How Your Body Affects Your Happiness & Good News for Self-Critics and Perfectionists

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, what happens to all the lost luggage at the airport that never gets claimed? Then, what you do to your body can affect your mood and happiness.

Speaker 2 For example, turns out that we're happier in blue spaces near water and in green spaces when we're outside.

Speaker 2 There's a psychologist out of the UK who found that two hours a week spent near the water actually improves your well-being quite dramatically.

Speaker 1 Also, why most receipts you keep you could probably throw away. And understanding the feeling of perfectionism and what it's really trying to tell you.

Speaker 3 The word perfectionism is actually a misnomer. Instead of striving to be perfect, it's really about never feeling good enough, especially in the context of an ever more competitive culture.

Speaker 3 It makes sense that we respond with the feeling that we're not good enough.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know.
With Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. We're doing this episode around the holidays, and a lot of people travel around the holiday season.

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Speaker 1 You can shop online and the prices are pretty impressive. you can check out the unclaimed baggage store there is a link to it in the show notes and that is something you should know

Speaker 1 you've probably heard that expression that happiness is a state of mind and while that's probably true there's another piece to this happiness is also a state of body In other words, what you do with your body can affect your happiness or your state of mind more than you probably ever imagined.

Speaker 1 So how does that work? Well, you're about to find out from Janice Kaplan.

Speaker 1 She's a journalist and former editor of Parade magazine, and she's author of a book called What Your Body Knows About Happiness. Hi, Janice.
Welcome.

Speaker 2 Hi, Mike. Thanks so much.
Great to be with you.

Speaker 1 So first, explain the general principle here of how the body affects your mind and how it can impact your happiness and how, in general, how this works and why it works.

Speaker 2 So, the idea here is that there are really strong links between our bodies and our minds. And we tend to think of our brain as being the big computer that controls everything.

Speaker 2 But the truth is that your brain is just this three-pound mass sitting up there in a very dark skull.

Speaker 2 And the only information it gets is from your body, from your environment, from your senses, all sending that information up to your brain.

Speaker 2 And the more we can understand about how those links are working and the information that we're sending, the more we can control them and the more we can use them to make ourselves feel better and happier and improve our well-being.

Speaker 1 So give me an example of how those things are working.

Speaker 2 Well, I'll give you sort of a funny example here that was some research that was done out of Yale where people were given a warm cup of coffee to hold or else they were given an iced coffee to hold.

Speaker 2 And they didn't even realize that that was part of the research because then they were brought in and they were asked to describe how they felt about certain people.

Speaker 2 And the researchers found that those who had been given the warm coffee described people as being warmer and kinder than those who had been given the iced coffee. So how does that possibly work?

Speaker 2 Well, our brains in some ways think in metaphors, and they're getting the information of something warm or something cold, and they're actually misattributing it and assuming that it has to do with the person rather than with the coffee that they've just held.

Speaker 2 Another researcher who's now at the University of Michigan did something similar where he had people sitting in soft chairs and hard chairs.

Speaker 2 And he found that the people who were sitting in the hard chairs negotiated harder in a question about how much they would pay for a car than the people who were sitting in the soft chairs.

Speaker 2 I guess you could say soft chairs, soft heart.

Speaker 1 Doesn't that sound like

Speaker 1 overly simplistic? Like, you know, a soft chair. I mean, it makes sense in a way, but it sounds like it can't be that simple.

Speaker 2 I know. I absolutely agree with you.
It sounds crazy. And we just don't want to attribute so much to our bodies.
But think about it this way.

Speaker 2 If you touch a classic example, if you touch a hot stove, your hand is going to pull back long before your brain actually registers what has happened.

Speaker 2 And we want our bodies to be able to be sending that information.

Speaker 2 If you had to wait for your brain to go, oh my goodness, I have just touched a hot stove, I think I had better remove my hand, you're gonna have a lot of burns.

Speaker 2 So we understand that our bodies have these instinctive responses. What we don't always realize is that they're happening on every level of our environment, all around us all the time.

Speaker 2 Let me give you one other example of similar research where people were given resumes to evaluate.

Speaker 2 Now, that's a kind of standard psychological experiment, and if I handed you two resumes, you'd probably say, oh, she's checking for unconscious bias, and I'm going to make sure not to get influenced by the person's name or where they live or ethnicity.

Speaker 2 But what you might not think about would be the weight of the clipboard that was holding the resume.

Speaker 2 And the researchers found that when people were holding the resume on a heavy clipboard, they described the person as being much more serious.

Speaker 2 I guess somehow the heavy clipboard was sending the information of a heavyweight while the light clipboard was sending the information of a lightweight.

