Dr. Susan Cohen on perfectionism, why it impacts the veterinary profession, how to identify it, and what to do next

Listen in as VIN Foundation Vets4Vets® team member Dr. Susan Cohen dives deep on perfectionism. She covers how to identify it in ourselves and/or others, how it impacts veterinary teams, and helpful tools to decrease the self-torment. Learn how to move toward enjoying the good stuff, and find out what a bliss list is and how it can be motivational. Check the links below to download a copy of Susan’s Bliss List example.

GUEST BIO:

Dr. Susan Cohen 

Susan P. Cohen, DSW, ACSW has been called a pioneer in the fields of pet loss, human-animal interaction, and the human side of veterinary practice. Since 1982 Dr. Cohen has helped pet lovers make decisions about the illness of their pets. She developed the first-ever Pet Loss Support Group and began an animal assisted activity program that took the then-unusual form of having volunteers work with their own pets. She originated many training programs for workers in the veterinary and social service fields, and she has been a field instructor for several schools of social work. She has written several book chapters and scholarly articles on social work, veterinary practice, and the human-animal bond. Her most recent book chapter, “Loss, Grief, and Bereavement in the Context of Human-Animal Relationships” (Susan Cohen, DSW; and Adam Clark, LSW, AASW) was published in 2019. She is currently working on a chapter on pet loss for Routledge’s International Handbook on Human-Animal Interaction. These days she consults with veterinary groups on client and professional communication, compassion fatigue, and how to make practice fun again. She facilitates online support groups for veterinarians, animal welfare workers, managers, and those grieving the loss of a pet. She teaches online workshops and lectures widely to veterinary colleges and conferences, colleges of social work, veterinary technician programs, and human health groups on communication, pet loss and bereavement, human-animal interaction, client relations, compassion fatigue, and career development. She is Vice Chairperson of SWAHAB (Social Workers Advancing the Human-Animal Bond), the first such committee of the National Association of Social Workers. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian Magazine. In addition, she has made numerous television and radio addresses nationwide, including “The Today Show,” “20-20,” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

LINKS AND INFORMATION:

• VIN Foundation Vets4Vets®
• Dr. Susan Cohen, Bliss List example
• Red Shoes Syndrome podcast
• Wabi Sabi
• Nine Signs Your Perfectionism is Out of Control
• 14 Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control

Quotes mentioned in the episode:

• Brene Brown: “Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame.”
• Fred Astaire: “Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.”

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TRANSCRIPT

Intro

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: We can understand striving to do your best and pursuing your creative dream is one thing, and just being unhappy all the time because you can never meet these impossible standards is something else.

Jordan Benshea: That is Dr. Susan Cohen, a mental health professional and a member of the Vets4Vets team, and this is the VIN Foundation’s Veterinary Pulse Podcast. I’m Jordan Benshea, VIN Foundation’s Executive Director. Join me as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics and share stories, stories that connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible by individuals like you who donate to the VIN Foundation. Thank you. Please check the episode’s notes for bios, links, and information mentioned.Welcome, Susan. Thank you for being here with us.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Jordan, it’s always a pleasure.

Jordan Benshea: Well, we’re thrilled to have you back. 

Understanding Perfectionism: Insights from Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW

Jordan Benshea: I’m thrilled to have you back for another episode of the Inhale, Exhale series, and today we are talking about a topic that I’ve just heard a lot about lately. Colleagues bringing it up and that is perfectionism, and it’s a hot topic. I mean, I feel like it’s not a new topic, but it just seems like one that we consistently hear about.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: And it seems to be hard to shake, you know, if you’re a perfectionist, it’s hard to let go of it. You know, it’s interesting. I was doing some reading, and there are a lot of, if you read biographies or whatever, there are a lot of famous people that will tell you proudly they’re perfectionists. And I think, you know, there’s a place for it, if you are the Beatles and or some other hot band, you know, some current band, and you’re trying to get a new sound or a new direction in your painting or something like that, then I can understand, we probably all can and we all benefit from, people really pursuing getting whatever they have in their head out on paper, out in music, out on the dance floor. But that’s not really what perfectionism is. Perfectionism is tormenting yourself and everybody around you for every flaw, every mistake, everything you forgot. It’s a inability to tolerate anything that isn’t a 1000%. Brene Brown, who a lot of people really like, has a wonderful quote about this. She says, “perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame”. So really what she’s saying there is that this is kind of an anxiety based issue for people, and the big shots in mental health, we’ll call it maladaptive perfectionism. But I think, we can understand striving to do your best and pursuing your creative dream is one thing, and just being unhappy all the time because you can never meet these impossible standards is something else.

