Be Perfect - Kelly Johnson

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Worst Advice I Ever Got. I'm your host, Sean Taylor, along with my producer, jb and today our guest is Kelly Johnson. Now, Kelly is a high achiever, a record breaking swimmer, a successful businesswoman, a coach, a mentor to others, but the worst advice she ever got, Be perfect. It sounds motivating on the surface, but as Kelly shares, chasing perfection nearly broke her. It led to anxiety, lost confidence, and years of feeling like nothing she did was ever enough. Until she learned how to let go of that pressure and to start showing up as her real self. This one's for the overachievers, the high performers, the people who look like they have it all together but feel like they're barely holding on. Let's get into it. Hey, Kelly, thanks for joining us today. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Shawn, thank you for having me here today. [00:00:56] Speaker A: Kelly, we would love to hear what was the worst advice you ever got? [00:01:00] Speaker B: The worst advice I ever got was to make it perfect. [00:01:05] Speaker A: Okay, make it perfect. Give us some context. Where did this come from? [00:01:09] Speaker B: Wow. So this advice was given to me as a young girl, so around 9 or 10 years old, by my mom, a very well intended mother who was trying to motivate me as a young swimmer. She was. She gave me the advice that if I wanted to be successful, then I had to be perfect in the pool. And so that was not only said, but reiterated every time I got in the pool and didn't do my best time or didn't win the race or achieve whatever goal that I set for myself. I'm a high achiever, so I motivate myself. So hearing that, I'm already hearing it from myself, but then to hear it from a parent, it was really kind of debilitating. [00:01:47] Speaker C: Did it? Yeah. Did it help? [00:01:49] Speaker B: No, it didn't help. It didn't help? No, it absolutely didn't help. And, you know, you kind of go into my career as a swimmer, so I was rising in the ranks pretty quickly as a swimmer. From the time I was 9 or 10, I would win these state titles, I would set state records, and I would get to the national meet and I would freeze. [00:02:04] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:02:05] Speaker B: I'd be afraid of failure. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:02:07] Speaker B: So I finally had a breakthrough my senior in high school. I won a junior national championship. I set a national record, and I should have felt, this is awesome. But instead I beat myself up. Why didn't I do that two years earlier? [00:02:22] Speaker A: You know, sometimes advice comes from people's own experiences. Right. So what do you think made her feel like you needed to be Perfect. You said it was well intentioned. Where's that coming from? [00:02:32] Speaker B: Well, she's a, she's a very nice person. She's, you know, she wants me to do my best. But I think, you know, you get in that competitive mindset as parents, right? Like I have kids, right. You want your kid to do their best, you want them to win. So sometimes even now I see, you know, it's parent ego driving it. I don't know if that with her or more of like, you know, you want this, I want this for you. So why can't you do it? [00:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting to think about my grandmother growing up, grew up in the Great Depression, so she had these, these notions and things about money. Sometimes the motivation for advice comes from other people not having what they want for you. [00:03:08] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Right. So it's a, it's a struggle. So you're 8, you're 9, you're 10, you're getting into your teenage years and you would have some successes. But when the lights got bright, the pressure was on. [00:03:22] Speaker B: It definitely was coming from the constant pressure to be perfect. I mean, you look at athletes in general, right? Like they have to be perfect in their sport to really achieve high levels. My mom's saying it, right? Like that was one part of it. But then as an athlete in general, you're surrounded by it, right? You're surrounded by other people who are driving to be perfect. And, and so that, you know, as this athlete, it just continued to reinforce that behavior. Okay, if you're not perfect, if you don't do your best time, if you don't win, if you don't set a national record, you're not worthy. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Did the advice and the pressure leak over into other aspects of your life? The social, the school, in college? [00:03:57] Speaker B: Yes. So when I got to University of Georgia, it was one of the top swimming programs in the nation. But our coach, Jack Bowerley, who was a four time Olympic coach, he knew that swimmers were not going to make a living after college in their sport. This was pre Michael Phelps, when you can make money out of swimming. So he very much emphasized academics. So he was like, you know, go get some A's after every practice, go get some A's. So you have this environment of all these type A competitive achievers. And now we're competing in the pool, but we're competing academically. So at that point I was like, okay, to be perfect, I have, have the top gpa, I have to win all the awards. So it leaked over from my Athletics into my academics and it helped me achieve some amazing goals. But it put a lot of pressure on me. And if I look back to my college years, I remember being exhausted, mentally exhausted all the time, trying to be perf as an athlete, trying to be perfect as a student. [00:04:50] Speaker A: And does this pursuit of perfection in your life prevent you from pursuing certain opportunities? [00:04:57] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. So going into career, like my coach's husband come to me and he's like, kelly, you're really smart, you're really driven, you're really hard worker. I would love to give you an opportunity to meet the peop, the hiring people at SAP. And I was like, oh no, I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough, I'm not perfect. I can't do that. Passed it over. I can't do that. [00:05:15] Speaker A: Wow. So let me get this straight. You are now considering yourself not good enough to take a job interview? [00:05:21] Speaker B: I didn't feel I had set myself up for career. To be able to step in an organization like SAP, even back then, you know, it was impressive. So it was, it really, it really messed up my self confidence to say, okay, I'm not perfect. I'm not even going to go there. [00:05:35] Speaker A: I, I, I'm interested to know if you started to sense that maybe it was affecting your health, like your mental health or your physical health. Was there a time where you started really suffering from this? [00:05:48] Speaker B: Well, Sean, that's why I'm here and that's why I want to share my story. Because it took me until my mid-40s. I am 49 right now, and the aha moment for me was probably five or six years ago. So I had started a business and I was at max capacity with my business. I had three fractional marketing clients that I was working with. And I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe I'm not meant for the business world. And kind of serendipitously at that point, I started getting all these emails from my client telling me, oh my gosh, you're amazing. Like, thank you for all you're doing. We couldn't be who we are without you here. And that was so eye opening to me to be like, okay, here's what they're saying about me and here's how I'm feeling about myself. So it was kind of put me down this journey of what, what is wrong with me? And I, I really felt like there was something wrong with me. I didn't understand that all of these years of struggle that I had with debilitating anxiety. I didn't realize it. Back to my nine year old self being told that I needed to be perfect. So I started listening. There's a girl named Samantha Livingstone Arsenal. She started talking about her journey after winning a gold medal and the debilitating anxiety and depression she had. And she started calling herself recovering perfectionist. And I'm like, this is interesting, but that's not who I am. And the more I listened to her, I was like, oh my gosh, that's me. It's not something wrong with me. It's something that advice I'd been given as a young child that was reinforced. Reinforced, Reinforced. Reinforced to I believed it. [00:07:17] Speaker C: What would you say? What's the definition of a recovering professor? [00:07:21] Speaker B: You know you don't get cured of perfectionism, right? There's no cure for a perfectionist. It's I take daily steps and do things to remind myself daily that it's okay not to be perfect. So I call myself a recovering perfectionist or perfectly imperfect. Every day I get those tendencies in my head to say, okay, you didn't do that right? You didn't do that good enough. But now I have mechanisms to say, okay, your voices in your head aren't real. This is what's real. Even as late as two years ago, I would probably not be here in the same realm I am. But I'm taking the steps over time to get me to a point where I feel more fulfilled than ever, feel more confident than ever, even though I've achieved so many amazing things. And that's what perfectionists do, right? Perfectionism take you to the highest levels, but at the negative side of it, it can take you where I was debilitating anxiety, depression at times and really feeling worthless in society which had no basis in reality. [00:08:19] Speaker C: You said mechanisms that you do to when you're gonna what? Like what? [00:08:23] Speaker B: So I've gone through the program called positive intelligence training. It's training to really improve your mental agility. It gives me mechanisms such as stopping when those voices in my head start talking to myself. Okay, stop. These voices aren't real. Take some deep breaths. Remember, you know what, really who you are. And even if you made a failure, what can you learn? Like even if you failed on something? Because I make mistakes and fail all the time, right? But what can I learn from this? Instead of dwelling in the negative, what can I learn to make me better, to do it next time so I don't feel this way to help me recover quickly, more quickly from those episodes of self doubt and feeling not perfect. [00:09:08] Speaker A: Are you doing this in your own thoughts by yourself or do you openly discuss this with a coach or with others? How does it work? [00:09:16] Speaker B: Oh, that's a great question. So I hired my executive coach for me two and a half years ago. She's like, kelly, you need to do this positive intelligence training. And I said, no, I can't do it. I'm too busy. I've got to give my clients. Until finally I was like, okay, I'll do it. And it's really been game changing for me. And now I have a Monday morning accountability group that is a businesswomen C level women that get together to talk about it. So I know I'm not alone. Like, we have lots of high achieving women who are very similar to me. And that's really helpful too is meeting with these women on a weekly basis to talk through some of these things. And then I also have a personal accountability group through my church. So I. That has been game change. Both of those areas have been game