Speaker 1 So as fascinating as that is,

Speaker 1 so what? I mean,

Speaker 1 what can we do with that

Speaker 1 in our lives other than observe that and say, well, that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 Well, great question. And I think the answer is that being more aware of the body-mind links allows us to use our bodies in ways that are going to improve our well-being.

Speaker 2 So something very simple like sit up a little bit straighter when you're feeling down, stand a little bit straighter. Research shows that when you're depressed, you just naturally slouch.

Speaker 2 And so when you're in a slouched position, your brain, which is constantly scanning your body for information, assumes that something's going wrong.

Speaker 2 And somehow when you stand up straighter, the message is getting sent to your body that you're a little bit happier. So those little tweaks actually work.

Speaker 2 You're probably familiar with the research that's been done on smiling. It goes back a long time where people, the first research was people were given a pencil to hold

Speaker 2 and some of them were given it in a way that would make them frown and some of them in a way that would make them smile. And those whose faces were put into a smile actually reported feeling happier.

Speaker 2 And this research has been repeated, has been challenged, has been done all over the world in many different ways.

Speaker 2 But the ultimate result is that, yes, yes, indeed, the position that the muscles are in in our face affect how our brains feel.

Speaker 1 But how?

Speaker 1 How does that work?

Speaker 1 What's the mechanism that makes that work? Is it hormones? Is it, I mean, how does that make you happier?

Speaker 2 Well, again, your brain is always getting the information from your neurons and from your senses. And

Speaker 2 when your muscles are in a particular position, if your muscles are tensed, your body is realizing that you're tense.

Speaker 2 There's an old story about what would happen when you're walking down the street and you encounter a bear. I guess in more modern days, we can update that to you encounter a dark alley.

Speaker 2 And what happens, of course, is that your heart starts pounding and your hands get sweaty and you're scared. And so the question is,

Speaker 2 are you scared because your heart is pounding and your hands are sweaty? Or is your heart pounding because you're scared?

Speaker 2 So most of us would say, well, of course we're scared and that causes the physical symptoms. But it now seems to be that it works the other way around.

Speaker 2 That once again, just like with that touching the hot stove, our bodies are responding first and our minds are taking that information in and realizing what's going on.

Speaker 2 So how can you use that for good? How can you turn that around?

Speaker 2 Well let's imagine you're about to give a speech or you're about to ask your boss for a raise and sure enough your hands are sweating and your chest is pounding.

Speaker 2 Well if you just try to tell yourself no no no I'm calm I have this under control all is going to be well it's not going to work because your body is sending a different message.

Speaker 2 But you can take the message that your body is sending and reframe that a little bit. When else is your chest pounding and your hands sweaty when you're excited.

Speaker 2 So reframe that thought and say, I'm not worried about asking my boss for a raise. I'm excited about it.
I'm not worried about giving this toast at the wedding. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 And that little change actually works, and it works because your body is sending the same message that you're trying to tell yourself.

Speaker 1 You say that the colors blue and green are important to this discussion. So can you explain how?

Speaker 2 The colors are nice, but really it's what they stand for: that it turns out that we're happier in blue spaces near water and in green spaces when we're outside.

Speaker 2 There's been a lot of research into that, and there's a psychologist out of the UK who did very extensive research and found that two hours a week spent near the water actually improves your well-being quite dramatically.

Speaker 2 And it doesn't have to be at a roaring ocean.

Speaker 2 There are lakes and ponds and streams just about everywhere. Lots of cities are reclaiming their waterfronts at great expense, but actually it's such an important thing to do because it really does.

Speaker 2 The calmness of the water actually just makes us feel better. The fact that water is constantly changing, that there is a rhythm to it.
There's something about water.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's that we, going back to our evolutionary biology, we've wanted to live near water because it was safer and it

Speaker 2 gave us a place where we could find food and possibilities. So just being near water makes us happier.
Being outside in any way, being out in the mountains, being

Speaker 2 outdoors, improves our well-being.

Speaker 2 So that's another thing that we can recognize that when we're feeling down, when we're not feeling great, just step outside and it's probably going to improve how you feel.

Speaker 1 We're discussing the fascinating connection between what you do with your body and how that affects your happiness. My guest guest is Janice Kaplan.

Speaker 1 She is author of a book called What Your Body Knows About Happiness.

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Speaker 1 So, Janice, it's interesting that, you know, we're talking about how your body can make you happy, but it also seems true that it works the other way.

Speaker 1 Like when you're in pain or you're sick, it makes you pretty unhappy, and that's your body just feeling pain and sickness.

Speaker 2 Of course. And there are many ways that we actually can distract ourselves from pain.
There's research that shows that playing music makes you feel better. By touching somebody else,

Speaker 2 a physical response that way can distract you from pain.