Perfectionism in the Veterinary Profession

Jordan Benshea: Right, and let’s dive a bit deeper into that because we hear about perfectionism, to your point a few moments ago when you said across the board with different jobs and different professions. How are you hearing about it as it relates to the veterinary profession and how it impacts veterinary teams?

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: You know, veterinarians and technicians and some of the other parts of the team have been in a sense selected from childhood, to be the way they are, which is, they are very smart. They are meticulous. They’re hardworking and they keep, as they go through school, having to jump through those hoops. On top of that, many of them are introverts, so they’re introverts in an extrovert job. So it can be very stressful, and again, you’ve picked people for whom failure is just, can be a horror, and I think the other piece of it, particularly for veterinarians, is that the stakes are very high in veterinary medicine. There are lives on the line here and animals that may or may not be able to be saved because of you and your skill and the team you’ve put together. On top of that, as we know, it has now become a very stressful place in terms of dealing with clients, and it’s no longer just because veterinarians and some technicians are introverts and weren’t taught how to do this. They’re all taught how to do it now in school, deal with clients. But now because of social media and Internet, horrible things are going on involving clients and friends of clients who abuse you for every little thing that they feel has gone wrong, and they’re very quick to file a complaint with your boss and demand their money back. They are very quick to file a board complaint, and even if going into this as a veterinarian you feel strongly that you did everything correctly, it’s going to take a year, 2 years to shake itself out. During which time you have it hanging over your head, you know, that you might get sued or you might have a black mark on your record. So you can see that there’s a lot of outside pressure to continue being a perfectionist.

Jordan Benshea: Right, and I can imagine that this world of cyberbullying behind the “safety” of a computer, and the Internet just adds so much pressure to that aspect of professionalism. Do you also see perfectionism or rather, I’m sure that you do, so rather, how are you seeing perfectionism play within the veterinary teams?

The Impact of Perfectionism on Veterinary Teams

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Well, as the veterinarian and certainly for the owner of the practice, you’re responsible for outcomes. If you allowed somebody to make a mistake on your watch or somebody can accuse you of you didn’t have the right training, whatever, you have to care about every little detail, who did what tests, what tech handed out the medication, that kind of thing. So within the team, there’s a lot of, a lot of stress and a lot of pressure to make sure everything is perfect. One of the things I really wanted to talk about was, how you know you’re a perfectionist and kind of what you can do about that, and that all comes back to this issue of how it plays out in the team. So if you might be a perfectionist if you have very black and white thinking and you focus only on the details, the smallest mistakes, you know, and you can’t see the big picture and you take no pleasure in it If you are a significant procrastinator, which I have to admit I can be, a lot of times it’s because you feel you have to have it completely right before you even get started. I actually was unaware of my tendencies in this until I tried to do my dissertation. It was taking forever, and I was having a lot of demands placed on me by the dissertation committee, and I finally just decided I can’t go on, I have to finish this. I was talking to somebody at work about it, and he said, “oh, you decided to give up on the Nobel Prize”, and that’s the moment where I realized that, yes, I have my perfectionist moments too. So another piece of this is being afraid to fail, and sometimes it can cause you to lash out at other people because you want to avoid the blame. There are obviously a lot of problems if you have, if you’re on a veterinary team and you have a boss or a technician or a front desk person who’s always blaming everybody else for anything that goes wrong. That person can, is very likely a perfectionist and an anxious person who cannot tolerate any negativity, any negative feedback, any imperfect results, and so their fear drives them to lash out at other people. On a team, that’s deadly.

Recognizing and Addressing Perfectionism

Jordan Benshea: One thing I think about when defining something as important as perfectionism is also defining what is it not. So I remember when I would see, one time when I was seeing a therapist, he was talking about OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and he said, “when you’re talking about obsessive compulsive disorder, there are some things where, if you check that your door is locked in your car, that’s not really OCD. That’s just what we call checking if your door is locked. So are there different areas that you or that somebody might be able to define, okay, I might like to do things correctly, but where are the lines there? Where are the lines that I’m for sure a perfectionist versus what are things that mean I’m not a perfectionist, but I just like to do a good job, because that’s probably a slippery slope, right?

