The Perfection Trap with Thomas Curran

Power Hour

Adrienne Herbert

Society & Culture, Unknown

4.8 • 713 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thomas Curran (@thom_curran) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He is a world leading expert on perfectionism. He has written for the Harvard Business Review, was featured in the New Scientist, and his work has been covered by publications including the Guardian, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and Ariana Huffington's 'Thrive Global' campaign. In 2018, he gave a TEDMED talk entitled 'Our Dangerous Obsession with Perfectionism is Getting Worse'. Thomas' book The Perfection Trap is out on June 1st and has been described as "a powerful, poignant book on the impossibly high expectations that stand in the way of happiness, health, and success".

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Power Hour. I'm Adrienne Herbert, wellness coach, international speaker and author.
0:10.2	Each week I speak to a variety of guests from business founders to Olympic athletes, leading coaches, change makers and innovators to find out their daily habits, their rules to live by and what
0:22.2	motivates them to get up out of bed each day. Personally, I am on a mission to encourage, motivate and
0:28.9	inspire, so I hope that the Power Hour will help you to achieve your personal and professional
0:33.9	goals. Welcome back to the Power Hour podcast.
0:39.2	Today I'm joined by Thomas Curran.
0:41.4	Thomas is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Science
0:45.4	at London School of Economics.
0:46.8	He is a world-leading expert on perfectionism and the author of The Perfectionist Trap,
0:52.5	the power of good enough in a world that always wants
0:55.5	more. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us. As a recovering perfectionist, I really enjoyed
1:01.5	reading the book. No problem. Thank you for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation,
1:06.1	and I know that there's so much to talk about with this topic. I think a lot of people might already think
1:11.6	they know what perfectionism is, but I'd love to, I guess, dive straight into this topic with you.
1:17.1	And as you are the expert, could you firstly explain to us the concept of perfectionism?
1:23.3	Of course. So perfectionism is a personality character. I think a lot of people listening can I identify with.
1:30.3	It's the most common answer to that dreaded interview question. What's your biggest weakness?
1:37.3	I'm a total perfectionist. And in many ways, it's a kind of indicative of a sort of cultural perception, I suppose, that perfectionism
1:47.2	is our favourite flaw. And although these are kind of amusing anecdotes we can point to, my research
1:53.1	is actually showing that perfectionism is indeed becoming more common. It's risen by about 40%
1:58.6	since the late 1980s.
2:06.1	But as I talk about in the book, this is not necessarily something to celebrate because I think we're quite mistaken if we think perfectionism is healthy or positive because
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