Speaker 2 There are lots of different ways to talk about pain and to think about it. There are huge differences also between chronic pain and between an immediate pain.

Speaker 2 If you break your leg, that's an immediate pain that needs to be taken care of.

Speaker 2 So many people suffer from chronic pain, from back pain, from knee pain that just goes on and on for months with no obvious cause.

Speaker 2 And it's starting to seem that a lot of that pain can actually be relieved rather than at the site of where it's occurring, but in our brains.

Speaker 2 You can think of the pain circuit as being like those old electric circuits that you used to set up as a kid, you know, where you'd connect everything and try to make the light bulb go off.

Speaker 2 And any place where you disconnected the circuit would make the light bulb, you were trying to make the light bulb go on, excuse me, any place you disconnected the circuit would make the light bulb go off.

Speaker 2 And it's the same thing with the pain. Any place in that pain circuit, which of course runs through the brain where we can disrupt the circuit, we might be able to stop the pain.

Speaker 2 And more and more of the pain researchers who I spoke to, in fact, all of the researchers, pain researchers I spoke to, are focusing on the brain as the place to stop chronic pain rather than the specific site of where you think the pain is occurring.

Speaker 1 What about food and how that works with our body to affect happiness?

Speaker 2 I loved learning about food and what makes us think something tastes good.

Speaker 2 Have you ever gone on a vacation and had maybe a glass of wine while you're sitting in Paris or sitting in the south of France and you go, this is the most amazing wine I've ever tasted.

Speaker 2 And then you come home and you go to your local store and you manage to find the same wine. You bring it home and it just doesn't taste the same.
And is it true that wine tastes better in Paris?

Speaker 2 Well, absolutely. And that's because when you're in Paris, you're not just drinking the wine, you're drinking in the atmosphere.
You're drinking in the most romantic city in the world.

Speaker 2 You're drinking in the sense of being in this charming little cafe. We actually taste with all of our senses.

Speaker 2 There's been some really interesting research showing that you can influence how people feel about a food or what they're drinking by changing the environment where they are.

Speaker 2 One researcher gave people glasses of whiskey, and he sent them to three different rooms that he had set up with dramatically different environments. And he had them describe the whiskey in each room.

Speaker 2 And the one of the rooms, for example, that was set up to be very bucolic with green lighting and with beautiful things that gave a sense of the outdoors, people described the whiskey as having sort of a grassy taste.

Speaker 2 And then they would go to the next room that was set up very differently with jazz music, and they might describe the whiskey as being a bit edgier.

Speaker 2 And he laughed to say that the people were holding the same glass of whiskey in their hands as they moved from room to room. So at the end of it, they realized nobody had been tricking them.

Speaker 2 They had been tricking themselves. We take in everything in our environment

Speaker 2 and we attribute it to the food that seems to be on the plate in front of us.

Speaker 1 So knowing what you know, like how do you incorporate this into your life?

Speaker 2 Back when I wrote the gratitude diaries, I knew that if I was unhappy about something or if I could catch myself in a moment when I was just being incredibly grumpy, I would actually stop and

Speaker 2 literally make myself stop and try to reframe reframe the situation and try to think about something positive and try to think about how could I look at this in a more positive way.

Speaker 2 And that's pretty wonderful because it gives you a sense of control and a sense that you don't have to just rely on the events that are occurring around you. You can change how you perceive them.

Speaker 2 Now that I've written this book, What Your Body Knows About Happiness, I'm able to use my body in a similar way.

Speaker 2 So if I'm unhappy, sometimes I might stop and make myself stand a little straighter as I'm walking or give a little smile or look up.

Speaker 2 Or if I'm sitting in my house or apartment and aren't happy, I'll step outside.

Speaker 2 So being aware that there are things that you can physically do to change how you feel, to perk up your brain, as we said before, to go someplace new, really gives you that sense that you're in control.

Speaker 2 You don't have to be reliant on what's happening around you.

Speaker 1 See, that's what I think is so important about this is the awareness of that. Because if you're upset about something,

Speaker 1 some problem you're having, you tend to think, I need to solve this problem in order to feel better again.

Speaker 1 But you're saying there are other things you can do that might help you reframe the problem or view it differently or not be so down about it that has nothing to do with the problem.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. Go out for a walk, take a bike ride.
There's actually a lot of fascinating research that shows how much more creative we are when we're walking.

Speaker 2 We tend to, you know, sit slouched over our computers all day trying to come up with good ideas and clever things and solve problems.

Speaker 2 And if you actually get up and walk, you're going to become much more creative. There's a professor out of Stanford who did some research on this, and she called her paper, Give Your Ideas Some Legs.

