Foreign. Welcome to the Meaningful Work Matters podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Soren, founder of eudaimonic by Design. On this podcast, we'll dive into the world of meaningful work, explore its complexities. And examine its impact on people and. The organizations they're a part of. Each episode features insightful conversations with cutting edge experts who are successfully navigating the challenges of meaningful work.
We hope to offer you ideas, frameworks and tools to unlock potential and design work that's fulfilling, impactful, and supports everyone's well being. Subscribe or follow us now and let's make meaningful work matter. Sonia Looney, it is really exciting to have you on the Meaningful Work Matters podcast. This is, quite frankly, a bit of an intimidating podcast for me to host because you're a podcast host who I deeply admire.
And actually, when I was thinking about starting this podcast, I remember reaching out to you and asking your advice around how to. How to go about starting a podcast. So it's really fun to switch to turn the tables and have you sitting in the guest seat on this particular podcast. Welcome. Thank you. I'm in the hot seat and I have to say, Andrew, your podcast is one of my favorites. I've listened to almost every episode and I have learned so much. So thank you so much for doing this podcast
because I love it. Well, thank you. Sonia. You and I know each other because of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. You have just wrapped that up and I think a lot of what we are going to be talking about today relates to the work that you did as part of your thesis project for that program, or what we call a capstone project.
So I'm excited to dive into that. But maybe before we do, you can tell us a little bit about yourself and what makes your work meaningful. Yeah. So this is the hardest question. Talking about yourself and how do you talk about yourself? Like, people want to hear about your accomplishments, but people also kind of want to hear about your character. So I guess I'll do
both. I am a professional mountain biker. I've been racing for 20 years and I've gotten to race all over the world in countries where I didn't know where they were whenever I signed up for them, which was exciting for me. And somehow I've attained these goals or, or these accolades, like being a world champion, like being a national champion. And that's helped me actually, because I've been able to inspire and help
other people. So initially I set out on this goal because to be a pro mountain biker Cause I loved racing, I loved exploration. I wanted to see what I was capable of and it was really just kind of about me. But over time it, it morphed into being a way to connect people to themselves through story. And it wasn't really intentional how that happened. And now, you know, 20 years later, I'm still racing and honestly it's, it's really weird. Like if I win a race, I don't really care anymore.
It's more, how can I use this experience, how can I use my bike racing as a laboratory to help other people unlock their potential and find fulfillment in the process? Wow, that's pretty darn cool. I love that shift from kind of the me oriented to the other focus and, and even using personal accomplishment as a vehicle to be able to, to strike a little beneficence. As Anne Bradford, who is just on this program, was telling us, a new word in my vocabulary. But that's, that's awesome.
Well, maybe we can use, maybe we can use that to launch into some of the questions that I have for you. I, I know that a lot of really excellent research starts often as me search and possibly just based on what you've just described, that that maybe sets a bit of a tone as to some of the work that you've done and the things that we're going to be talking about, which largely revolve around the topic of perfectionism. Tell us what perfectionism means and how you got interested in
the study of it. There's a lot of kind of different definitions and even assumptions around if perfectionism is healthy or not. So I'll just stick with the one that came out of the work that I did. So I used Flett and Hewitt's multidimensional perfectionism model. So basically that says that we're perfectionistic in three ways. We have very high standards for ourselves, we have very high standards for other people or, and, or we expect to meet, we have to try to meet other people's
standards, society standards, someone else's standards. So those are kind of the three dimensions and most people kind of fit on the continuum somewhere. And the behavior that results from that is excessive striving, self validation through goals. And that can lead to some mental health challenges. But also what comes with that is a difficulty in realizing sense of accomplishment. And I've really, I really wrestled during my masters of like what is that?
What is a sense of accomplishment? And because for me, pride wasn't it like I would accomplish all these goals and I would just feel like, eh, well it could have been better or what could I have done better? Which is a typical behavior of a perfectionist is like they don't celebrate their accomplishments. They're debriefing how it could always have been better. But I thought if accomplishment is supposed to be this part of our lives,
it is fulfilling and meaningful and helpful. Why is it that I can't feel a sense of accomplishment? So that's kind of why I was interested in perfectionism. And perfectionists are also very self critical and that is something that I had to work on, you know, as a, as a student. This kind of happened in high school. Like if my parents were, they're trying their best to, to help me, you know, be, be my best. But like an A minus or an A was
not acceptable. It needed to be an A plus. And then that kind of became my internal narrative with everything that I did. So I had to learn how to wrestle against that. And I thought that I had kind of manage that a bit. But it was really around this sense of accomplishment piece of everyone would be so amazed by all these things that I did and I would just kind of want to hide when people would make a big deal about
them. This, this notion of perfectionism seems like it's, it's very, very tied to performance orientation perhaps, which is probably something that we'll talk about a little bit later, this idea of a performance identity. But, but I would imagine it's also just something that's really, really common amongst elite athletes.
Is that, is that a fair assumption? I would say it's probably common amongst anyone who is striving for high goals that has this sort of contingent self worth which is like what, what Jennifer Crocker and colleagues call it in the research. And there's lots of different ways that our self worth becomes staked upon something. So staked upon competition, staked upon how we look, staked upon approval
of others. So when you have a high contingent self worth, it can become really problematic when it's based on an accomplishment or performance. Particularly for a perfectionist where maybe they had a great performance or something that they did really well, but in their mind it's never good enough. So therefore they as a person are never good enough. So I think yes, athletes, but also in my coaching practice I've worked with a lot of people across different disciplines and I've been surprised
to see that this is kind of a rampant problem. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean I'm, my background is not in elite athletes, but certainly in elite performers. I've spent a lot of time in the arts and in my experience, especially with like ballet dancers, opera singers, people who have an extraordinarily honed and refined technical skill set that they've been working at forever, really, that has defined their whole sense of identity.
You know, just as, just as you described. Right. Like a high standard for myself, a high standard for the other people around me and desperately trying to fit into the society standards of what they think that I should be. I mean, you think about ballet dancer and that just feels like, oh my God, that's exactly what the life of a ballet dancer often is. And their worth is so much based on the degree to which that is recognized, that's received, that's applauded, that's appreciated.
I also know enough about this space to know that senior executives in organizations often feel the exact same way about the work that they're doing. So it is interesting how pervasive some of this perfectionist tendencies can go. Yeah, And I also think about the reason why we started doing all these things in the first place. A ballet dancer probably started ballet dancing when they were a little kid because it was fun and exciting and an athlete might have started their sport because
it was just interesting to them and they loved it. But then as they started getting more attention for the thing or maybe, you know, getting paid money to do that thing, it started complicating the relationship with it and then it shifts away from why they're doing it to what am I worth? And I think that can really take away someone's, someone's joy and, and someone's reason
for doing it in the first place. And that, that really happens a lot with athletes, especially in my sport, cuz mountain biking, you know, world class mountain biking or, or whatever, road cycling. I, I really like the podcast that you did. Is it his, his name is.
Is it David Blouse? David Bluestein? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Where it's about and, and in your presentations that you do about like decency and meaning and a lot of these sports you might, you might initially have high meaning and then I feel like the meaning might go away because of these sort of extrinsic things that happen.
And then the decency piece is difficult because maybe you don't make very much money or you don't make a regular income or if you get injured, you get fired, like things like that happen. So I think it's really complicated with performance and meaningful work and also just how we feel in our lives, our psychological, well, being around all these things. So that probably connects A lot to the construct of mattering, which I'm imagining there's a relationship between contingent self
worth and mattering. You know, we've definitely had other guests on this podcast talk about mattering. We've had Isaac Polentensky and I just talked to Zach Mercurio, who's got this amazing book on mattering that's about to come out. And so based on those conversations, you know, if any of the listeners have heard those, you might know that mattering is this psychological need that we all kind of have to feel valued and valuable, which is perhaps,
perhaps another way of talking about contingent self worth. I don't know. What's the relationship between mattering and everything you're talking about? Yeah, there is a relationship between self, contingent self worth and mattering. And people can have a conditional sense of mattering. So Gordon Flett has done a lot of research in perfectionism, but he's kind of doing research and mattering now as well.
And for perfectionism in general, it's really difficult for them because there's these different domains, right, that Pilotinsky talks about, mattering to the self, mattering in relationships and mattering in community. And mattering to the self is hard because in order to matter to the self, you need to have self compassion and self acceptance, which a lot of high performers who are highly self critical don't
have that. So it's hard for them to matter to themself. And then also to matter in the world, you need to have recognition and feel worthy. But if you reject recognition, if someone says, oh, great job at whatever race, like I think you and I had a conversation, or you were my journal reader for, for Maps. I've wrote a lot. You've, you've had a front row seat into some of the crazy places
my brain goes. But if someone says great job on your third place and you feel horrible about your third place, then you're rejecting the recognition in the first place. So I think there's a lot of issues with mattering and how we, how we realize that is and, and what we choose to focus on is such an important part of, of how we
feel like we matter in the world. The work that, that I know that your capstone kind of focuses on, which is around goal attainment and kind of the relationship between perfectionism, mattering and then the kind of goals that you're trying to move towards. So yeah, tell us, tell us about that. And then of course, you know, there's like the meaning and purpose element of it. Well, I'll kind of just give a framework as to how I came up with these ideas.
