continuum. We all thrive with some level of rigidity and structure. I think that becomes a problem when it's excessive and causes impairments and impacts other people. This is not a witch hunt against people that like structure and rigid rules. Sometimes those are really helpful for certain people, especially when they struggle with structure or self-imposed rules. But when it starts to impact your functioning or the rules and the rigidity starts to get in the way of the purpose that those rules even exist, the example I give is really stupid, but imagine you're at the community pool and a kid is drowning and nobody sees it. And you stop and you say, well, I can't go help them. I just ate within 30 minutes. It says it right there on the pool's rules that you can't get in the pool if you've just had food. Well, what's the point of that? I don't know the entirety of the, I've never had a pool, but my guess is that the public safety, they don't want people puking in the pool. That can't be good for anyone. What is it that I've just undermined? Public safety, the kid's drowning. Obviously, it's a really stupid example. No, it's a great example because it's so glaring of this thing that makes perfect sense on the surface, but nothing is on the surface. Everything has layers to it and depth to it. And if you don't have some level of flexibility, and that's where I wanna go with this, talk to us about cognitive flexibility, 'cause that's what you're talking about here. - Absolutely, cognitive flexibility to me is the key to moving forward from perfectionism. And there are multiple ways of doing that. I prefer behavioral exercises and approaches that are drawn from a very rich and long history of behavior therapy in the clinical world, and then extrapolating them, borrowing them for people that are not so severe, are not necessarily clinically diagnosable, but would really benefit from the strategies. And so I would borrow from approach-based, exposure-based strategies. And what I tell people often blows their mind. I will have them do exercises where I ask them to make mistakes on purpose. - Give us examples of this, 'cause this is great. 'Cause again, individual listening potentially has some level of awareness around this, and/or is dealing with, they are the, quote, leader in a culture. So let's go to these things. Give us some of the strategies that people can, well, maybe I'm not that, but I'll try this. - Yeah, great. I think the caveat to this, or the sort of warning, is that I'm not asking people to make really big mistakes. I'll work with a surgeon, and my goal is not for them to leave a sponge inside a body. That's not what I'm talking about. Instead, I'm talking about things like, let's send a typo in an email to a colleague. Let's forget to send the attachments. Whoops, I've never done that before, right? I was like, who's done that? - I've never. - Or let's send this to gym and receivables instead of gym and accounting. Little mistakes that, in truth, from our perspective, as somebody that's working on some of this perfectionism, seem trivial or not that big a deal. But to the perfectionists, this is a very difficult thing for them. - Creating an anxiety attack for some of them. - Absolutely. And if you do it enough times and in a systematic way, without providing them the opportunity to check and to fix and to do all these things that they do, these safety behaviors that I call them, they then start to shatter this worldview through experience. They shatter this schema or source code or whatever you want to call it. This upbringing of belief about how the world operates that they can't make mistakes, but also that they won't even be able to handle it if they did, that they can't tolerate. - Yeah. And again, you know, it's something you talked about in the first part, which is having a set of principles versus having a set of rules. My core around this is that rules are black holes for joy. They got nothing to do with principles in my philosophy. Rules are about others, about what you have to, so I have to do a certain thing because you have to be something. So it's a set of rules. And that's very different than what you're talking about, which is a set of principles. Can you give us your version of that to help our audience understand that? - I would love to. I see it as a pyramid at the base of this pyramid on which everything is built, values. And I speak about it more broadly than just one word, values, but things like I value contributing to my work in a way that has purpose, those values, things that are important to you in your life. On the next level, and this is of course, the values are very abstract. You can't really hold them, you can't grasp them, you can't really measure them. They're never achieved. You have to show fidelity towards them. The next level up that are built on these values, these are the principles. And these are a little less abstract, but definitely not as concrete as rules. They also can't be really attains. You can show fidelity towards those as well. And I'll give an example of all this in just a moment, but at the very top, that's where you get the rules. Rules are based on those principles, which in turn are then based on the values. And you create this pyramid. And