Speaker 2 And the idea is that somehow the fluidity of body movement helps the fluidity of thinking.

Speaker 2 And again, as you just suggested, I think when you're stuck on something or when you're feeling down, one of the things that happens is that you start digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole and you don't see a way that you can get out.

Speaker 2 And if you have these little tricks, these little things that you know, this is going to make a change for me,

Speaker 2 you can start to move forward again.

Speaker 1 But it just seems too simple, right? It's like, this is too easy. It couldn't possibly work.
It must be more complicated than this. When, in fact, it really isn't.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we like to think of ourselves as being incredibly complicated, don't we? And we are. Our brains can do a lot of great things and our bodies can do a lot of great things.

Speaker 2 But these very simple messages that are being sent between body and brain are pretty simple. And you know, you can think of it that our brain's basic role in life is to keep your body alive.

Speaker 2 You can't solve huge mathematical problems unless you're here.

Speaker 2 So your brain is just very busy trying to figure out what your body needs and send out those right messages to it, and you're going to feel better.

Speaker 1 Well, and certainly exercise. I think everybody has heard that message, that exercise can have a real effect on your mood and your happiness if you do it.

Speaker 1 And you got to do it, but exercise is another thing your body can do to affect your happiness.

Speaker 2 And there's something interesting on that also, which is that so many people have gotten caught up with their Apple watches and their various ways of measuring things

Speaker 2 that they're doing. People are out there with their, we must do 10,000 steps, which I think by now we all know is really, there's no scientific basis for 10,000 steps at all.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 A lot of the research now suggests that if you're a professional athlete, if you're really serious about the sports that you're doing, maybe you want to be measuring what you're doing.

Speaker 2 But if you're a weekend athlete, if you're going out for a run or a walk or a bike ride to make yourself feel better, to get a little healthier, throw away the measuring devices because what they're doing is that they're giving you a goal to achieve rather than allowing you to enjoy the pleasure of the moment.

Speaker 2 So there is a great pleasure in taking a walk.

Speaker 2 Maybe for some people there's a great pleasure in taking a run or a jog or a bike ride.

Speaker 2 But if you're very busy looking at how fast you're going and how well you're doing and how many steps have I achieved, you're

Speaker 2 losing that pleasure. So allow yourself to just indulge in the moment, enjoy the pleasures that you have, and

Speaker 2 the health benefits are going to come.

Speaker 1 Well, this is so useful because, as I said in the beginning,

Speaker 1 I think people think that if you have a problem, if something's going wrong, you need to deal with that. You need to resolve that in order for you to feel happier about it.

Speaker 1 And in fact, there are things you can do that affect your happiness that have nothing to do with the problem.

Speaker 1 Things to do with your body that most of us never think about. Janice Kaplan has been my guest.

Speaker 1 She's the former editor of Parade magazine, author of a couple of books, and her latest is called What Your Body Knows About Happiness. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Speaker 1 Thanks for sharing this, Janice.

Speaker 2 Thanks, Mike. It's been really fun and great to talk to you.
I appreciate it.

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Speaker 1 Around the first of the year is a time when people take stock of who they are and where they're going, how they're getting there.

Speaker 1 And one of the common concerns or complaints that people often have about their lives is they don't feel they're good enough. They're not living up to their potential.
They should be doing better.

Speaker 1 These people are what you would call self-critical, and self-criticism can be a real source of trouble. And according to my guest, it may also be a symptom of perfectionism.

Speaker 1 Ellen Hendrickson is a clinical psychologist at Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, and Psychology Today.

Speaker 1 She's author of a book called How to Be Enough, Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists. Hi, Ellen.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 So I would imagine that this idea, this feeling people have of not being enough, of being hard on themselves, self-critical, is a pretty common problem. A lot of people deal with this.

Speaker 3 Oh, for sure. Yeah.
So I am a clinical psychologist. I work at an anxiety specialty center.

Speaker 3 And I have to say that the majority of my clients who come into the center have perfectionism at the center of their challenges. But nobody has ever come in and said, Ellen, I'm a perfectionist.

Speaker 3 I need everything to be perfect. Instead, people say things like, I feel like I'm failing.
I feel like I'm falling behind. I have a million things on my plate and I'm not doing any of them well.

Speaker 3 And I think that's because the word perfectionism is actually a misnomer that instead of striving to be perfect, it's really about never feeling good enough. And that, especially in the context of

Speaker 3 2025, a demanding, ever more competitive, ratings-oriented, you know, optimization-focused. culture, it makes sense that we respond with the feeling that we're not good enough.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, if you're a perfectionist and nobody's perfect, so you're never going to be satisfied.
You're always going to feel like you're not doing it right. You're not doing it well.

