Escaping the Perfectionism Trap

This month on The SALT Talk, we're doing something a little different.

In this special episode, the tables are turned as Rev. Jermine Alberty, host of The SALT Talk, becomes the guest. The conversation is led by D. Rashaan Gilmore, host of Unbossed and Unbothered, in an honest and thought-provoking discussion about perfectionism, fear, mental health, and the courage to move forward.

Perfectionism can sound like maturity, high standards, and "doing it right," but it often behaves like fear dressed in a nicer outfit. Rashaan and Jermine explore why so many of us stall right before the thing that matters most—launching the business, sharing the creative work, applying for the opportunity, starting the routine, or finally finishing the draft. When life feels overwhelming and the world feels relentless, "perfect" can seem like the safest option, and that's often how progress gets delayed.

Together, they unpack where perfectionism begins, including childhood experiences of only being praised for getting it right, and how societal pressures and inequities can turn growth into a never-ending performance test. They also examine the hidden costs of perfectionism: procrastination disguised as preparation, endless tweaking that prevents action, and overwhelm that can appear to be laziness from the outside.

Jermine offers a practical framework for recognizing when a challenge may be affecting your mental health by considering its duration, frequency, and impact. He also shares a grounded perspective on mental health as something people experience—not a personal failure or character flaw.

Most importantly, this conversation provides practical steps for moving forward: break large goals into manageable actions, seek feedback from a trusted circle before presenting your work to the world, and stop chasing universal approval. The people who need what you have are not waiting on perfection—they're waiting on your willingness to show up.

Join us for this special crossover conversation between The SALT Talk and Unbossed and Unbothered. Share it with someone who has been stuck waiting for the perfect moment, and ask yourself: What's one thing you're ready to put out into the world this week?

Transcript

Introducing Jermaine Alberty

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'd like to transition to the feature interview for today's program. And it is a voice that many of you have heard before and that I hope, fingers crossed, will be a regular contributor to our program here in this hour because he just brings such heft to the topics that we discussed. And today's topic, I think, is going to reach a lot of people right where you are. I'm really excited to bring on uh once again with me Jermaine Alberty. Jermaine Alberty is not in his first appearance here, as I mentioned, but he is a faith leader, author, consultant, and mental health educator dedicated to helping people live with purpose and resilience. He's the host of the SALT Talk Podcast with Jermaine Alberty, where faith, leadership, and real life conversations meet. And through his work with faith communities and organizations across the country, he is empowering individuals to transform their lives and their communities. Jermaine, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Good to be back always, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Well, uh, I hate that I had to bring you on after such a heavy topic there, but I I knew that you could handle it. And I know that this next topic that we're going to be discussing with the audience today is one that many can relate to. And I I think that for a lot of us, Jermaine, we find ourselves sometimes stuck. You know, I talked earlier in the broadcast about the cacophony of noise that we're all trying to find our way through most of the time. There's always something in the news or some headline or something going on, or we find ourselves really just being overwhelmed by life itself. You know, a pound of ground beef costs what, $12 these days. But I think when we're talking about trying to make progress in our lives when perfectionism feels safer, I know there are so many people who are struggling to find a pathway for themselves, but they can't seem to either get going or perhaps they feel like they are uh they've they maybe shot their wad in the in the sense that they've gotten as far as they can go and they're stuck. I wanted to talk to

How Perfectionism Blocks Progress

SPEAKER_00 2:12

our listeners today about what it takes to make progress when perfectionism feels safer. What well let me let me rephrase this. Can you share with our listeners what you shared with me earlier today?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Most definitely. So when we're aiming to get a thing done, what keeps us from doing it oftentimes is perfectionism. And instead of even starting it, we don't even start because the goal in mind is it just has to be just right. Perfect plan, the perfect start, the perfect thing. And we don't even get it started because we get stuck in the ideal that has to be a certain way before we even do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, where does that pressure for perfectionism come from? I mean, is it is it is it fear?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

It starts for many people with that whole ideal of getting a happy plate.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Okay, say say more about that.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

