Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Hey, guys. I am excited to talk to you about a very sticky floor that I have talked with a ton of women about lately, and it is the sticky floor of perfectionism. Now, where the hell do I start with perfectionism? This is one sticky floor that I have personally struggled with.

Erica: I still struggle with it. But originally, it is not one that I would have thought that I struggled from. Like, I never feel this need to be perfect. But when I sit back and I look at where a lot of my stress comes from and my anxiety, I can say that I can attribute this to the sticky floor of perfectionism. Perfectionism is when life seems like this endless report card of your accomplishments, your looks, your to do list, everything checked off.

Erica: You're getting it all done. Right? It's the belief that we have to live perfect. We have to look perfect. We have to act perfect.

Erica: By doing this, we minimize the judgment that we receive from others and also from ourselves and we minimize struggle. We minimize that feeling of not being good enough. Now, when I stopped and examined what perfectionism was or what it is and about earning approval and acceptance, it really rang true with me. Now I've ascribed to the notion that I'm not perfect, which why in the beginning, I didn't think this was a real case for me, but there are certain areas of my life that I'm comfortable with being not perfect. You know, I don't care if my kids are eating off paper plates.

Erica: I don't even care if I serve you off paper plates if you come over to my house for dinner so long as you have a good time. But then there are areas of my life where perfectionism really kicks in and I didn't even realize it. And I'll give you some examples. So my car, it's a mess. It's always dirty.

Erica: It's got grass in it from the kids, dense scratches. It drives my husband crazy, but I could, like driving it all day long. Doesn't bother me. I am happy happy to welcome anyone into my dirty ass car. But when it comes to my fitness, I have really struggled with not having the perfect workout.

Erica: So let me explain. I truly value my health and my fitness, and I pride myself on being a super fit person, on being able to run six miles easily, on being able to lift heavy, to be strong. And for over ten years of my life, I was a personal trainer, yoga instructor, spin instructor, and an avid distance runner. So it was a huge piece of my identity. It still is.

Erica: And when I shifted from corporate wellness instructor, where I literally worked out for a living into the HR world, I wanted to keep that piece of me of fitness alive. I would wake up early every morning, something I never had to do before because I got paid to work out. And I wanted to make sure that I got at least thirty minutes of cardio in followed by a straight training session followed by stretching. And every day had to have a time that was dedicated to fitness. So I would be frustrated on the days if I got a slow start and I could only get in twenty minutes of cardio.

Erica: I would really just feel anxiety and be stressed out about it. And I would look at my husband who would just squeeze in fifteen minutes of cardio because that was all the time he had. And I would think, like, he is freaking crazy. Fifteen minutes does not do shit. Like, why is he even bothering?

Erica: And if that were me, I would a 100% not work out at all rather than squeeze in the fifteen minutes. If that was all I had, I just did not see the point. So if I couldn't do it, I wasn't gonna do it at all. And that my friends is perfectionism. Now let's talk about motherhood.

Erica: Right? Because I think this is a lot of there are, there are a lot of women out there who feel this way. Right? So after seven years, I have relaxed a little bit, but I remember needing to feel like I was the perfect mom, the best mom, that I was doing everything right for my kid because my kid was the most important thing. Now I never use the word perfect, like, in my brain, but I had set these standards that I believe were so important that they had to be done, like, at all cost to myself.

Erica: So I breast had my kid for a year. And do you I mean, do you know how stressful that is? Like, I spent so much extra money and time, like, researching, like, lactation cookies and having them shipped to me and what foods I should be eating, you know, so I could produce more milk. I would wake up. I would set my alarm in the middle of the night to pump more and all of that stress associated with it was like just exhausting.

Erica: But I felt like I had to do it because if I breastfed my kid for a year, that was the best thing and it needed to be done. You know, I felt like I had to have him sleep trained. I mean, yes. Like everyone, I wanted him to sleep when I slept, but I killed myself in the process of it because I had this expectation that if I could show everybody else and tell everybody else there that I breastfed my kid for a year, he sleeps eight hours a night, he's fully vaccinated, healthy, he eats homemade organic baby food, all of those things, like I was doing it right. Now news flash, no one cared.

Erica: Literally, no one gave a shit. No one cared if I bottle fed breastfed formula fed so long as he was fed. No one cared when he slept. They just cared that I was also rested. You know, but I had these beliefs that I just held so tightly in my head that, like, this was what I had to do and at all cost.

Erica: And I was running myself into the ground just so I could say that I was doing these things. Now this concept of perfectionism, it can be healthy. So when it's healthy, it's motivating you. It helps you achieve your goals. Think about, like, wanting to check off your habit tracker for one piece of daily movement a day or taking your vitamins on the regular.

Erica: Right? But when it becomes unhealthy, it can cause you to feel like a constant failure and leave you with these feelings of I'm not good enough. It can hamper your success because it can be self destructive. For me waking up in the middle of the night several times so that I could have an extra pumping session for my kid while I was working a full time job and then waking up at 5AM to work out when I easily could have and probably should have been resting him and maybe just given him some formula once a day instead. You know, that's self destructive stuff there that can run a woman into the ground.