Speaker 1 You're not doing it good enough.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, the definition of perfectionism is the tendency to demand of oneself a level of performance. higher than is required for the situation.

Speaker 3 And I really feel like that definition is sort of like one of those optical illusions where if you look at it one way, you see one thing. If you look at it the other way, you see another thing.

Speaker 3 It's like the bunny and the duck or the young lady and the old lady, because there is healthy perfectionism, like the tendency to demand of oneself a level of performance higher than is required for the situation can be really great.

Speaker 3 That's when we, you know, we hit it out of the park. That makes the world go round.

Speaker 3 It's when we strive for excellence, you know, we do good work for the work's sake, we set high standards, we care deeply, please keep doing that. Those are all amazing things.

Speaker 3 But where it can tip over into unhealthy perfectionism, into clinical perfectionism, is when we start to get into two things, when that, you know, demanding of oneself a level of performance higher than is required turns into something called over-evaluation, which was a new term for me.

Speaker 3 And what that means is when we start to conflate our performance and our character. Essentially, when I did good means I am good, or I did bad means I am bad.

Speaker 3 And like we can, we can overevaluate anything.

Speaker 3 So like think of the striver student who derives their value from their grades, or the employee who sees their quarterly evaluation as a referendum, like not just on their work, but their character.

Speaker 3 You know, the musician who's only as good as their last performance, the athlete who's only as good as their last game.

Speaker 3 You know, we can really overevaluate anything, like how healthy we ate today, whether or not we were awkward at the holiday party.

Speaker 3 It's wherever we think we have to perform as superbly as possible to be sufficient as a person. So that's one of the big pillars.
And the other is self-criticism.

Speaker 3 And that needs no definition, but in clinical perfectionism, it's particularly harsh.

Speaker 1 And why do we do that? Why are we so self-critical when we're harder on ourselves than we are on anybody else or that anybody else is on us? But where does that come from?

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 That's the $64,000 question. So this is

Speaker 3 kind of at the edge of science, but

Speaker 3 it's starting to look like perfectionism, even though it in itself is not a disorder, it's more like a cross-cutting part of other disorders.

Speaker 3 Perfectionism is part of social anxiety, eating disorders, depression, like lots of OCD, lots of things.

Speaker 3 And so even though it's not diagnosable in and of itself, it's definitely heritable. It's genetic.
So it can come from within, from our own DNA.

Speaker 3 It can

Speaker 3 also come from the way we were raised. So there's some research just showing likelihood of

Speaker 3 if we were raised within a family where

Speaker 3 love is sort of contingent upon performance, where like love and pride get confused.

Speaker 3 If we were raised where with a sort of snowplow or helicopter type of family, that can increase the likelihood that we come out perfectionistic.

Speaker 3 If we were raised in sort of a chaotic, unstable family, where maybe there was some substance abuse, chronic illness that

Speaker 3 again made that family unstable, it's likely that we might come out feeling like we need to overcompensate for something. But I think this is the most interesting thing.

Speaker 3 It can also come from the culture all around us. The researchers, Dr.
Thomas Kern and Andrew Hill, looked at 27 years worth of data and found that perfectionism is on the rise.

Speaker 3 And I found it particularly fascinating that the inflection point was 2005. That's when it really started to increase like a rocket launch.

Speaker 3 And I think it's no coincidence that that's when Facebook came out.

Speaker 3 So with the rise of social media, And again, this ever more demanding, ratings-oriented, consumeristic, capitalistic culture, you know, it makes sense that we respond by feeling like we're not good enough.

Speaker 1 Well, here's something that I've noticed, and I'll get you to comment on this, but you would use the phrase that a perfectionist does things to a level that is higher than required.

Speaker 1 And so higher than required

Speaker 1 means, for example, you don't have to get straight A's. A couple of B's are okay, but boy, when you get straight A's,

Speaker 1 everybody talks about that. Everybody, your parents gloat about my son has straight A's.
It wasn't required,

Speaker 1 but man, that's something. And the same with when you perform at work.
You know, you didn't have to do that, but boy, the fact that you did that, that is fabulous. And that feels great.

Speaker 1 So maybe it sort of was required, at least in my head.

Speaker 3 Sure. No, I think that's a really, a really important point because

Speaker 3 absolutely.

Speaker 3 Like the problem with perfectionism is not the high standards we can aim for and get straight a's those you know those high standards are fantastic they do get us far in life performing really well at work yes absolutely that's gonna get us some admiration uh

Speaker 3 maybe

Speaker 3 fast track our promotion and that's why i think that the advice around perfectionism is a little bit misguided because certainly you know i i identify as having some perfectionism.

Speaker 3 And sometimes I've been told, Ellen, you need to stop when things are good enough. Or, you know, you really should lower your standards.

Speaker 3 But like we talked about, when there is a little bit of over-evaluation happening, when we're conflating ourselves with our performance,

Speaker 3 good enough doesn't resonate when it's something from which we derive. our value.

Speaker 3 Like we're not going to settle for what we consider good enough, like subpar or mediocre performance, because that would mean that we're subpar or mediocre.

Speaker 3 So again, the problem with unhealthy perfectionism, and it's it's not the high standards, it's that overevaluation.

Speaker 1 So how do you fix that? If you've grown up your whole life as a perfectionist or someone who just has to hit it out of the park with everything you do, how do you then dial that back?

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. So I think, well, here,

Speaker 3 I want to make one more point because again you're absolutely right about how you know it feels really good to hit it out of the park and it it does get us positive attention and so you know perfectionism is this is what makes it so hard i think is what is called interpersonally motivated so you know it's essentially it's trying to help us it's trying to help us belong to the tribe but Perfectionism takes us down the wrong path to get there.

Speaker 3 Like it tells us the lie that we have to perform as superbly as possible to get people to like us, that we have to be good at things in order to belong.

Speaker 3 But think about why your friends are your friends. Like, are you friends with them because they're good at things? You know, do you like them because they're skilled at conversation?

Speaker 3 They always pick a good restaurant. You know, they always remember your birthday.
You know, none of those things are bad. But I'm guessing that is not why you like them.

Speaker 3 You know, more, more likely you're friends with your friends because of how they make you feel. Like

Speaker 3 when I'm with my friends, I feel connected, supported, understood. Like I can be myself.

Speaker 3 But the lie of perfectionism makes us really double down on performance in order to earn our way into belonging rather than focusing on connecting or like enjoying each other.

Speaker 1 So then what is the goal here? I mean, are we trying to just be able to accept that we don't have to do our best? I mean,

Speaker 1 or is, well, what is the goal?

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're trying to we're trying to separate the overlap of our performance from our value, from our self-worth. So, you know, we're never going to separate those completely.

Speaker 3 Of course, we're going to be proud of the good things we do. Of course, we're going to be disappointed when the things we try, you know, don't work out.

Speaker 3 But if we can try to separate that over-evaluation,

Speaker 3 that's what we're trying to do. And to that end, I tell the story of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his time at UCLA under the legendary basketball coach John Wooden.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the record of the team was so impressive that two researchers, so doctors Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore, sat in the stands for the 1974, 1975 practices.

Speaker 3 to see like like what is the secret sauce like what what does coach wooden do to

Speaker 3 make this this team just hit it out of the park every time to mix my metaphors?

Speaker 3 And what they discovered is that he very seldom praised or criticized his players. And that instead, as a former high school teacher, he did exactly that.
He taught.

Speaker 3 He told you what to do and how to do it. So he would say things like, pass from the chest.
Run, don't walk, take lots of shots where you might get them in games, pass the ball to someone short.

Speaker 3 He He was focused on information, not evaluation. And so we can take a page from that book.

Speaker 3 We can take the stance of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble and say, okay, what would be better for the work?

Speaker 3 What would be better for this? task or this thing I'm doing. And that can help us try to separate out our performance from our very character.
If we shift the focus from evaluating ourselves,

Speaker 3 like, you know, I'm so stupid, to focusing on how to make the work better, like pass the ball to someone short. For example, I had a client who was a conservatory student.
She was a violin major.

Speaker 3 And she would just mercilessly criticize herself in the practice room. She'd say things like, oh, why are you so stupid? You know, like, why, why can't you get this?

Speaker 3 And so we tried to shift her over to focusing on the music and to

Speaker 3 say things like, okay, like maybe I could try this slower. Maybe I can do this like one measure at a time.
It was about the work, not about her.

Speaker 1 And did that work?

Speaker 3 It's, you know, it can, it certainly can be, can be hard, but just, you don't have to completely separate this. We're not doing a 180.

Speaker 1 just a little bit of being able to see our performance at a perspective like five percent ten percent is really all we need it would seem though that if you have always done this it would be so hard to separate these two it's like scrambling an egg you can't unscramble it it's it would be so hard if i've always uh put my

Speaker 1 based my self-worth on how well a job I do.

Speaker 1 How do you ever say, oh, no, I'm not going to do that anymore?

Speaker 1 And I know what you said, not completely, but even a little bit. It seems like

Speaker 1 that's where my worth comes from.