So think about this. When you were a little kid growing up, you only got praise when you did the right thing. You got the sucker, you got the praise, you got this. Good job, good job. Only when you did it just the right way, only when you, you know, achieved the A, only when you achieved this. You know, you got a dollar, if you if you got an A, you got Wolf, you got a C, you know. So I think it is embedded in us sometimes from you that if you just don't get it right, then you're not good enough, which which kind of then goes to this ideal of I have to be perfect to get praise and to be accepted. And I can start very early in life.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

And so is there uh is there a voice in the back of our heads, maybe that's telling us that we're not ready, we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, or whatever. And so therefore, perfectionism becomes the goal because then I'm unassailable if whatever I produce, and again, we could be talking about anything, right? We're not just talking about um maybe starting a business, it could be almost anything, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah. Well, and the thing about it though is those barriers that are already natural for some people. The inequity, being male, being female, uh, being black, being uh from a lower class, all those different things could be things that we already have in front of us to go, man. I'm already I'm already three things behind before I can even get into the front of the line. Yeah, that's good. And so when you're taught that growing up, that you know you have to be even better if you're black, it could be even better if you're if you're this, it could be even better. And so in essence, it says that you have to work harder, 10 times harder in order to achieve a thing. And so you always find yourself trying to make sure you're better and better and better, which leads to this ideal of perfectionism. Perfectionism. And so my thing is aim to get better, not perfect.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Aim to get better, not perfect. It reminds me of something that uh one of our mutual friends, uh Lashonda Hamilton, uh, used to always say to me when we were in business together, she would always say, friend, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Mm-hmm. Right. And I think that some of the pressure that many feel, particularly if you're bringing a product to market, let's say, and you're you're pouring blood, sweat, and tears into it, you want acceptance, you want to make money from it, or whatever, and you feel like you've got to get it perfect, otherwise that's your one and only chance, or people won't like it, or they'll talk bad about you, that sort of a thing. I also wonder if

Where Perfectionism Starts Early

SPEAKER_00 6:05

you agree with this thought that I have had for a long time now, which is that really perfectionism is procrastination wearing an appropriate mask. In other words, we allow perfectionism. I gotta keep tweaking it, I gotta keep working on it, instead of just putting it out there, whatever it may be, your your new song, your new podcast, your new product, instead of just putting it out there to test it, to see what you learn once you are, you know, doing the thing, or to see what your customers, if you have them, uh, really think of what the thing is. But we use perfectionism as a means of procrastinating because then we feel safe. Well, I gotta keep working on it until it's perfect when really we're just putting off getting it out there. Or am I completely on base?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

No, you listen, you you are on base. I am a baker, I love baking. You like to bake too. And I I baked this pound cake, and I don't I don't know if I didn't wait for the pan to cool down enough. When I flipped it over, the crust of it got stuck in the pan.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Oh, don't you hate that.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Don't you hate that? And I was and I was like, I cannot serve this cake to anybody, I cannot get this cake out to anybody. I want to be the perfect cake, perfect brown, perfectness, where it has that piece missing. Somebody ate that cake, they said, boy, you better give me that cake.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Right. But but but but that but that's the point, though. To to the people who are waiting for what you have to say, what you have to deliver, they're not looking for perfection. What they're looking for is whatever the assistance is that they need or the product that they want. And here you are abusing yourself, basically. And I know I've been guilty of this a lot in my life, even the things that I have brought forth. Um, whether it's this show or uh work that I do in other parts of my life, there are so many times where I have been the negative voice in my own head telling myself, well, you can't move forward because it's not good enough yet. And I really feel like what underlies that is a fear that I'm not gonna get it right or people won't like it. And if I can just keep working on it, working on it, working on it. But what happens when we spend so much time working on the thing instead of delivering the thing? Um, what what happens to us? Because I feel like in in some ways, we find ourselves in a bit of a it's like a hamster on a wheel in like this doom gap.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah, as and here's the thing about it, people would would call it being uh paralyzed or paralysis or being stuck, but really what it really is is being overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

We're overwhelmed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Say more about that. And so so when you're overwhelmed because everything is coming