Erica: So how do we cultivate what we need to let go of this notion of perfectionism? This notion that if I don't check all the boxes and do all the things, if I don't get in my full hour of a workout every day, that it's okay. That is indeed enough. And what I'm finding is that the key is to separate yourself from the behavior. So I'm addressing what I'm doing or what I'm not doing and understand that is not necessarily who I am.

Erica: So I am still a very fitness focused person. It is still a very big part of who I am, even if I don't get that full hour of an intense workout every day. Just because I don't get thirty minutes of intense cardio a day, it doesn't make me somebody that's not fit or unhealthy. It just because I gave my kids formula instead of breastfeeding them because I needed the sleep. It doesn't make me a bad mom.

Erica: It makes me human. So we have to stop hustling and grinding and killing ourselves for this worthiness by constantly trying to perfect and please other people and prove to other people that we are this fit, amazing, wonderful person or mom. Right. We have to acknowledge our vulnerabilities. And a big one for me is practicing self compassion.

Erica: We have to embrace like who we really are, including all of those imperfections. Owning our story, accepting our flaws, accepting those imperfections. It's one of the greatest things that we can do for ourselves. And it takes a lot of work and a lot of practice. Brene Brown spent years researching shame and guilt, and she wrote a book called the gift of imperfection, which I hands down recommend for everyone to read.

Erica: It is a really great book, but she states that shame is the warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough. She talks about shame resilience, which is a, a practice that we should all be doing and how we need to recognize that shame, but that we have to be able to move through it while maintaining our worthiness and our authenticity. It's the ability to move through the feeling of shame and develop courage, develop compassion, and make connection with other people. So do you ever notice that when you talk about your failures or your misses that you form connections with others, that it seems to minimize the shame and the discomfort associated with whatever you're talking about. When I finally opened up to other moms that I was struggling with breastfeeding and I was getting up at 4AM and I was exhausted, Other moms started talking to me about the same thing and they would help me throw that idea out the door and, you know, help me embrace formula.

Erica: And it comforted me. It made me feel not alone. It helped me form this connection and this tribe with other women to learn that it was okay. That I wasn't being judged. And that this concept of what a good mom was in my head was all bullshit.

Erica: So why did I feel as though I couldn't breastfeed my kid that if I couldn't do it for a whole year exclusively, that I wasn't a good mom? Why do we associate this being imperfect with being inadequate? And that's exactly the feelings that I was having. So we have to embrace our imperfections, embrace our authentic selves and separate those behaviors, what we're doing, from who we are at our core. Now, authenticity is a practice.

Erica: It is a daily practice for everyone. It's the choice to show up every day. It's the choice to be real. I think social media has made that a lot harder for all of us because we only put out all of the rainbows and sunshine and good positive things out there, but that's not real life. You have to let go of this notion of who you're supposed to be and what that entails and embrace who you are.

Erica: We have to practice being flexible with ourselves. We have to practice demonstrating perseverance. For me, that means not throwing in the towel for fitness and exercise if I only have twenty minutes a day. It's just doing something. We have to tolerate some disappointment.

Erica: Yes. I wanted to breastfeed for a year. I read the studies. I felt it was a good decision for me and my baby, but it wasn't entirely because it wasn't easy for me. And that's okay.

Erica: I needed to be okay with that. We have to be okay with sufficiency with enough and you are enough. I am enough. We are enough. I find that perfectionism really stems, at least for me, from this desire to be perceived a certain way.

Erica: And I've come to think that and believe that after reading about it and really examining my sticky floor, and it's really all constructed in our heads. It's this comparison devil. Right? So, like, we're constantly comparing our parenting, our bodies, our careers, our success, our money, our trips, our happiness. We think that we should look a certain way, that we sure have our kids in certain activities, throw these extravagant parties because everyone else is.

Erica: I mean, that list is endless, y'all. We even compare our freaking levels of exhaustion, and we use that as a status symbol. How ridiculous is that? We have this supposed to do list that is constantly going in our mind. Right?

Erica: So you're supposed to work out every day for an hour. You're supposed to cook dinner every night for your family. You're supposed to make your bed. You're supposed to check-in with all your friends. You're supposed to have family dinners with the in laws.

Erica: You're supposed to go to swim practice, baseball, ballet, whatever. Now I challenge you to ask yourself, what adds meaning to your life? Get rid of that supposed to do list and get a meaning life, a meaning list, a quality list. So sometimes it might be an hour long workout and sometimes it might be an app. And you have to ask yourself when things are going really well for you, what does that look like?

Erica: When things are going really well for your family, what does that look like? For me, it's a balance of getting the necessary things done, like schoolwork and homework and my work. But it's also making time for movements. It's making time for family walks. It's making time for quiet time, rest time, and for reading fictional books, not always educational books.

Erica: Now I'm not going to lie. It is uncomfortable for me sometimes, you know, it feels challenging a lot. I still struggle with feeling like fifteen minutes is not a sufficient workout for me, but it's all about breaking the long set of patterns of thought that we have in our head. So it takes work. It takes a lot of self awareness for me.

Erica: You know, but as Anna Quindlen says, the thing that is really hard and really amazing is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. So I challenge you to flip the script. Don't think about arriving somewhere. Don't think about fitness as a destination, motherhood as a destination. Think of it as an act of becoming and becoming yourself.

Erica: Take care.