Speaker 3 Sure. Yeah.
I think

Speaker 3 we can take some of the eggs out of the proverbial basket of performance and

Speaker 3 leave some in there. Again, performance is important.
I'm not saying it's... not important or that we don't derive any of our self-image or self-worth from it,

Speaker 3 but we can distribute some of those eggs to things that are more qualitative, like connection, like enjoyment. Like the people with perfectionism that I work with, often

Speaker 3 it's 110% all the time. And so I think the focus on perfectionism can sometimes edge out that we forget to connect with people, we forget to enjoy ourselves.

Speaker 3 We focus so exclusively on the performance. So, for instance, maybe if we're part of a karate dojo, we only focus on working our way through the successive belts.
We forget to enjoy the camaraderie.

Speaker 3 We forget to enjoy the movement of our limbs or

Speaker 3 the joy of improving or learning new things.

Speaker 3 If we have spare time, we might think, okay, I need to always be productive. I should be watching a documentary.
I should be reading history.

Speaker 3 And we forget that, you know, it's okay to, you know, watch a grass out comedy or read a rom-com or just go hang out and connect with our friends.

Speaker 3 There's, there's an outsized importance on performance in perfectionism, sometimes to the detriment of connecting with others in our lives or enjoying ourselves.

Speaker 3 And I find it ironic because perfectionism, again, is trying to connect us, but it tells us that we have to perform well in order for people to like us. But that's not true.

Speaker 3 We can instead, you know, focus on them, focus on our relationships, as opposed to trying to be good at things and earn liking and belonging that way.

Speaker 1 It does seem that this goes, I mean, way back in your, to school. I mean, at school, especially if you want to go to a college that

Speaker 1 you know, where that's the goal,

Speaker 1 your grade, you are your grades.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's, that's who you are and everyone's disappointed if you don't get the grades to get into that college so it's all about your performance and and you kind of learn that in school

Speaker 3 yeah no i mean we again we absorb perfectionism through the culture and if we're put in a situation where you know we are our grades or you know our parents only notice us when we deliver as opposed to when we you know feel deeply or or notice us because of our personality or our talents,

Speaker 3 then yeah, absolutely. Every human reacts to the situation we're put in.

Speaker 3 And so if we're put in what's called a perfectionistic climate like that, when we're defined by our performance, think of the highest levels of women's gymnastics or like classical music orchestra auditions, then yeah,

Speaker 3 if there is no room for error, of course we're going to respond with some perfectionism.

Speaker 1 I guess it's hard not to. Like you say, it's the culture.
It's, you know, we like people who are winners, who perform well, who are at the top of their game.

Speaker 1 And the only way to get to your the top of your game is to focus on your performance.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but I think there is a difference between admiration and being impressive

Speaker 3 versus belonging.

Speaker 3 So if we are impressive, if we're the top performer, then yes, we're singular, but we're also separate. Being at the top is pretty lonely.

Speaker 3 And so I think when we mistakenly double down on perfectionism, and again, the high standards are not the problem. Please perform well.
Like, please keep hitting it out of the park.

Speaker 3 It's that over-evaluation when we think that our self-worth, like our,

Speaker 3 to be sufficient as a person,

Speaker 3 we need to perform as superbly as possible. And so there, again, this, you think about why your friends are your friends, or like think about the when we

Speaker 3 are trying to be closer to people, there's a difference between impressing them and connecting with them. So vulnerability is a term that gets kicked around a lot, but

Speaker 3 let's define it so we can just be on the same page. So vulnerability is when

Speaker 3 we have a willingness to reveal thoughts, actions, emotions that might result in criticism or rejection and taking a leap of faith that we won't.

Speaker 3 It's letting people that we want to be closer to, not just anyone, not our boss, not some authority figure, but letting the people we want to be closer to see some of the mess, because that signals two things.

Speaker 3 One is vulnerability signals: I trust you. I trust you to see some of my struggle or mistakes, and I trust you not to judge or reject me for it.

Speaker 3 And second, it signals we are the same, that, you know, just like you, I struggle or I, you know, need help or I need to ask for some advice.

Speaker 3 This is not a teacher-student relationship or a mentor-mentee relationship. If this is someone you want to get closer to, being equal and on the same footing is the foundation of that.

Speaker 3 So being vulnerable and showing a little bit of what, you know, what might not go right all the time

Speaker 3 signals we're the same.

Speaker 1 Wow, what you just said a moment ago

Speaker 1 is so right on the money from my perspective. And that is to realize the difference between trying to impress people and trying to connect with people, that those are two very different things.

Speaker 1 And that by trying to impress people, to some extent, as you just described, you tend to push them away because nobody wants to be around somebody who's perfect. I mean, how boring is that?

Speaker 3 Right, right. We're trying to keep ourselves, you know, socially safe by being impressive, by putting our best foot forward and hiding the mess.

Speaker 3 But then we come across as like superhuman or unrelatable or intimidating, and that keeps us disconnected.

