What if letting go of perfectionism meant you could finally rest—and still achieve your goals?

In this episode of Deeply Rested, Maegan Megginson chats with Amber Petty, a freelance writer and writing coach, to explore the many ways perfectionism impacts our lives—and how to move past it. 

Amber, whose work has appeared in many major publications, shares her personal journey of navigating perfectionism, from childhood experiences to its role in her professional life. Together, Maegan and Amber unpack how perfectionism keeps us stuck, where it shows up most often, and why it can be so hard to let it go. 

In this candid conversation, Amber introduces practical strategies to help us push past perfectionism and embrace imperfection as part of the creative process. You’ll learn techniques you can use starting today to stop perfectionism from keeping you on the sidelines of your own life. 

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

How perfectionism keeps us stuck (00:06)

Amber’s journey from perfectionism to progress (01:12)

Exploring the roots of your perfectionism (10:48)

Simple strategies to move past perfectionism (34:50)

Why imperfection sparks creativity (38:27)

The power of community in overcoming perfectionism (46:18)

How letting go of perfection creates space for rest and joy (47:46)

Tune in to learn how you can loosen perfectionism’s grip and start creating with more freedom, authenticity, and joy. You can check out the video version of this podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3DoQe8bKo0o

Connect with Amber Petty

Want to see your name in a cool publication? You're one pitch away. Find out how to do it in Write Your Pitch in 30 Minutes. It's free!

https://amber-petty.newzenler.com/f/write-your-pitch-in-30-minutes-green 

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[00:00:25] I've also found that perfectionism is one of the main things that I struggle with in my life which makes it hard for me to slow down and experience deep rest. Right? Perfectionism pushes us to do more, be more, and continuously raise the bar higher and higher and higher, and all of that effort requires a ton of energy.

[00:01:12] Amber helps creatives get bylines and build audiences. She's written for the New York Times, Parade, Bustle, and many others. Her clients have been seen in Huffington Post, The New Yorker, Washington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, Business Insider, and a whole lot more. After growing her business to six figures in the first year and creating an email list of over 11, 000 people, Amber has helped hundreds of people write for actual money, get PR, and build a platform for their creative careers.

[00:02:23] I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation. Sit back, take a deep breath, and prepare to be awed by the most perfectly imperfect conversation about perfectionism you are going to listen to today. Enjoy this conversation with Amber Petty.

[00:03:35] Amber: Yay, hello!

[00:03:42] Amber: Oh, Weird, but that's nothing to do with the podcast. I'm very excited to be here.

[00:04:07] What a perfect day for us to talk about perfectionism, right? Being in the midst of this kind of weird, intense energy. All right, Amber. Well, I would love for us to take two deep breaths together before we get started. Amber, I would love for you to tell me about a time when you felt paralyzed by perfectionism.

[00:05:11] Push through so I would ignore body signals or emotional signals, and just just push through everything. So, I might not be paralyzed, but I would work myself to death, and just figured, well, that's what you have to do, right? So, when I was 30, I moved to LA from New York City, and in New York City, I was busy all the time because you had to work a million jobs, and I was an actress, and all that stuff.

[00:06:19] So I started freelance writing, and there was a place where I'd sent them one, and they liked it, and they wanted me to write another article. And this was just like snarky entertainment stuff. It was not deep dives into the Catholic Church or something like that. You know, it was very, very light.

[00:06:52] So then thankfully I went to therapy. I started going to therapy. And that was a step, the first kind of step in getting out of how much perfectionism had become not just, oh, I'm a perfectionist or default, but it's like, it was my way of thinking and it was the only way of thinking.

[00:07:46] Yeah, not everything has to be treated like the most important thing in the world.

[00:08:17] and which I think is so interesting, right? And true for many of us perfectionists, the kind of people probably listening to this podcast, it's like, we've achieved a lot. And sometimes it's like, the more we achieve, the higher our standards become for ourselves and then we just get in our way It's what I'm hearing. They weren't expecting Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism from you. They just wanted a quick silly story and your system blocked you from being able to produce your creativity in that way.