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Right, and again, I think veterinarians and a lot of technicians have essentially been trained from childhood to be perfectionists because that’s how you get ahead in school. And again, lives are at stake, people’s reputations are at stake. So there’s nobody to say, “oh, ease up, don’t be so careful”. That’s an issue, and there are pros, you know, good things about having high standards. So the person I always think of here is, Fred Astaire, now he’s not as well known as he once was, but in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, he was in every successful musical movie because he’s an amazing dancer, and most people think he’s the best popular dancer that has ever been on the planet. He was notorious for rehearsing eight gazillion times to get something so that he would do it the same way every time and it would be excellent, and he said about his own work ethic, “do it big, do it right, and do it with style”. So he’s a great pleasure to watch on the screen. Every contemporary dancer says, “oh, I study him, he’s amazing”. That’s a great thing, but there’s a downside to perfectionism. So, again, it’s not just a matter of having high standards and wanting to continue to grow and learn and get better. That’s positive, and if you’re bringing something new into the world, whether it’s a scientific discovery or a new kind of dance or a new kind of art, then again, trying to get out into the world that thing that’s in your head, and it might mean tinkering with your equipment and getting other people to to change the way they’re doing things, that can be a great gift to all of us, but there are negatives. I think this is where if you find yourself in this situation, and we already talked about how you might recognize that you’re an unhealthy perfectionist, I think perfectionism, or maladaptive perfectionism just robs you of joy. A wonderful surgeon, a veterinary surgeon that I met many, many years ago, who was just a wonderful technician and great with the staff and wonderful with the clients, told me one time that every time something goes wrong it’s an extra weight on her shoulders. So the longer she’s in practice, instead of being able to say look at the other hundreds of lives I’ve now saved since last year, it’s look at the three that did go wrong, and it’s continuing to weigh on her shoulders like Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. Everyone is a link that he’s forged himself of, you know, of mistakes. If it’s robbing you of joy, if you can’t be in practice because you’re carrying every little wrong thing on your shoulders, that’s bad. It also can cause you to not only lash out at other people, but to hide your mistakes. So you don’t learn from them, you’re trying to sweep things under the rug. Other people are going to wind up in trouble because you didn’t own up to something that went wrong. Believe me, it’s very hard, and I’m not trying to give legal advice here, but it’s very hard to go to a client and say, “I messed up”. But I have seen amazing results when people did that. They were forgiven, people understood that you tried your best, that you grabbed, somebody grabbed the wrong bottle off the shelf because it looked like the other bottle, and here are the steps you’ve taken to correct that. If you can’t admit that something went wrong and really hone in on what went wrong, it’s never going to get any better. In fact, it could get a whole lot worse. So, in addition to being really hard on yourself and hard on other people, as much as I love Fred Astaire, I’m a huge fan, in addition to do it big, do it with style and do it right, he also said this. First of all, you may know that his most famous dance partner was Ginger Rogers, and she was known for dancing until her feet bled into her shoes. I mean, it was that tough because he insisted not only that he practice eight million times, but everybody else do. So he also said this, “when you have a dancing partner, there’s always going to be a moment where the girl’s going to cry. Ginger didn’t do that, but most every other girl I have worked with cried because they said, “I can’t do it”, so I have to go, “yes, you can, shut up”, and they do do it”. Now, there’s tough love and helping people do their best, and then there’s just bullying. So bad perfectionism can lead you into bullying other people and not just saying, all right, what can we learn from this team, what can we change, and let’s celebrate what we did well and learn from the mistakes. It’s being impossible to yourself and everybody around you for fear.

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, and when you shared about Ginger Rogers, it reminded me of the red shoe syndrome episode that we recorded and talked about. We’ll definitely link to that in the episode notes because I think part of that, you know, is pertinent for this conversation as well.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: I think, you know, what I call red shoes syndrome is being able to recognize that what you’re doing is hurting you, but you’re not able to stop, and that’s with perfectionism too. Again, it’s one thing to say aim high, we’re going to just get better every year. It’s that inability to stop what you’re doing even though you can see it’s bad for you and bad for the people around you, and it can be a hard thing to unlearn. It takes practice and often support to learn to tolerate imperfection. I have some thoughts about that but.