Speaker 3 So, not to get too academic about this, but you know, so humans' impressions of each other fall along two fundamental dimensions: there's competence and there's warmth.

Speaker 3 And competence is, you know, how capable, skilled, and/or

Speaker 3 is this person? Whereas warmth is how trustworthy, caring, and kind is this person. And in perfectionism, we put a premium on competence.

Speaker 3 Again, that lie of perfectionism tells us we have to perform as superbly as possible in order to belong.

Speaker 3 But the most important dimension is actually warmth, because evolutionarily, we have to assess other people's intentions. You know, are they friend or foe? Are they in my tribe?

Speaker 3 So we have to assess their warmth, essentially, or lack thereof, before we evaluate their capability to fulfill those attentions, before we evaluate their competence.

Speaker 3 So warmth comes first and carries more weight.

Speaker 1 So if I'm a perfectionist listening to you and thinking, well, you know, I like this, but like, it's hard for me to imagine putting my toe in the water here. What's a good

Speaker 1 first step or a good way to frame this so you could like test it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, actually, I love this question because I, so I take the subtitle of my book really literally. It's self-acceptance for self-critics and perfectionists.

Speaker 3 And there, we don't even have to change anything. So, okay, let's take self-criticism.
So, like, I, you know, I have learned over the years that

Speaker 3 whenever I do something with a microphone or whenever I put a piece of writing out into the world, my brain will automatically think it sucks and think it wasn't good enough.

Speaker 3 But I have realized that this is just how my brain is wired, that some brains are wired to be more optimistic or pessimistic, more introverted or extroverted.

Speaker 3 My brain and the brains of any other people with perfectionism are just wired to be a little more self-critical. But that doesn't mean that I have to listen.

Speaker 3 to those thoughts or to take them so seriously or so literally that I can take the stance of listening to my self-critical thoughts like I listen to the music in a coffee shop.

Speaker 3 It's there in the background. It's, you know, it's happening.
I can hear it, but I don't have to dance along. Like I don't have to sing the lyrics.

Speaker 3 And this is a method called cognitive diffusion, which gets some perspective on the fact that our self-critical thoughts, are just that thoughts.

Speaker 3 And there, you know, there are lots of ways to do this exercise.

Speaker 3 There's a a fan favorite method of doing cognitive diffusion is to sort of play with the thoughts to make them irreverent or like a little bit ridiculous again to emphasize that these are just thoughts so i have a client who likes to picture animal from the muppets banging his drum set and yelling his thought which is everyone will judge you

Speaker 3 and i have another client who her thought is you're going to let everyone down and so she pictures that thought on a coffee mug.

Speaker 3 And she pictures herself taking a little sip from the mug when she has that thought. And again, it's to emphasize that this is not truth.
These are not facts. These are products of our own brain.

Speaker 3 They're just thoughts.

Speaker 1 Well, that's a very different and refreshing look at perfectionism. You know, it's interesting too, is that sometimes people self-describe as perfectionists in a bad way.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm such a perfectionist, you know, and it's a problem. Whereas other people will take pride in their perfectionism.
Your view is really different and I think really helpful.

Speaker 1 Ellen Hendrickson has been my guest. She's a clinical psychologist at Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

Speaker 1 And she is author of a book called How to Be Enough, Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists. And if you'd like to read it, there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Speaker 1 Thank you for being here today, Ellen.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
And I enjoy talking to you. You ask great questions.

Speaker 1 Ever reach into your pocket and pull out some old receipt or open a drawer and there's receipts in there from who knows how long ago?

Speaker 1 We get receipts for almost everything, but most receipts can be tossed out. Sure, if you plan to deduct the purchase on your taxes, you'll need to keep the receipt longer.

Speaker 1 But for everything else, well, here are a few guidelines.

Speaker 1 For cash receipts, if you use, say a money management software program, once you've entered that amount into your computer, you can toss the receipt.

Speaker 1 If you keep receipts for clothes you've purchased, well once you've removed the tags and worn the clothes, you really don't need to keep the receipt anymore.

Speaker 1 For restaurant receipts, you should probably keep those and other charge card receipts long enough to check the amount against the credit card statement.

Speaker 1 But after that, unless it's a tax deduction, you can throw restaurant receipts away.

Speaker 1 Business, job hunting, medical expenses, and charitable donations, those receipts should be kept longer, at least long enough to discuss with your tax preparer to find out if you need to keep them for your taxes.

Speaker 1 Also, if you bought anything that came with a warranty, you should probably hold on to the receipt until the warranty runs out. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 Remember to tell your friends and share this podcast with people you know. It really helps us and it's a great way to support the show.
I'm Mike Carruthers.

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