Toxic Bosses, Perfectionism, And Healing At Work with Susan Schmitt Winchester

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:00)
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Hi, I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes. And honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that reminds you it's from another time, but I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before. If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again or even re-record it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.
Perfection, something I've always struggled with. That little voice inside my head that looks at the work I've just spent heenstaking hours on and says, it's not good enough. No one will care about reading this. This won't make an impact. This doesn't make any sense.
In times of stress, it can get even worse. The need to be perfect. Sometimes, perfectionism feels like procrastination are actually not doing a good job because the stakes seem so high, right? I can never get it right, so why bother trying? Well, Susan Schmitt Winchester returns to the show today to talk about what she's learned about perfectionism in her own life and the lives of others. She explains where some of these people-pleasing, self-doubting ways come from and shares her patented actionable interventions we can take to change the ways we talk to ourself and the way we work. So Susan, you tell a story about a boss a long time ago who had a sign on her desk that she could flip, and one sign of it said Glinda the Good Witch, and the other one said Wicked Witch of the West.

**Susan Schmitt Winchester** (4:34)
It was a statue.
Each part of the statue, one side, if you looked at it, it was Glinda the Good Witch. You flipped it around, it was the Wicked Witch of the West. I mean, it was a dang statue.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (4:47)
I don't even know what the words are. That's amazing.

**Susan Schmitt Winchester** (4:50)
She flipped it based on her mood. What a terrible leadership act. It's just either you go in her office and you relax, or you're immediately on pins and needles.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (5:00)
She took something away from you in a really nasty way.

**Susan Schmitt Winchester** (5:05)
Yeah.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (5:05)
Give us why that was such a crucible moment for you, and how in retrospect you realize it relates to your perfectionism.