Fear Disguised As Product Tweaking

SPEAKER_01 8:53

at you all at one time, and so you feel like, oh my god, I can't get this done. And here's the first part in it is having the courage, that airstream to speak to yourself and say to yourself, listen, take this as both what I talk about as the elephant, one bite at a time. So we have to deconstruct what is making it so overwhelming for me. But I think this is a segue that I want to talk about, and it's so important, and is those friends of ours and neighbors who have a mental health challenge where it could be ADHD, it could be OCD, it could be generalized anxiety disorder, it could be something that is uh illness that is causing that person to not be able to move past the mark. Because it's not just them being perfect, it is their brain itself fighting against them, keeping them from moving forward. And so I think there's this key thing I want people to think about. It's called D, the D stands for duration. How long is this going on? The F stands for frequency. How frequent is this? And the I stands for impact. So duration, frequency, and impact. So if if you this is going on in your brain, it's been going on for a month at a time, talk to somebody about that. If it's every day, day in, day out, it's just happening. Talk to somebody. And if it's impacting your relationship, your work, your job, talk to somebody about that. Because it could be more than just trying to be perfect, it could be something developing within you that is challenging your mental well-being.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Well, I just want to say, as someone who, and I I I had no intention a few weeks back when we had you on of uh disclosing uh my neurodivergence. Of course, if you've met me or listened to this broadcast, uh you probably picked up on that yourself if you know anything at all about ADHD. Uh, but I am someone who's late diagnosed in life, and I used to frequently joke about my undiagnosed, unmedicated uh, you know, ADHD. And it is hereditary and it does run in families, and I have several family members who uh, you know, because of the particular type of uh you know ADHD uh that they had were able to be diagnosed sooner. And it was the truly hyperactive, you know, just external. So you see all this energy just constantly all the time bouncing off the walls. And I'm a high energy person, but not like that. My particular version of ADHD is what's known as inattentive. And it's not that I can't focus, it's just that I don't always get to choose what my brain wants to focus on. Yeah, I don't get to discipline it the way I want to. And so a lot of times if it's not novel or new or interesting, then I just can't get into it sometimes, or I have a harder time. Now I've learned a lot of, as many of us have had to do, uh, different masking behaviors and tips and hacks and techniques and things. And so I've gotten better about knowing when I'm in that space, but the pendulum can swing completely to the other side where I can get into a hyper-focus mode. And many people living with ADHD talk about you know it as a superpower. I'm not uh there yet with it where I feel like it's a superpower, but the ability to hyperfocus, you know, I can get you know, it can take me two weeks to get something done that could have taken 15 minutes, but I have those days too where I can get a week's worth of stuff done, you know, in four hours. But I mentioned

Overwhelm Versus Being Stuck

SPEAKER_00 12:14

the the hyper focus piece of it because it can be very, very easy. So when you talk about that duration, frequency, impact piece, where because of the hyperfocus, I want to know everything about a particular subject or or or an idea. And so I am down the rabbit hole. I am probably an a junior expert on it, but at some point you've got to flip that switch. So even if as you're talking about, you have someone that's got a neurodivergence or some other issue that may be um, you know, informing how they approach work, how do you snap out of it? That's the best term I have. So I apologize if I offend anybody with that.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

But how do you snap out of that? And actually, we I was gonna say, I think we got to make sure people understand that mental illness or mental health challenges is episodic. Just like any other episode that you may have, like without heart palpitation or some kind of other physical health challenge. It's episodic, it's not everyday, constant. Sometimes it is episodic, meaning it occurs for a period and ends for a period, which makes it really tricky because all of a sudden you're hot functioning, everything's going well, you're laughing, ha ha ha. It's like, oh, and then you're depressed down on stuff. It's like, oh, he's faking, she's faking. No, it's an episode. It's an episode. And so there's these moments where you're doing well and you're recovering and you're getting better, and then those moments where you're in the pit and in the hole. And so it's not a matter of snapping out of it, it's a matter of having a coping strategy and friends that can know the signs and symptoms and say, friend, if I don't call you back in a matter of 48 hours, you call me. Friend, if uh if this happens and uh my attitude shifts, it could be this. It is literally that accountability partner, it is that advanced directive, if you would, to say, if you notice this, hey, do this. And that way I don't have to wonder how to support you when you're as bearing episode. We've talked about it already.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So I I appreciate that very much. And and it makes me think to ask you this question. So, if regardless of your reasons, if you're a person with neurodivergence, if you're not, but you're somebody who's trying to get something out there, you feel um, you know, destined or you have a desire to do something, put some product out there. It could be you want to open up a uh you know, a cupcake business. I don't know. It could be anything. We know what happens because we've been talking about it, when you don't take the step and actually put it out there, right? And you let perfectionism um mask your you know procrastination. But let's talk about what benefits come when you do take the step to put it out there, because I imagine for most people, once you finally do it, there's great relief that is experienced, if nothing else.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah. I I want to say this. Listen, if you are feeling that you can't put it out there because you're fearful what people are gonna think about you, because typically that's what it's really in fear. Yeah, then get you with a focus group with folks you trust. And like, guys, I got an ideal. Get you two or three people, what you think about it, giving your honest opinion. And that way you've done it, right? It didn't go out on Facebook, it didn't