Tools and Concepts to Manage Perfectionism

Jordan Benshea: So if somebody’s listening and thinks, “oh, geez, this sounds like me, I think I might be dealing with some perfectionism”. What are some tools they can use to help manage this aspect of themselves?

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: So one thing you can do is recognize that sometimes from apparent mistakes or things that didn’t go well, you know, your cake that fell, whatever it is, really interesting discoveries can come. So you want to look for, you want to train yourself to look for the good in every bad situation. The Japanese are experts at this, and you may be familiar with this term which I’m probably not pronouncing properly, so apologies to anybody who actually speaks Japanese, but they have a concept called “wabi-sabi”.

Jordan Benshea: That’s correct. You’re saying it correctly.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Yeah, which means recognizing that things are beautiful because they’re not perfect, because they are temporary. So think about the cherry blossom festival, it’s beautiful because it’s not only beautiful, it’s very short, and the next thing you know the ground is covered with pink snow, which is also beautiful. And that probably contributes to the health of the soil so that everything can be more beautiful after that. They actually, when they make pottery, I never could understand, I like tea, and I never could understand why these Japanese tea cups were a little wonky looking and the glaze wasn’t even and stuff. That is a perception of beauty, that it’s more interesting because you have flaws and wrinkles and scars and gray hair and whatever, you know, a little like a few extra pounds or whatever. They actually are known for fixing broken pottery with gold to sort of highlight those mistakes. There’s another concept that I think is really useful and it’s hard to embrace, but I think we all ought to remember this, and that is being a good enough mother, or in this case, a good enough veterinarian. 

The Good Enough Mother Concept

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: There’s a guy named Winnicott who was a famous child psychologist, and he decided to figure out what was the minimum it took to raise a reasonably healthy adult. He called it the good enough mother, and here’s the description, an ordinary mother who is fond of her baby. Could we learn to be good enough veterinarians and technicians and whatever? I’m not saying slack off. I’m saying appreciate that there are a lot of ways to be successful and you don’t have to say or do or whatever everything perfectly and you can come back and take a second crack at it often. I’m so sorry. I know I just chewed you out and I was in a horrible mood and I won’t do that again. You know, people forgive you, unless you do it constantly. 

Dealing with Mistakes and Negative Thinking

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: I think another thing you can do, and this very often works very well with people who are thinkers in their head a lot. Let’s say you have a theory that because this thing went wrong, you’re a horrible veterinarian and maybe they should just drum you out of the profession and heaven help you if anybody finds out. So that’s a theory. Right? It’s a theory that you’re a terrible veterinarian and you’re about to get fired and you’re going to, you know, be disgraced. So test that out, ask your boss, are you going to fire me over this? You know, find out on a scale of 1-100 how bad you think this is going to be, and if it’s better than you think it’s going to be, you’re ahead and it shows that your theory that you’re a terrible vet is flawed. And if you get stuck in that sort of negative thinking, ask your friends, ask your colleagues, how bad was this? 

Support Systems and Peer Groups

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: As you know very well, Jordan, we have a support group through Vets4Vets, and one of the great things this group does, it’s peer support. Sometimes people will come in and say, “here’s what happened, did I make a horrible mistake?”, and you have people of all different ages and levels of prior years of experience in that group who will find a way to tell you if maybe there’s something you could have done better. But mostly, they’ll tell you, “oh, that’s happened to me many times. It is horrible. I’m sorry you’re going through that, but it wasn’t your fault”. That can be very valuable if you have safe colleagues that you can talk things out with, and then a final thing you can do to help yourself live with your own flaws and imperfections is to say, “how am I going to feel about this in five years? Is this still going to be a big deal in five years?” I think if you can back up a little bit, you’ll realize, probably it won’t.

Jordan Benshea: I think those give some good suggestions in terms of how to reframe it if somebody’s stuck, because sometimes it can feel like a lot. But I think that question of, okay, in five years, is this going to matter? I mean, of course, there are colleagues probably listening, part of our audience members listening feeling like I need to make it five years. I’m so overwhelmed right now. So what if somebody’s listening and thinks a colleague or a loved one might be struggling with perfectionism? They don’t feel like it fits for themselves specifically, but that they know somebody. How can we help colleagues like that?

Listening and Encouraging Others

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: You know, if you can be a good listener, that’s always valuable. If somebody needs to say, “I think I really screwed up” or “this horrible thing has happened to me”, don’t immediately jump in and talk them out of it. Hear them out. Help them tell their story, help them put their feelings into words because once you get something like that outside of yourself to another person, on paper, you can begin to stand back from it a little bit and examine it with a little less emotional heat. So be a good listener, remind them of their successes, and if you don’t know them well enough to know how brilliant they are, you can say something like, well, tell me about a time when you did save an animal that no one thought could be saved, or tell me about a time when you did get an A on a test, you know, because this could be a child, it could be a friend, a colleague, whatever. If you’re a parent or if you are someone’s boss, it’s helpful if you can refrain from judgmental comments, even if they’re good, and here’s why. If you tell your child, “you got an A on that test, you’re so smart”, I mean, obviously that’s a wonderful thing to have in your life, but it can also make some kids, especially sensitive people, afraid of not being smart, afraid of making a B. So instead, I read this when my daughter was young and I used it on her and it’s now a family joke. Instead of saying “what a beautiful painting you have here, it really looks like a bird”, you should find something else to say about it, like, “it’s so blue!”. So that’s become a kind of a standing joke in our family, but it’s a reminder not to grade people, not to tell them they’re smart and successful and beautiful all the time. I mean, sometimes we can’t help it if we’re fond of them, but we don’t want to set up the sensitive people in our lives for a fear of not being beautiful one day, not being able to make that jump shot, and help them figure out alternative ways to get to where they’re trying to go. And then the final thing that really can work so well, and kids love it, younger colleagues love it, other people love it, TV hosts love it, is talking about your own mistakes. “You think that’s bad, you should have seen the time that I blah, blah”, because now you’re normalizing that it’s okay to talk about mistakes and that, even you, the boss or the parent or whatever, is an ordinary human being. We’re all just, you know, trying to get through the day here, trying to do our best.

Jordan Benshea: Those are some really good tips. I agree about the, especially when you said at the end there about the first starting from these are the mistakes that I have, because I think that through that vulnerability we are able to connect. Once we realize none of us are perfect, we’re all a work in progress, and that willingness to put your ego aside and say, “look, I made this mistake, and I’ve done this before”, it allows them to feel like they can connect. As you said, it normalizes it, and that’s so important.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Yeah, and we can do that for each other. You know, it makes it so much easier for the people around you to own up to being imperfect if you do it. You know it’s funny, the thing that always comes back to me is seeing a very tall, good looking, actor. I don’t remember who it was, who I believe was on Johnny Carson, one of those shows, and they’re always up on a little bit of a platform, and he stumbled getting onto that platform. The host said, “oh, I’m so sorry, are you okay? Do you do that often?”, and he said, “actually I’ve had a hard time because I’ve always been tall and people tell me I’m good looking, and it really annoys some people and it puts a barrier up between us, so I make it a policy when I come into a new situation to fumble so that people know I’m just like everybody else I just happen to be an actor”. That’s very gutsy.

Self-Care and Setting Boundaries

Jordan Benshea: So are there some, so you know, we hear about self care so often when we’re talking about mental wellness and well-being, and I think all of us know that self care is really important. But finding the time to do it, and probably in the midst of dealing with perfectionism, how do you see those two play and how do you see the importance of self care play into perfectionism? What are some examples of self care that can really support somebody that’s struggling with perfectionism?

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: We all know that we’re supposed to eat properly and get enough sleep and get some exercise. We may not all know, but there’s plenty of research to back all of that up. So if you need scientific proof that it’s important to get out and get a little sun on your skin now and then or to move around a little, know that there’s science behind it. But sometimes we’re so afraid of messing up that we need to control everything, and so we have to stay at work way after everybody else and that kind of thing, and then we say, “oh, well, there’s no time for me to go to the gym” or whatever it is you need to do, play music, read for fun. So if you can stop trying to be in charge of the universe and thinking that you can prevent all harm from happening in the world if you just stay there, can be very helpful. If you’re a person who has a hard time saying no to requests, you can learn to do that. I have two colleagues and we are each other’s sounding board on that, and every so often we gather and we say, “what have you said no to in the last month?”, and it’s very, you have to commit to doing it, you know, and you have to come up with something. I think we tolerate our own negative comments to our own selves in a way that we would not tolerate it to a friend, so why are you allowing yourself to beat up on yourself and say awful things to yourself and maybe other people that you wouldn’t tolerate if it happened to a friend. You wouldn’t say it to a friend, you wouldn’t allow it to be said around you about your friend. Why are you being so hard on yourself in your own head? So try to notice when you do that and treat yourself like a friend, you know, and surround yourself with people and animals and environments that are supportive to you, that are kind to you. You don’t need to hang out with people who make you feel bad, belittle you, and whatever. If it’s a relative or a coworker that you can’t get away from, sometimes trying to see things from their perspective can help you recognize what they’re doing and where they’re coming from. And you may not be able to just cut all ties, but, you know, see if you can turn the situation around, and if not, spend as little time in an aversive situation as you can. 