[00:08:51] Amber: Yeah. Because in that case, they'd like to buy a story I'd already written. And it was about the six worst video game movies of all time. So again, nobody's lives are being changed here. And so then like, what idea do you want to do now? And then it's probably a double fluke that liked that one.

[00:09:34] Maegan: Couldn't do it. Right.

[00:09:40] Maegan: Yes, please go to therapy. I feel like every episode of this podcast ends with, please go to therapy. Okay, yes, I know I had this side thought just now of like, I wonder how many people with writer's block are experiencing, like, the grip of perfectionism.

[00:10:20] And when people say they have no ideas, almost always that's because they're just rejecting all their ideas before they get a chance to even fully think them out, or definitely before they write them down.

[00:10:48] Right now I want to follow a thread back to your childhood, if we may.

[00:11:19] Can you paint that picture for me?

[00:11:47] And then as I got a little older, like into middle school and high school, I would figure out what I needed to do. And then do just that. So like the first report somebody asked me for in a history class, it was 11 pages. Then I saw everybody else did one page. And so I would figure out, okay, cool. I can reduce the amount I do because How much I care about this is medium, but I love acting and singing.

[00:12:20] Maegan: I mean, once an actress, always an actress, let's be real.

[00:12:28] Maegan: Nothing.

[00:12:41] There's everybody tells you, you have to be the best and work harder, and you know the odds are against you and all that stuff. So it was very like a safe way for me to channel all that energy. And so things like I would get sick at the end of every play, which I just thought is what happened when a play was over.

[00:13:40] Amber: As I got older in my twenties, that's when I was getting more like actual anxiety, or noticeable depression. Even where I did, I mean, there were times I had to just lie down on the floor in my dressing room and just breathe in between shows.

[00:14:21] Maegan: I appreciate the reflection. It's true for me. I know it's true for so many high-achieving perfectionists that when we refuse to listen to the signals from our body, or maybe a more compassionate way to say that is that we don't know how to read the signals coming from our bodies, eventually our body will stop us in our tracks.

[00:15:07] And can we maybe get curious like how much of that stress is self-imposed? And like, okay, then we get to start just poking holes a little bit in this narrative we've created for our lives that makes the stakes feel like life or death all the time. Everything feels so important. And I love what you're saying, and I'm just like, holy shit, Amber was like an incredibly wise child.

[00:15:55] I don't care about history class that much, but I care about theater a lot. So let me moderate expectations for myself. In history class, which proves that you were able to moderate your perfectionism,

[00:16:31] Amber: Yeah. Yeah. And to me, that felt like, I mean, I cared, I needed to get good grades in school. So I cared that much, but that was it. I was like, my future does not rely on me knowing the missionaries that came to Washington state in order, you know, like, no. So, yeah, I could easily do that. But then, things that I thought.

[00:17:17] You should care so much that you would do it every day without fail. You should care so much. You do any job in a theater and that's stupid. It's like, it's not the way it should be. It just, I mean, it sets it up so you can be taken advantage of, quite frankly, but I think that because you do care so deeply, naturally, without any of those external signals, and you do want to make it your life if you do, yeah, that's harder work.

[00:18:35] Cause your whole self is just this artist. And that is a very hard way to live from my experience.

[00:19:38] with me. It's a problem for me. So as I'm listening to you talk about this, this experience, what I'm hearing is the emergence of the inner critic. And I would love to hear a little bit from you about the relationship between perfectionism and your inner critic and your own experience.

[00:20:17] I did not clock that at all as an opinion. I clocked that in my head as, like, that's reality. That's me being realistic. That is the pragmatic, realistic side of myself that I should listen to. So, it's kind of hard to even, like, know when that emerged. Because, I don't know, certainly when I was a kid, because my inner critic had many thoughts on my vocal performances, so she's been around.

[00:20:50] that my inner critic is just like, you idiot, everyone hates you, you suck. It's just like, well, what are the chances somebody's going to like that? So what, they probably won't like that idea. I mean, like, it's very easy to go, yeah, you're right, they won't. And then with the perfectionism piece of it, your expectations for yourself are then just so high, that again, It doesn't feel like criticism; it just feels like a fact. So it feels like, you know, somebody said, Oh, can you get me a glass of water?

[00:21:37] but we have built everything up. So it doesn't feel like criticism to say, that's just water. That's not very good. It feels normal. Yeah, it should be should be filtered. It should be in a crystal thing. Like, don't you want this to be good? That's the bare minimum for what a good glass of water would be.

[00:22:20] and I talk about this a lot, but like. One of my first writing jobs was writing for Snooki from the Jersey Shores blog and they paid twenty dollars an article. And at first, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to get fired. This isn't good enough, but I had to turn it in because it had to make money. And so, I would.

[00:22:45] see, Oh, what I think is enough is wrong. And what is enough is much less. And then as you lower that expectation. I think it's easier to hear, oh, the inner critic is also wrong.

[00:23:10] Maegan: I love the water example. That is so great. I'm going to hold on to that, too. Because it's true. It's like, it's a gut reaction. Like, our expectations, our bar, are so high for ourselves that we assume everyone else in the world is operating at the same standard. So if someone asks for something, and then we over-deliver like you writing the 11-page history paper instead of the five-paragraph essay. And we have to learn how to catch that how to catch ourselves over functioning, over delivering. That is so true. And the other thing I love is like, I feel like you're describing the evolution of your inner critic and how as you get older, she gets smarter, right, and sneakier and sassier, and she becomes a little less of like a critic, you know, like, oh, you're ugly and your voice is terrible.

[00:24:28] There's something really powerful about slowing down in our process in our inside life. Like, slowing down and exploring our relationship with our inner critic, exploring the evolution of our perfectionism, and trying to track back, like, where these things originate

[00:25:20] I need to, like, get in there, and I need to figure out how to just, like, to remove this invasive species. But it does require going back and trying to understand, like, where did this start for me? So I'm curious, I'm happy to share about it for myself as well, so I'm not just putting you in the vulnerable hot seat.

[00:25:51] Amber: So my parents were not super critical of me or anything like that. They weren't at all. But like especially my dad, is very critical of everyone and has an opinion about everything and usually how it's bad. And so definitely sometimes when I'm, Even today, I'm like, God, why do I think this way?

[00:26:22] But definitely like absorbing that was like Step one, I’d say.

[00:26:56] I think that's what I hear, right? That like you probably, like most perfectionists, we're like a very sensitive child.

[00:27:45] Maegan: It feels really important that you're able to track that back and name it and for me, I can track it back and look at my family, and some very similar themes to what you just shared. And also something that I've kind of excavated in my therapy is that I was rewarded strongly when I did well. Right, so I was like really heavily rewarded when I succeeded when I did exceed expectations.

[00:28:55] That's a lot. I mean, that's like 20 years of having that reinforced in our bodies and our nervous systems over and over again. Like, wow, can we meet ourselves with so much compassion? Because that's intense. That's a lot. And then we somehow find our way into entrepreneurship, where we're just like replicating all of those patterns again and again and again.

[00:29:39] Amber: No, definitely, because it is for me so often, it is just the same lessons over and over again, but... And I used to get mad at myself of like, oh my God, like, figure it out, This is the same thing again, but it isn't the same thing. It's like when you go into something a little bit different, it will enact like a similar fear, and so, you know, that can be frustrating sometimes, but when you look at it, like, why is it frustrating? Of course, you're going into something different. You're doing something new. As entrepreneurs, we're constantly putting ourselves into situations where we have to learn something new, do something new, put ourselves out there, put a price on what we do.

[00:30:30] And so it does force you in a... Well, if you deal with it, it does force you to, you know, like become a, better person in a way. Maybe that's too bold, but like, you have to deal with this stuff, and learn something new about yourself, and then move forward.

[00:31:04] Maegan: I say to my clients all the time like your business is paying you to work out your shit. Like how cool is that, right? That like my job, part of my job responsibility, part of what I'm getting paid to do is to do my healing work. Because the more... And I think of healing as a spiral, right?

[00:31:52] It's awesome, and it requires what you're saying, it requires a decision to be a person who is doing healing work in your life. You have got to make that choice.

[00:32:17] Maegan: I would be super bored if I weren't trying to heal and grow, but we all know plenty of people who have opted out of healing and

[00:32:36] Let's just come back to this for a minute. Perfectionism. I'm so grateful to you. If I can just pause for a second, for sharing so vulnerably about how you experience perfectionism. I find it can be hard to find people having really honest conversations about perfectionism because we're a perfectionist, and we don't want to, like, reveal the fact that there's, like, a messy undercarriage, you know, that is, like, hiding underneath this kind of polished high standard work that we put out into the world.

[00:33:29] So I'm grateful that we're talking about this. And I know that you have some great techniques, if you will, strategies, ideas, and things that you have discovered in your healing work that are helping you unwind your relationship with perfectionism. And I want to move us in that direction now if you feel ready to talk about how we can overcome or combat perfectionism when it feels like it's, it's making it hard for us to rest.

[00:34:33] Amber: There are a couple of quick things you can do. So when you're really in like the thick of it, then that is not the time to like, great, I'll write my book now. That's not the time for those things. So like, look at the smaller tasks you can do. This is perhaps controversial, but also like if you're... So this is more for your writer.

[00:35:19] But then when you look around, there's a lot of stuff that's just fine. And there's a lot of things that will also piss you off because they suck so badly. And those things, I find, can be very inspiring because especially as a perfectionist, somebody else is making money talking about what you talk about, and they are doing a much worse job than you, infinitely.

[00:35:47] Amber: I have found for me, honestly, and again, I'm probably just a jerk, and that's fine... but I found, like, oh, I want an inspiring story of, like, somebody who made it, and oh, they made their movie, and then they made it, and they climbed this mountain, and whatever, and then I just think, great.

[00:36:20] All kinds of things. Simply because I finally got so mad that I was letting my perfectionism stop me when nothing was stopping these other people. That can kind of help you do a little bit of something. So, I just wanted, I don't know, that felt more... it's again, it's a jerky thing to do, but sometimes.

[00:36:38] Maegan: I don't think it is. Okay, Amber, hold on a second. You're always so quick to be like, I'm such a jerk. You're like literally the nicest person I've ever met in my entire life. So let's clear that up. And like, you're not a jerk because it's not like you're reaching out to these people, and saying like, Hey, shithead, like that was the dumbest article I've ever read.

[00:37:15] It's like thinking about your business. Like I have a policy, this is a personal Maegan policy, that I mute or unsubscribe anyone doing similar types of work that I'm doing. Not because I don't care, not because I'm not impressed, not because I don't want to know what other people think or say, but because I know my compare and despair trigger is like, really sensitive.

[00:37:57] They did it better than me. Like what, who are you to do anything? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I love this advice from you, which is like, don't do that. Like, don't look at people who are... On the outside, it seems like they've got it all together or they're succeeding. Instead, turn to your left and observe how much garbage exists in the world, bad articles, and emails with typos and people you don't agree with.

[00:38:28] Maegan: Stupid ideas, dumb ideas. And yeah, yes, and they're making money. I love that. And why can't we, why can't we be judgmental and snarky, and let that be a backward way to inspire ourselves to greatness?

[00:38:58] Okay. I'm sure I'm at the bottom of Everest, but Jesus, I'm farther than most people would ever even go.

[00:39:25] Amber: It didn't seem weird at all. Exactly. I was like, Oh, well. That wasn't me even trying to be, like, impressive. It was just like, well, clearly, this is what is required.

[00:39:58] And we're going to say to ourselves, if they can do that, then I can do this. And just see if that gives us a little boost of self-confidence and inspiration.

[00:40:24] Maegan: That's right.

[00:40:49] It helps you see, oh yeah, my default was the 11-page paper. What I did that was half-assed in quotes, now that I'm looking at it, is more than enough.

[00:41:19] You don't. It makes sense that that feels hard. Whereas if you're like, I don't know, just kind of half-ass something and see what happens, you will at least do it, and start it. And a lot of times when you get to that point where you've started it, or even you've completed your half-assed draft, you will find, hey, this is fine.

[00:42:04] And sometimes it can then even like rearrange what those big projects are, or even if it doesn't, it still gets you something so that your confidence gets up, so that later when you do tackle that big project, now you have the confidence behind yourself that you can work through it and get through it.

[00:42:35] And I love that, that there is like a corrective experience that happens when you half-ass something. And, again, a reminder, half-ass for us means we go from over-performing to performing slightly better than average.

[00:43:11] Like you're still doing great. And, you and I have talked about this before, that the work is just to do that a million times. And

[00:43:33] Amber: Absolutely. It gets so much easier as time goes on and then it doesn't necessarily feel like at any point in my life I had some quantum leap where I was suddenly I'm not a perfectionist anymore. I just noticed like hey that wasn't that scary to do, or I was able to just put something out there.

[00:44:08] I keep doing it and still let myself know that never, it's not all going to be ideal, but it just needs to happen. It does get easier every time and the period it takes to adjust gets shorter and shorter. Yes.

[00:44:43] Like, there are a lot of strengths around perfectionism, too. Our ability to do a good job on something is really special. I want us to like to protect that and cultivate that. And this is why I love your half-ass strategy so much it's not about letting go of the parts of our personality that make us great.

[00:45:27] They're going to have some extra time available. And I think that time could be and that energy could be well spent resting, right? And like turning your attention towards slowing down, going to therapy, and making art for fun, right? Exercising your body, all of the different ways that we can rest and recharge.

[00:46:00] Amber: Yeah. No, absolutely. And then you also kind of find a little bit, I found this with writing and it, and I think it transfers to other things too, but that you, you also start to be less scared of the task itself. So even if it is writing something very vulnerable, because the unpleasant part of writing is not as much the writing itself as we all know.

[00:46:48] Maegan: So freeing. I appreciate you saying that. Okay, Amber, we're gonna pause here because my power flickered

[00:47:21] Cause I have this very fancy mic setup, right? Cause I want it to sound perfect. Like I want my audio perfect on this podcast. And which I'll, I'll say more in a second about like how my perfectionism manifests in my business, but I just, I literally, we're sitting here talking about perfectionism, and I had this moment where I was like, Oh, do we need to go back and rerecord when my mic dropped out?

[00:48:07] The fact that that just happened. What do you think, Amber? Am I totally off base?

[00:48:26] And the fact that you go, oh. I don't need to go back and do that. I feel like that's how it works. You know, it's not that the perfectionism goes away. We don't want it to go away. Like you were talking about, it brings us many good things, too. And it's, expecting it to go away is just, I don't know.

[00:48:55] Maegan: Talk yourself off the ledge and this is highlighting, a perfectionistic tip that wasn't on our list, but it's happening for me right now in this moment, which is to have friends and colleagues you can check yourself with. Right? I mean, it's so helpful. I know like Amber, you and I before have sent each other a new sales page and been like, can you tell me if this is absolute garbage?

[00:49:45] And it becomes very lonely and like the inner critic, the inner skeptic, like she is the loudest when there is no one in the circle to be like, Hey girl, let me give you a reality check. You're great. This is awesome. Keep going. Don't stress so much. So if you don't have those people in your life right now, people you can vox or text or go on a walk with who can help you reality check with love, but also assertiveness and clarity.

[00:50:20] Amber: Oh, well, thank you, Maegan.

[00:50:32] Amber: So this one, I do feel like especially talking to a former therapist, I'm like, is this a horrible idea, but it does work for me.

[00:50:43] Amber: So, outrunning your perfectionism. So when I do my writing classes and stuff like that, I tend to give really short writing exercises and for half-assed stuff, I'm like, write for 30 minutes, max, you know, like limit the time, Giving yourself deadlines doesn't always work, but if it does, like, give yourself a deadline and try to stick to it.

[00:51:38] It's just, you've set up a timetable for yourself. So one, you don't have to worry, how long is this going to take? Well, this is going to take forever. And so it assuages all of those kind of thoughts.

[00:51:56] When your inner critic likes to pop up, tends to be louder. So it's easier for you to go, you can come bitch at me all day and all night, but for the next five minutes, I'm just writing this. And when you do that, I find that you just come out with more ideas. It lets you just Get the stuff out of your mind and onto paper and this works well for copy Ideas for your business sales... Like any of that kind of stuff too.