When It Might Be Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 15:30

go out on social media. No, just you're on with a study group, focus of the group, and say, What you think about this? Get that honest feedback, and what happens is it's out of your mind now where it gets stuck.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Yeah, it can really torture and haunt you.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah, yeah. It's out of your mind where it's stuck at, and now it's out there on paper, or it's out there in a group, and get that feedback. And so for me, it's like that way you're no longer stuck in it. Because what happens is that we get stuck in what we what I call the sunk cost mindset. Ooh, this is where we invested so much time in anything that we're like, I can't let it go. I can't let it go, I can't let it go. And you hold it on simply because you invested all this time, energy, emotion into it. And just because you spent that time on it doesn't mean that you have to stay trapped in it.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

And you know, another thing that I experienced too is that you know, we fear you mentioned that word fear. I think a lot of times we fear the worst. And specifically what you said, we fear what other people are gonna think about it and say about it. Oh, you left your job and did what? Or this is what you told me, no, you couldn't go to this concert for because you had to go back and work on this thing. I read your book or your manuscript, and this this is that's usually not even the case at all. But even if that is the case, then you have information that you can take and and evolve into the next iteration of whatever the thing is. And I always like to quote Nelson Mandela who said, you know, I never lose. I never lose. Either win or I learn. And so I'm gonna give you just the last 30 or 45 seconds here. Please talk to the audience about what that means to put something out there. You're trying it out, you're afraid that people may not want it, but I want to flip the script or they may not like it. I'm gonna flip the script though, and talk about or ask you to talk about what it could mean for those who are waiting for what you have to offer. Because it's in you for a reason to deliver that to the world. And so somebody's waiting for it, and what happens when you don't do it or you delay doing it?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah, here's the key thing: don't get stuck in mass appeal. Don't get stuck in mass appeal. It doesn't have to please the masses as long as it's pleased one somebody, and that one somebody is you is you don't get stuck in mass appeal because once you get it out there and you've done it, then you can say, you know what, I'll put it out there and now I'm gonna let it do what it do. Just get real real biblical real quick. We're biblical. Go for it. Listen, some people plant and some people water and wait for the universe to bring the increase.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Break that down for us. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

It simply means that sometimes when you are talking to somebody, you're planting a seed, an ideal, a concept. And the next person comes along and they water that seed, that idea, that concept. But you're not gonna get in control of increase. That's not your that's not your role. Uh you can do you can you can pay for all kinds of marketing, it may not go nowhere. Sometimes it's that universal alignment, connection that will bring increase beyond your wildest imagination. But at least plant the seed. And as you would say, don't eat your seed, plant your seed. That's right. Plant the seed, water seed, and look at God, bring increase, the universe, or whoever your greater power is, believe me, it can happen.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

That's fantastic. I always appreciate having you on, Jermaine. Um, you've been listening to Jermaine Alberty with Salt Initiative. Jermaine, where can our listeners find find you and find out more about your work?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Saltinitiative.org.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Saltinitiative.org.

ADHD Inattentive And Hyperfocus

SPEAKER_00 19:05

You've been listening to Jermaine Alberty here on Unboss and Unbothered, my special guest today. I'm really thankful for you, Jermaine, and we cannot wait to have you back. I want to thank you, our listeners, for tuning in for another episode of Unbossed and Unbothered with me, D. Rashawn Gilmore. Thank you so much, Kansas City and surrounding areas, and those of you listening online for the pleasure of your time. Uh, you're listening to 90.1 FM, KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio.