Could Chasing Perfection Make You Less Productive?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Lily Silverton** (0:30)
We're trying to make yourself perfect. To never feel tired and to never feel stressed, this attempt to affect our lives is really damaging us.

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:40)
Lily Silverton is a best-selling author and mindset coach. We'll be learning all about his signature framework, The Priorities Method, which uses neuroscience and psychology to make positive changes that actually stick. I have this fear that if I'm gentle on myself, I won't do anything.

**Lily Silverton** (0:56)
Entire identity up into our work, right? I really believe that balance is a myth. Having those moments where you allow yourself to be in the moment can really shift your perspective on...
How can I say to myself? We can stop for a bit. The whole world's not going to fall apart.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:15)
And before we get into the conversation, if you could do me a favor that literally takes you two seconds, hit the subscribe button or leave a five-star review depending on what platform you're listening on. It really helps us to continue to grow the podcast and bring you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life.
Thank you. Many of us will understand the feeling of setting big New Year's resolutions at the beginning of the year and then being burnt out by this time of year. So we've had so many questions come in from our community. But before we get into those, I would love to hear a little bit about how you ended up here from a high-pressured media environment.

**Lily Silverton** (1:55)
Yeah. Okay. So thanks for having me, first of all, Faye. Right. So I was a magazine editor who worked at Fashion and Arts and Culture magazines. And it really was a job I'd wanted for some time. It wasn't what I studied. I studied politics and human rights, but it was a job that I absolutely loved. And writing had always been sort of in my DNA. My father was a writer.
And I had this kind of dream job where I was traveling all over the world. I was doing all the fashion shows. I had an amazing team. I was at Hunger magazine. I had the photographer Rankin. He was my boss and he was incredible boss. We got on really well. And yeah, I got to this point when I was in my early thirties, where I just looked around myself and my surroundings and went, God, this is amazing and I absolutely don't want this.
And I looked at the women especially, who I could see who were 10 years older than me, so sort of the age I am now.
And I saw them at the shows and absolutely no opinion or judgment on the people that stay within the world because I think it's just different types of people and what suits them. But I looked around and thought, this is not what I want in 10 years. This is not where I want to be in 10 years. And so then it was that realization of, OK, what do I actually want? What actually do I think is important? Going to priorities. And I've done yoga since I was a kid. It was always a big part of my life. I'd always wanted to do my training. So I had this big breakup that forced me to go like, fuck it, I'm going to do it. Rankin was really supportive. So he gave me time off to go and do it. And then from there, I went really quickly into the thought repatterning side of things. I find that really fine with yoga. You can get flexible and whatever, but we all know it's not about the body and what you're doing with the body. When it comes to yoga, it's more about the flexibility and understanding that you create in the mind, the compassion, and that side of things, I found really interesting. And so through that, I discovered coaching and quickly led myself down that path. And that's how I've ended up here.

**Dr Faye Bate** (4:05)
And what I find really interesting as a self-confessed workaholic myself, is you are an incredibly successful person in your current career now, as you were in your previous career. The fear that drives my workaholicism, is the fear that I will maybe go back to where I came from. I will lose things that I've worked for if I don't have this, I don't know, this insufferable self-optimization drive to keep going. I know all too well teetering along the one-way train to burn out town. I'm really excited to come on to how you've found this balanced space, where you also feel fulfilled a little bit later on. But first, we have a section of the podcast called Bye or Bye Bye.