rules on the other hand are very concrete. The best rules are concrete, understandable, explicit, and they can be achieved or not achieved. And you know it at the end. So can you give us an example of how all that plays out? - Yeah, the example that I might use that we brought up in the last episode is somebody who shows up at 701 to work, and the bosses gets on their case about being late. And the underlying value is punctuality. The principle is to show up to work on time. And the rule is be it work at seven a.m. And so you can kind of see that the value is very broad, very abstract. It can apply to a number of different situations, not just showing up to work on time. The idea is I value punctuality, I value that. And therefore, I will live by this principle of showing up to places on time, which is also vague, but a little less so. And you still can't really meet it. At what point in life do you declare that you have met that goal, if it were one, that you're showing up to things on time? What if you showed up to one thing not on time? Did you just ruin that? - Well, as I was saying earlier, is that these rules are absolutes. - Yes. - And if your life is run by absolutes, you are now a single faceted being. You're nothing more than a cardboard cutout, because that's not how human beings are. We are multifaceted, and so it gets overlaid. It's this piece of this is who I am that's so dangerous to me, psychologically. - Yeah, yeah. And it's for perfectionist, it's hard to give up. It's a safety blanket for them, because it's so predictable and so easy to understand. I think that sometimes they treat principles like this. They treat principles like rules, and so they expect people to be meeting them, which is not possible. And if you can't meet them, all it takes is one time for them not to be met, and you think that they've quote unquote violated this principle. And so if an employee shows up at 701, they think, oh, this person is not necessarily punctual and doesn't believe in this idea of being to work on time. And because they're so all or none, that's the interpretation, and then they take it out on their employee. - So how do we deal with this in the corporate culture? How do we make this healthier, more effective in the corporate culture? - Top down and bottom up, there are different strategies. The top down cultural approach would be to have an environment. It's not living and breathing set of rules that operate the entire place, but rather a set of principles that are guiding behavior. And this is not to say that rules are bad. This is not to say that there should be no rules. That would be chaos. This is about being able to be flexible. There's that word again. Be flexible about knowing when a rule should not be applied or not be adhered to, or when it doesn't make any sense, or is it actually adverse and should not be used, and use principles as the guide and values, even more so as the guide for what to do next. And by providing that type of leadership and de-emphasizing rules and promoting values and principles and allowing people the freedom, the autonomy to make those choices, that is crucial. - But again, in a practicality, how does a leader do that, who now recognizes, yeah, I've been running this as a set of rules of perfection. I have enough self-awareness that I recognize I've done that and I want to move to being more principles-based. I'm still battling my own demon around this perfectionist stuff. Where do they go? What's the next step for them? Besides buying your book? - Yeah, buy my book or crate or truck full. I think the strategy would be, first don't get too overwhelmed and be perfectionistic about this, right? Don't think that you're gonna change everything overnight and that you're gonna be able to see it all as if you had some beautiful vision of all the things that need to be changed. I think you just bite off a piece that you can chew, find an area where you think that there is an overwhelming amount of rules or that you've heard or seen or seen evidence of where people are not thrilled with the prison of rules that have been created and start there and write them all down and try to cluster them by principles. Some of them might have multiple principles, that's okay. But try to cluster them by principles and ask yourself, do I really need these rules in order to promote a culture that thrives on these principles or really pushes these principles forward and start pairing them away, start stripping them away. If you don't need the rules, do an experiment, start small. Get rid of a rule and see what happens. You might be surprised by the people that are in your organization. They might rise to the occasion and really appreciate having a little bit more freedom and not feeling so controlled and actually do better. Yeah, as I said, the rules are black holes for joy. So when I think about you and you said your entire life was run by this and you had your own awakening, where did you start to shift yourself out of that perfectionistic, got to keep the image side? What was your gradual movement? What did you do? - So in the mid 20s, as I was indicating, there was that moment where I thought, why am I doing this? If I'm going to be screwed around by the people I'm supposed to trust. And then more and more things started to happen that I think continue to shape this worldview of needing to be more flexible and principle-based and less a concern, frankly, about what the people around me, how they're perceiving me. The idea that everyone would like me, like you said, is a recipe for disaster. Not that you got to go around and have everyone hate you, but the idea that you're going to be able to control that in the first place is bizarre. I think back and think, wow, I can't even believe I had that thought. But smaller things started to happen and again, good mentorship is always clutch. And so I had a really good mentor who, funny enough, I didn't actually spend that much time with him, but he was so powerful in a few of the things he said to me and he's since passed, but he was a giant in the field of obsessive compulsive disorder. And he did and said a couple of things that really inspired some change. The first thing he did once, I sent him a scientific abstract for a conference as a trainee. And as somebody who is a polymath who reads scientific articles, you know that these abstracts are so jargon-filled and impossible for anyone to read. They are essentially a dog show for showing how, quote unquote, intelligent and clever you are. - It's really, look how smart I am, look at me. - Exactly. This was brilliant. I sent it to him for his thoughts as the senior author. And I said, what are your thoughts on this? And he sent it back almost instantly. And he said, can you write this in a way that a Genikee can understand? His name was Michael Genikee. And he said, can you write this in a way a Genikee could understand. This is a full professor at the Harvard Medical School who has published 400 articles, grants, up the walls. Like this guy was the king. And he was so one sentence changed my perspective on, yeah, why am I doing that? It's not that you need to write something for specific audiences, write it in a clear way. Right after that sentence, he said, Watson and Crick wrote about DNA in only a couple of pages. And it just blew my mind. Oh, this is the point of communication. What is the principle of this scientific communication? Well, it's to convey a point, it's communication. And all this crap and jargon and flexing your muscles is just getting in the way of the underlying principle. - Do you think people know what their underlying principles are? - I think some people would struggle to figure that out. I think others have a sense and I think if someone just took the time and focused on it and thought about, what's the point function of some of these rules? I think they could figure it out. But if they need some help, I think that's available as well. - But I think that that's the point is, as you very clearly said, people mix up principles with rules. And so they don't know their principles but they know their rules. And that's why they cling onto them and you're asking them to go a level deeper. And say, what's your principle that's manifest this rule? And if you don't know your principle, that's a good reason to dump the rule entirely and go, okay, well, this is manufactured for some reason probably to make me and my ego a good as opposed to actually being something that's functional and makes things better. - Right. I mean, how many rules get stuck through grandfathering that had a purpose at some point in some context long ago? And actually makes no sense anymore. Either it just got carried over over time and no one wanted to remove it. And people still abide by it. They marched to it as if it's reified in carved in stone. That's the example of having the rule in front of you that you may not understand the underlying principle. But if you can see that you don't know the principle, that's a great flag for you to then think, what is the point of this and to work backwards? And if you can't columbo that and figure it out, I think it's time for you to ask, is it time to do an experiment where we cut this out? Then you might find why it was there, but at least you now know. - Exactly. I love the example that if your principle is to learn, if that's the principle I want to continue to learn and you're stuck in time, as opposed to putting yourself in a constant evolution, then you have to have 10,000 books. - No, I've got a lot of books, so don't pretend I don't. But if your principle is to learn, then you can also listen to podcasts. You can also watch videos. You can also read e-books. You can also not read a book and just listen to audio books. All those things that seem against the rules of you've got to go to university, you've got to study the books and get your PhD, suddenly become like, hold on a second, if the principle is learning, not looking smart because I've got 10,000 books over there, that's my brag ability is the size of my library, then it's a very different thing. And I think that's a really good way of helping us to grasp this understanding of what's the principle that is underlying versus the rule that actually kind of devalues the principle. - Yeah, actually the school system is the perfect example of all of this. Sometimes the approaches used in the school system are absolutely undermining learning, which I think is the worst paradox of them all. The idea that some of these wrote learning principles or the idea of learning for learning's sake is lost on a lot of the teacher, there are just amazing teachers out there, but there are also just people marching through and doing this concrete, overly rigid approach, maybe even old school that doesn't take into account some of the newer understanding of learning. And so I think not only are you right, but I actually think some of the current systems in place undermine another example of where the rules undermine the principle. - Yeah, edu cut from the Latin to draw out, not to stuff in. And the most modern education is trying to stuff shit in so that you'll remember it. And then that certainly feeds into perfection 'cause you didn't get 100% on the exam. And it's like, oh, well, clearly I'm not smart as opposed to did you learn? Did you learn and fail the exam? - Well, in my mind, you're more successful at the principle of learning than passing the exam. Is the principle to pass the exam or to learn? - Mine's to learn. - The problem is you're right, the societies attach these rewards. You go to Ivy League school if you pass a test, but not necessarily if you learn. And so it's really tricky. I get where people are coming from when they're stuck on this perfectionism cycle. - That's why the movie Goodwill Hunting was so great because it showed exactly that. Here's somebody who can learn but can't apply. And here's a bunch of people who have all the rules that can do it by route but don't understand bugger all. - Exactly. That's why it was such a brilliant movie, absolutely. - So as we come to the end of part two of our show, I wanna ask you a personal question and that's this. If I could bring that little boy forward in time that used to be you, I don't want you to give him my advice 'cause that's what everybody asks you. I want to know what he would think about the imperfect guy with a piece of his finger missing, think of you. - First you would say, wow, you lost all your hair really? I think that would be his worst question. I think ultimately that deep down he knew the principles and the important stuff, the values, even though he was so anxious about the rules. And I think that if I could bestow anything or my showing him of anything, it would be the anxieties is not helping you and it's connected to these really rigid, wool-based beliefs, but the underlying core of what you've got, hold on to that and push it. - What would he think of you? - I think he would probably say you're not disciplined enough. I don't know that I buy this idea that you should give up perfection or give up trying to be perfect. And I think I would have some explaining to do. - Beautiful, that is a great insight. Thank you. So Greg, this has been a phenomenal conversation. Thank you so much for all that you've shared, for your wisdom. Again, I want to make sure that people know how they can find out more about you. So please tell us where they can find out more about you where they can tap into your resources. - Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me, Deb. This was a lot of fun. You can find out more about my book at www.flodbook.com, and you can hear and learn more about me and some of the programs I offer, some of the speaking and workshops, as well as an upcoming membership community for people who want to balance performance with quality of life and wellness. You can find that at my website, gregchassen.com, C-H-A-S-S-O-N is an antique, gregchassen.com. - Beautiful, thank you. And we'll make sure, again, that all of those links are put into the show notes. So if you didn't catch them, we'll make sure that they're there. Remember that those who control the meaning for the tribe, that could look like rules, and that could look better like principles. Those who control the meaning for the tribe control the movement of the tribe, and leaders who are committed to positively shaping the political and business landscape know they've got to type into what drives human behavior, and that is the emotional source code. I am Doug Barron, I show businesses, teams and leaders had harnessed their emotional source code to move their tribe, because unified actualized meaning is the single monolithic difference between mediocrity and greatness for individuals and for companies. Remember, we always need your help to stay relevant. So please do us a favor and go to wherever it is you listen to the podcast from, and rate, review and subscribe to the show. It makes a huge difference. And for those of you who are regulars, big thank you to you for sharing the show with everybody you know. 'Til next time, stay curious, my friend. Stay curious about whether you are living your life by a set of rules or a set of principles, because if it's by a set of rules, you're going to be constantly pursuing a perfectionism that's impossible, versus being present in your own life and in the lives of others, which is a lot more valuable. I'm Doug Barron, I'm here to assist you, tapping into your deepest meaning to reach that next level of clarity, focus, purpose and profit in your business, in your life and in your leadership impact, so that you can enjoy being flawed and I am out. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