changing for me. [00:09:56] Speaker A: And I assume you have to openly share in these groups. [00:09:59] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Oh, we do. [00:10:00] Speaker A: How does that help? [00:10:01] Speaker B: Well, it helps me by listening to other people's stories. Right. Like, you know, for a long time I felt like again, something was wrong with me. I felt just, I was different. Like I just wasn't worthy and no understand seeing these really successful C level women and sharing the same type of feelings. It's really helpful to be like, okay, I'm not alone. [00:10:21] Speaker A: It feels like young people struggle with this a lot. Despite not trying to be a college swimmer, for example. [00:10:28] Speaker B: Oh, well, you know, I talk about my, my background, but it's parallels to most anybody. You know, you talk about young people, what the pressure on young people right now. I really worry about them in 10 years if we don't start giving them mechanisms to learn how to deal with perfectionism and anxiety. You know, we, you know, I was a UGA student, my daughter's about to go to uga. The pressure to get into colleges these days and what they have to do, they feel like they have to be perfect from a very young age. And so I actually coach some of those individuals, young professionals, to help them really understand that they're worthy and that perfectionism is never a goal you want to have for yourself because it's unrealistic. But even going to people around my age, it's so common. And I coach a lot of individuals and I think they're attracted to me because of the journey I've been on to help them understand again, you never want to be A perfectionist. Don't aim for that. You know, in the past, it was like, oh, you want to be a perfectionist now? No, you don't want to aim for that. You want to be perfectly imperfect. Always making striving for your excellence, but not perfect, not perfection. [00:11:28] Speaker C: One of the things you said earlier with you in particular was that you were getting a lot of outside validation. Great job. You're so good. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And you look at these emails. A lot of people don't get that in their jobs. You know, words of affirmation, these things. You know, Don Draper, that's what the money is for. You know, like the whole. So people don't say that. So when people are striving for this perfection, but they're not getting what you got, which is like, oh, let me go look at all these people saying positive things. What can they do? [00:11:53] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's a great question. I think, first of all, acknowledging that they may have perfectionism is step one. Right. Like, if you don't understand it because, like, I didn't understand it, that's step one. Right. The step two is learning from your mistakes. Right. We all make mistakes every day. You know, if you're in a business environment, too, luckily now the business environment's different than when I started in business, and it's not as punitive. But if you're in a business environment where it is still punitive to this day, maybe you're not in a good environment for you and you're struggling with that perfectionism. So what is a culture that you want to be in? So, as a coach, I kind of look at that, you know, like, where does that culture look like? Are you feeling this because you're in a corporate culture that's really not matching what you need to be in because you are a perfectionist. So those are some of the things. You know, one of the things, again, I. Having that accountability group, having those people around you to help talk through these things, that's another helpful thing that I highly recommend. [00:12:49] Speaker C: Before we move on from that, are you saying some situations are not fixable and you. [00:12:53] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Oh, absolutely. [00:12:55] Speaker C: It's interesting. [00:12:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. Oh, yes. I mean, you hear stories all the time of corporate cultures that, you know, just burn out. Toxic. People are leaving, so why stay there? [00:13:04] Speaker A: Kelly? I keep thinking back to young people right now, but it's also co workers, too, right? What are signs that we can look out for in others to where maybe we can see that they're struggling with this striving for perfection. [00:13:17] Speaker B: I mean that's a great, great question. I can, I can identify them pretty, pretty quickly because I, I am one. [00:13:23] Speaker A: You lived it. [00:13:24] Speaker B: I lived it. So anybody I talk to, if you, you see their demeanor, they're not confident. They may have shrunked over shoulder. You know, I do a lot of my, my conversations on Zoom. So they may look away or they may like, you know, say an answer like, you know, I'm sorry that, you know, like their demeanor tells it all on how they feel. And like. Because self confidence has a lot to do with perfectionism. If you don't feel like you're perfect and you keep failing, then that's impacting your self confidence. So if I see action, I'm like, oh, they have perfectionist tendencies. I can help them here. I can help them. [00:13:59] Speaker A: How do you, how do, how do people give themselves a break when they have to strive to be per. I want, I want my surgeon to be perfect. I want, I want NASA absolutely, you know, to be perfect. How do people like that in those environments find ways to give themsel a break from this perfection poison? [00:14:18] Speaker B: I say perfectionism is a double edged sword. Right. Like as you said, it can make you achieve high. High. But also if you're someone like me who is achievement oriented and sensitive, that's led to that, some of that negative side. Someone like a surgeon. I don't, you know, I'm saying this, I'm not a surgeon, but they have a much different mindset up here. Right. Like they don't have that tendency as much to beat themselves up. They have the tendency to recover or their mental, they have that mental fitness to recover quickly. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Right? So I think, you know, someone like me who was told that and reiterated from a young age, it's actually what that happened to me is made me a much better parent for my children. [00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:03] Speaker B: So like, so they don't get into that tendency. They have that mental agility to become a surgeon because they don't have to get in their head so much. That's what takes that back to that nine year old I was told that reiterated that believe that instead of now like as I raise my children, it's positive work, you know, it's not none of the, you know, why didn't you do this? You have to be perfect. It's more of encouraging and based on their behaviors. Good work, you know, like good work not, you know, you won great job out there. Great trying, you know, trying your hardest or whatever. [00:15:35] Speaker C: Seems like a timing thing too. Right. So it's like you can strive for something and, and then, you know, surgeon striving to make sure your heart surgery goes well, but when it doesn't, you just get over it faster. It's like you can still strive for perfection. [00:15:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:15:49] Speaker C: Without ruining your life. [00:15:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think again, it's the recovery time sergeants have to come back like that. Right. Like, I did not learn that. And I don't know if I ever will, honestly, because that was ingrained in me so long. But I'm making progress to try to get better every day. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Let's go back to your not taking the SAP job interview. Right. You didn't want to take what? In my mind, I'm sort of formulating as a calculated risk that maybe you wouldn't show. Well, in my mind, I'm questioning how do people who are struggling with perfectionism learn how to take calculated risks without being maybe in their mind, ready? [00:16:24] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you're right. You're right. So I, you know, in some of my, when I took my biggest risk, again, I took a lot. I didn't do it right away. Right to your point where there was there a time, could I have done it sooner, I could have started my business 10, you know, well, I started eight years ago. I could have started 15 years ago, but I didn't feel ready. So that's, you know, maybe where you're going with, you know, that paralysis. Okay, 15 years ago, could I have started it? Yes. But I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. Seven years after that, I finally said, okay, I've done enough this information. Now I'm taking the jump and it worked. Right. So to your point. Yes. So many people get caught in that paralysis of, okay, it has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. It has to be perfect until I do it. And that's kind of where I was. But then I finally end up jumping. So now as I take risks, I try to lower that time from seven years. Yeah, whatever. [00:17:19] Speaker C: You know, like a lot of, a lot of perfectionists have a lot of confidence in themselves. You know what I mean? Like if, no, you wouldn't try to make something perfect if you thought it was impossible for you to do that. So do you think that that's something that is always hand in hand, A very confident person is always a perfectionist or random? [00:17:35] Speaker B: No. You know, because again, I didn't have confidence. I did so for me. No, I, I, I, I think it's different. Like I had low self esteem because of that Constant drive for, for perfectionism that I never could reach. So I constantly felt like a failure. But, but deep down, going back to the business growth, I'm, you know, even though I was a perfectionist and was, you know, didn't have super high self esteem, but deep down I knew that I could do whatever it took to make it work because I always have, like, I always would dive in deep and figure it out and make it work. But still, at the end of the day, it's still at low self esteem. So it's. [00:18:12] Speaker C: So that's part of getting over being a perfectionist? [00:18:14] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I'm more confident now than I ever have been in my entire life. [00:18:18] Speaker A: Who defines perfect me? Is it always you for yourself? Like, like I've heard of gymnasts, for example, executing a flawless floor exercise and getting a nine nine five from a judge. So who was right? [00:18:35] Speaker B: And when you're talking about gymnasts, I'm thinking about Simone biles. Right. In 2000 Olympics. And I applaud her for leaving the Tokyo Olympics when she didn't feel like she could be at her best and had that weight of the world on her and that weight of the world criticizing her for dropping out because of their expectations of what she should have achieved. You know, we all have our different definitions of success, right? So my definition is, I'm sure, much different than your definition. I know as I work with different people, I try to tell them, how do you define that for yourself instead of letting society define that by, you know, the car you drive or the money you make or the vacations you take? [00:19:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a big issue. I think we're talking about perfection from the standpoint of getting a hundred versus 99. But I think unfortunately for a lot of people, pursuit of perfect is not feeling good about themselves at all. I think it's a real problem. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Or the increased suicide rate among teens. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's terrifying. It's, it's terrifying. [00:19:36] Speaker A: It's, it's excruciating. I mean, it just feels like we're creating a society where everyone's pursuing perfection in look, in sound, in followers and likes and appreciation. And that's, that's, that's very dangerous. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Is so dangerous. I mean, social media has a lot of benefits. Right. But for teenagers, it can be debilitating. And I have a teenage daughter and see it with her and the comparison syndrome of, you know, she's extremely smart and pretty and athletic, but she feels less than at times, you know, when she looks at social media and sees someone's life, someone's perfect life, which, as we all know, is not real, what. [00:20:19] Speaker A: In your mind is a perfectly healthy, balanced life? [00:20:23] Speaker B: In my career now, most of the work that I'm doing is training and building others. So making an impact to help others avoid the challenges. I did so as a coach, really, that's where I make a difference. So helping people find to your question, what is their ideal career, which fits into their ideal life, which then brings that fulfillment to them instead of the anxiety and depression and other negative things that can come along with it? So impact to me is really, how do I make a difference to help others avoid some of these negative consequences of perfectionism? [00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know how we could have had a more perfect guest. [00:21:07] Speaker B: So perfectly imperfect. [00:21:09] Speaker A: Sean Kelly, you fit the mold perfectly, and I can't thank you enough for agreeing to join us on our podcast. There's a lot of people are going to hear your story and hear this episode and relate. You're very relatable. It's easily. It's easy to relate to your story. So thank you for sharing it. [00:21:29] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Thank you for having me. And I. I hope I can make a difference in someone's life to. To find their perfect life. [00:21:38] Speaker A: You know, jb, when Kelly first said the worst advice was be perfect, I kind of thought, well, yeah, we've heard that one before. Right? [00:21:46] Speaker C: Like, this day and age, it's like a. It's a cliche. You know, perfectionism is bad. Like, we. We know. [00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But then she told her story. It's not just the usual perfectionism held me back narrative. It. It. I think the key is how much it drove her. It drove her to win. She broke records, she got the grade, she built a business. She actually achieved everything people say they want to, you know, ultimately achieve. [00:22:09] Speaker C: Yeah. That's what makes it interesting is that, you know, the advice was actually good for her for a long time in this external kind of way. By every outside measure, you know, perfection really worked. [00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it worked until it didn't. You know, one thing I really appreciated was when Kelly called herself a recovering perfectionist. [00:22:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that framed it really well. You know, it's not like she's passed it completely. She just still manages it consciously every day. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it's a fix. Right. It's about recognizing it and building your life around healthier patterns. [00:22:41] Speaker C: And I like that she wasn't trying to stop striving altogether. You know, she still Works hard and pushes herself. She just doesn't let the outcome define her value. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it's sort of like a shift from I have to nail this to be enough to more of a I'm allowed to show up and be human is really. There's room for growth there now. [00:23:00] Speaker C: Yeah, she's built structure around it. You know, she has that weekly group. She does the coaching and the tools she's picked up and, you know, so she's putting in the work to stay grounded. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I respect that. I respect. She's not claiming to have it all figured out. She's just not letting perfection run the show anymore. [00:23:17] Speaker C: Yeah, it's progress over pressure. And, you know, for a lot of people listening, that probably sounds like a breath of fresh air. You know, that's the trap when your success is real, but so is your suffering. Nobody sees the second part. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Good point. Yeah, good point. The fact that she still calls the advice the worst she ever got, even though it pushed her to the top, it says everything you need to know about the hidden costs. [00:23:41] Speaker C: It also makes you think about the advice we casually pass down. You know, sometimes it sticks harder and cuts deeper than we ever intended. [00:23:48] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And. And speaking of things that stick, we hope this episode does just that, because next week we're back with another guest, another story, and more advice you might want to think twice about before taking. Follow the worst advice ever got wherever you listen to your podcast. And remember, don't be perfect. Just be here. Thanks for listening, everybody.