Creating a Bliss List

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: I have something I call a bliss list, maybe I’ll send that to you, and that is just a list of things that people like to do and room to add your own ideas. The more specific you are, the better this is going to work. So, don’t just say, I like music, you know, write down, I like to sing my own songs in the privacy of my own room or I like to be in a rock band or I like to listen to Mozart. The more specific you are, the more you will get somewhere. I like ice cream, alright, okay great, what kind of ice cream? Where do you find it? Is that a place you go out to, or can you bring it in? Once you fill out that list for yourself, put it on your refrigerator or hang it on your bathroom mirror and make sure that you are doing some of these things that you find make you happy and sustain you, and a lot of them don’t take any money and they really don’t take any time.

Jordan Benshea: I like that bliss list. That’s a great idea because it can be so easy to think about something generally, but if you think about something very specific and if you have it in front of you, it can help you see that more often and potentially make it more of a priority.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Yeah, you can put pictures of those things on your phone, so you remember to make a date to go to the beach or go to your favorite ice cream shop and buy it there so you get out of the house. All of those kinds of things, however you are, again, I like a list on the refrigerator, but if you’re a super visual person, put it on your computer, put it on your phone. Set it so that it pops up on your fancy photograph display that sits on your desk, you know, the ones where the picture changes all the time, and things like your heart dog and your loved ones. If they make you feel good, make sure you’re building that in, and remind yourself to give them a call. So it’s been a long time, so it’s a little embarrassing because you dropped the ball. There’s, again, research that shows that people get a lot of help out of just a call or an email from you out of the blue saying, “hey, I was just thinking about you. Sorry we haven’t seen each other for a while. I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you and how you are”, makes a big difference for both of you.

Final Thoughts on Perfectionism

Jordan Benshea: Yeah, I think you’re so right, and we’ve covered so much today, Susan. I really appreciate your time and this topic and are there any other things you’d like to kinda share with our audience about perfectionism?

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Well, I guess to sum up I would say, it’s not aiming high and having high standards, it’s torturing yourself. So try not to do that, try to enjoy the process, the journey there. Teach yourself and your colleagues and your loved ones that we’re all just works in progress to the end of our days, there’s still going to be stuff to learn and stuff to get better at, and get in the habit of celebrating the good stuff. Every little small step deserves some recognition. A lot of people find it very helpful in retraining their mind to at the end of the day write down three good things that happened that day. And get in the habit of telling other people things you’ve noticed about them that they’re good at or things you like about them. I know if you’re not especially a motive person, it might feel weird at first, but you would be surprised how long people will carry your words in their heart because you made them feel good about something. They’ll always remember green is their color or whatever it was you said to them. So yeah, I think it can be hard to undo, but I think it’s absolutely doable and I think we should all help each other let go of perfectionism and be happier with the lives we’re in.

Outro

Jordan Benshea: Thank you so much, Susan. I’m sure that our audience, this has been helpful, and we’ll put everything we talked about, references and quotes etc., in the episode notes as always. Susan, thank you so much for your time and everything that you’re doing for our veterinary colleagues. You really are a gem in this profession and for so many people, and we’re so fortunate to have you as part of the Vets4Vets team, and very grateful for your time and support and effort.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Thank you for being a shining example right then of helping somebody let go of perfectionism and be happy with their results.

Jordan Benshea: Well, I didn’t even consider that. I was just truly sharing how grateful I am. So thank you, Susan. We’ll talk to you soon.

Susan Cohen, DSW, ACSW: Thank you, Jordan.

Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the episode notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org, and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.