[00:52:34] Amber: Well, I guess cause anytime you think of just like we'll just outrun it kind of feels like you're just running away from the problem. And so to me, you're not running away from the problem, but you're just outrunning it for now. Like you're beating it at this particular race.

[00:52:55] Maegan: I don't get that. I've never gotten that sense before. And maybe it's just a change of language. It's like outsmarting your perfectionism because I hear you. Like, again, perfectionism, it's so default in our systems at this point. It's just, it's turned on all the time. I carry perfectionism with me around like a virus, and sometimes the symptoms are louder than other times.

[00:53:48] Amber: For your own business... it's to me, it's been, I've been able to, like, if I say something's going to launch, it will launch that day. Like that's a deadline I can stick to. Now again, of course, there can be circumstances, blah, blah, blah, to make that change and that's fine.

[00:54:14] giving yourself that launch date works because... and I think it makes your stuff better because otherwise you will use all that time and you will fill it with too much stuff where to the point is that it isn't as good for your clients, or your students, or whoever.

[00:55:00] You get to go, well, these people gave their money to me. That's pretty good proof that it is good enough. That's a very powerful way to recalibrate that sense of what's enough.

[00:55:45] We love like, great novels and like, beautiful websites, and fantastic art.

[00:56:12] to consume. You kind of spoke to this earlier. Like, yeah, if you've never written a short story before, it's probably not fair to assume that you can just sit down and write like the next great American novel. Like, there's a lot of steps between here and there. For me, I find in my perfectionism that I have to check that within myself.

[00:56:54] And then I don't hit publish until I'm happy with how good it looks or how good it sounds. And all I'm doing is making myself miserable, right? Giving myself shingles again, holding back an offering that is going to change people's lives, not making the money that I need to make to succeed. Like literally nobody wins when I am mired in the fake rules of my perfectionism, which is why your suggestion of outrunning my perfectionism using time limits and deadlines is so incredibly liberating. I learned recently in a writing workshop that I was taking, that they were reviewing some of the science behind flow states and how we get into flow state. And one thing they said that stayed with me is that it takes at least seven minutes to get into a flow state, at least. Which means, like, every time you sit down to write, expect the first seven minutes, at least, to be fucking terrible.

[00:58:13] Write about how dumb you think you are. And eventually, you get over the hump, and then you land in your creative power and you start to create for, like you said, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And then your rule, Amber, that I never regret when I follow it, is to stop when the timer goes off. Walk away, let it be done.

[00:58:47] Amber: And it's hard. It's, it's like, that sounds so easy, but I've found for me, I have a very hard time taking my advice there, because I'll be like, well, I can just finish it up. I can just finish this part, and then it's five hours later, and I haven't eaten anything, and it's like dark in my room now, and it’s not a great way to be.

[00:59:10] Amber: But yeah, that break will only fuel you.

[00:59:30] She said, I always try to stop when I'm on a downhill slope, meaning like there's ease. When things are flowing, when there's ease, that's where I want to stop for the day. Because if I wait to stop until I'm trudging uphill, I'm like climbing on an uphill slope, I'm going to be less likely to want to sit down to resume tomorrow.

[01:00:04] Amber: Oh, no, that's very cool. And it builds up trust that you will come back and do it, which is like the... the craziest part of perfectionism where it's that thought of, well, if you put it down, you're not going to come back to it.

[01:00:54] Where it's easy and start again, where it's easy, it also builds up that trust that one, I'm not saving this huge climb for every single day.

[01:01:27] Maegan: This is such a great practice. And again, you can apply this practice, to anything. Anything that you need to create, anything you need to do, like get creative with this practice and find a way to weave it into your unique brand of perfectionism, right? However you might be struggling, I think there's an application for this as a way to retrain ourselves or recalibrate ourselves so that we can step away from that perfectionism, just chill out, and experience the magic of how fucking awesome we are and how we create incredible things in the world that people want. And we can do it all with ease, and we can do it without sacrificing our health, and our mental well-being.

[01:02:35] Amber: Yeah. Cause I do think it's easy to treat it as like a terminal case. And, instead of being a real classy, real classy way to end this Maegan, it's just more like herpes.

[01:02:48] Amber: There's lots you can do. You can live a full life.

[01:02:59] Amber: Disclosing your perfectionism actually would be a good move so you don't end up doing all the work.

[01:03:34] They feel blocked. What do you wanna say to them?

[01:04:01] There are no Wall Street executives with no sense of humor and no creativity who are popping up. Yeah. to a deep rest retreat or to a writing class to explore. They have no desire. So again, you're probably comparing yourself to people who maybe are wildly artistic, and that's not how you express it.

[01:04:58] And so it feels like you have no ideas. So, two little tricks for this that I do, and I think work and they're very simple. It's one if you're brainstorming again, a good time to use a timer, just five minutes. .. And sometimes when you sit down to brainstorm ideas, you do.

[01:05:33] We're often used to shutting them down so that somebody else doesn't reject us.

[01:05:53] So bobby pins, I might be like, oh yeah, what's the history of bobby pins? Why are they called Bobby? Where does that come from? Oh, there, oh, I saw an old carton and they're called Bob Pins. And so that's a little different. Oh, maybe it came with Bob's hairstyles. Maybe there's something about hairstyles or I'd want to do something set in the twenties. Oh, yeah. Why did that hairstyle become, Oh, why did, what, what brought the flapper movement into existence? So like, I'm just saying a bunch of crap off the top of my head, but those are all little seedlings of potential ideas that just happened because I looked at a thing that was physically sitting on my desk.

[01:06:31] Maegan: Like And it sounds fun.

[01:06:41] Maegan: Any idea

[01:06:44] Maegan: And I love opening sideways doors, right? Like, okay, maybe I go on the tangent about bobby pins, but what I'm trying to do is access an idea about, I don't know, like my next offering, which is going to have nothing to do with hairstyles and bobby pins. But, when we can open the creativity flow, it's all going to come in.

[01:07:08] Amber: Exactly. Because even if you, like, look at a bobby pin and you're thinking, okay, something for my business. You know, if you're just like, huh, this is so simple and practical, it's been around for a hundred years. What's like the simplest thing I have in my business? Or what's kind of the most classic thing I have?

[01:07:43] The more often you do this, you'll just notice the ideas you have throughout the day and you're not training yourself to immediately dismiss them. So you'll keep them and write them down and remember them.

[01:08:12] Amber: I had to add in a bunch more.

[01:08:18] It's because, because once you open the flow. So much is going to come in. We thought we were going to start with two. Then we opened ourselves up to this conversation and bam, organically five things showed up. So to summarize, we have to look for things that suck, be inspired by ideas, projects, and offerings that we think are really stupid and poorly implemented and yet they're still successful, they're still making money.

[01:09:10] This is a great way to recalibrate what it means to do a good job in your life. And then you have all of this extra time and energy that you can direct towards taking care of yourself, recharging your batteries, and becoming deeply rested. Tip number three. Surround yourself with friends and colleagues that you can talk about your perfectionism with, you can reach out when you need a reality check, or when you need someone to mirror you back to you.

[01:09:59] And you can prove to yourself that you are phenomenal and you can get so much beautiful work accomplished in a really short, less stressful amount of time. And then finally, tip number five, create some kind of personal practice to open yourself to the flow of new ideas. And Amber gave some great examples, of how you might do that, how you might create a practice to open that flow of creativity, and then stand back, and be amazed by how incredible you are,

[01:10:52] in our communities. And Amber, that's absolutely what you do for me in helping me combat my perfectionism. I'm so grateful to you. And I would love for you to share with our listeners where they can find you and learn more about your incredible work.

[01:11:31] So you can go to amberpetty. Com slash two five zero for that. And I'm also, Amber N Petty. N for Nicole. Amber Petty was taken. Amber N Petty on Instagram and threads.that Twitter, no, one, I'll never stop calling it Twitter, and two, I am also not there. So,

[01:11:55] Amber: It's called X, see, it's a terrible idea, millions of dollars into a horrible idea, right?

[01:12:16] Amber hosts lots of incredible workshops and programs to help combat perfectionism in your writing. I've been to many of them. Can't say enough good things about the work that you do, Amber. So definitely reach out, get in touch, and join Amber's newsletter. Amber, thank you so much for being on the Deeply Rested podcast.