The Perfection Trap Embracing the Power of Good Enough

Thomas Curran is a psychologist at the London School of Economics he's the author of The Perfection Trap embracing the power of good enough

Thomas Curran is a psychologist at the London School of Economics, he's the author of The Perfection Trap Embracing the Power of Good Enough.

My guest today is Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap, Embracing the Power of Good Enough.

I think you have to start with perfectionism. It's very root and it's very root is a sense of deficit, a sense of lack, a sense that we really don't feel like we're good enough.

I think that's where it starts a hundred percent. Bernie Brown describes perfectionism as coming from shame based fears of not feeling enough.

And I think it's so, so important Dan that we start there because we can often confuse perfectionism with related characteristics, things like meticulousness, conscientiousness, these things that come from a very active, optimistic place of wanting to grow, wanting to improve, wanting to do better.

Perfectionism doesn't come from that place. It looks like those things because it has excessively high standards baked in, but it comes from a place of insecurity, a place of lack, a place of shame based fear of not feeling like we're enough.