I was school captain. Top gymnast. The girl who had a big social group, who brought home the good grades, and landed the lead in the school play. From the outside, I looked like a girl who had it all sorted.
What nobody saw was the engine underneath. Proving I was doing well enough. Proving I was enough, full stop.
That's where the "perfectionism" started. Not in adulthood, not in my business, but in a classroom, where a number on a page and how many friends I had in my contact list, became shorthand for my worth.
The cost of waiting until it's "ready"
Here's the thing about perfectionism. It doesn't announce itself as a problem. It dresses up as high standards, ambition, taking on too much, and "I just want to do it properly."
But it cost me. I lost opportunities because I was waiting. Overthinking. Holding back because it wasn't quite ready, I wasn't quite ready, the timing wasn't quite right.
Perfect is a moving target. You never actually reach it. You just keep nudging the finish line further away and calling it discipline.
I see this in so many of the women I work with. Brilliant, capable women who won't start the thing until they can do it flawlessly. So they never start. The dream stays in the drawer.
What chronic illness taught me about my body
Then my health fell apart, and perfectionism became a luxury I couldn't afford.
When you can't get off the couch, you stop chasing the perfect morning routine. You're just trying to get through the day.
What I learnt in those years changed how I think about everything. Your body remembers everything. Every stress you swallowed, every time you pushed when you should have rested, every standard you flogged yourself with. It all gets stored.
And here's what surprised me most. The body doesn't respond to intensity. It responds to consistency. It heals in small, repeated signals of safety, not in one heroic burst of effort.
Why I stopped chasing intensity
When I started rebuilding my health, I didn't do it perfectly. I couldn't. I did it in ten-minute pieces.
Ten minutes of movement instead of an hour I didn't have. One small swap in the kitchen instead of a complete overhaul. Thirty seconds of deep breathing instead of an hour of meditation I'd never actually sit through.
None of it looked impressive. None of it would make a good before-and-after on any single day. But it compounded.
That's the part perfectionism never tells you. Real change isn't loud. It's quiet and repetitive and almost boring. It's the small thing you do again tomorrow, and the day after, until one day you look back and barely recognise where you started.
What progress actually looks like now
These days, I value every small step. Nothing is too small to count. The walk I almost skipped counts. The early night counts. The hard conversation I'd been avoiding counts.
I had to go right back to the roots to get here. To the little girl who thought she had to earn her place with gold stars. I had to let her know she was already enough, before the grades, before the trophies, before any of it.
If you're waiting until you're ready, take this as your nudge. You won't feel ready. You'll just feel slightly less terrified one day, and that's the day to begin.
Pick one small thing. Do it today. Do it again tomorrow. That isn't a compromise on your standards. It's how anything that matters actually gets built.
Progress, not perfection. It's the whole game.
