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Hi, I'm Monica Packer from About Progress, and this is A Hug and a kick, a series where I share a short excerpt from my extensive podcast archives, one carefully selected to give you the validation and or motivation you need for the weekend.

How are you able to transition out of this perfectionist place of looking at yourself and actually try something?

Yeah, I love that you said that you are using the term rock bottom with perfectionism.

It's part of why I love the phrase recovering perfectionist because I think that with

perfectionism, the highs are so high.

The validation that you get from the praise of other people,

it just makes you feel like you are the most special person in the

world because everybody is telling you that you are. But the lows can destroy you. They are

completely detrimental to your sense of self, right? When you let perfectionism lead the way

and you let perfectionism be in charge of your worth

as a creative person, then that means any time you don't meet that standard, that impossible

standard of consistent perfectionism, then your sense of self is completely gone.

And your creativity is gone too. I don't know

that I have like one specific memory in my life of hitting rock bottom, but I do know that I've had

...