Because I went back and reread my work yesterday and I thought I did kind of take a lot of different things from a lot of different places and pull them together. I thought to myself, okay, sense of accomplishment is an important thing. What is a sense of accomplishment? Well, for me it's not pride. I don't feel pride with my accomplishments. That's a key issue with perfectionists. They tend to feel shame because it's not good enough. So when do, when do I feel good about something I did?
So I had this story that kind of popped in my mind and it was this race I won a couple years ago in North Carolina. And I felt like I didn't deserve to win it because I had been sick and I didn't train very much and all these reasons and I somehow still won the race. And I thought, well, it's not good enough cuz I didn't work hard enough or, or whatever. But then a week or two later, this man sends me an email and he said, I saw you at this race, it was a five day race and you
know, you had a one year old and a three year old there. I saw them at the start line with your husband every morning. Um, you know, I know what that, what that, what that's like to have toddlers. And you were winning
the race on this leader's jersey. And the way that you showed up every morning, like you were full of energy, you were smiling, you were open and, and warm and all these like really nice things that he said to me and he said to, he said, if I saw you doing that and if, if you could do that, then I can do it too. And I believed in myself and I had a way better race because of that. That was way more meaningful than
winning any race. And I thought back to other times. People had told me about the impact I, I had made on them somehow, like indirectly. And to me that's what it was all about. So I thought, well, what is that? That's not really a goal I was striving for, but that really is in line with my purpose, my purpose in life. Like I've always wanted to impact other people's lives in a positive way and help them realize that they are more capable than they thought and to
overcome limiting beliefs. And so I thought, well, that's a way that my personal goals are in line with my purpose, but not in a way that I initially thought. So I wondered, well, if this is the case for Me, I wonder if this is the case for other perfectionists who are trying to matter through their accomplishments. If I can just be better, if I can just do more, maybe, maybe I'll be lovable, maybe people will pay attention to me, maybe I'll be special. That that isolates you.
It doesn't actually help you be connected with other people. And because of that, it's like this hamster wheel that becomes really problematic. So I interviewed in a qualitative study, I interviewed 10 perfectionists and they all ended up kind of being in this high personal stand category. And at the beginning of the interviews, they couldn't articulate if they had a sense of purpose or not. They felt like they didn't really matter. They said they never reflected
on their accomplishments. But the, the actual interview ended up being an intervention, which I didn't really intend it to be. But I guess as a coach you kind of just start asking all these questions and it just sort of leads, leads the way. And people by the end were able to say, yeah, I, I never really feel good about the personal things that I did. Like the outcome metric, the check
mark. Like that never feels good. But yeah, whenever I think about how I've impacted other people almost in an indirect way, or accomplishments that have been more collective or accomplishments where I was a role model in the process, they felt a great sense of accomplishment. That wasn't a prideful feeling, it was something else. And after that they were able to really say, well, you know what? Actually no, like I do have purpose in life. And so I started thinking like,
what is that? What is. And all the research I had read and all these like, papers I had worked through in my, in my MAP degree kept coming back to some of these similar topics and it kept coming back to like, so contingent self worth, like what do you do if you have contingent self worth? What is the recommendation if you have these like, goals that are feeding kind of a negative contingent self worth? And Crocker and colleagues said, well, mastery and social contribution goals are kind of
the goals that you should be focusing on. Whereas a lot of performance based folks are looking at achievement goals or they are looking at mastery, but they're also looking at competition and being better than other people. And even for perfectionists who are looking at mastery like it's still not good enough, like, oh, I'm working, I'm getting better, but it's still not good enough. So then I really honed in on this social contribution goal and I said,
well, what is the social contribution goal? And that's impacting other people. So I looked further into that and I saw like, well, Emmons has these in the early 2000s, came up with these four different types of strivings and like generativity strivings where you're, you're leading, you're teaching, you're mentoring to make the world better, a better place that leads to purpose. I saw that pop up and then I saw in like
Keys and Rifts work, there's. They were talking about gen generativity and like if you have higher generativity, you tend to have higher purpose. So I started like linking all these ideas together of, well, there's all these different types of goals out there. There's like self image goals, there's compassionate goals. Like how do all of these goals interact with social contribution and sense of purpose and what are the emotions associated with that?
And I realized that it's not pride at all. It's like self transcendent emotions which are by definition other focus. They're bigger than you. And so I linked that to purpose. And then I just kind of came up with these, these different types of goals that people can pursue that helps people matter. That's not contingent upon being perfect, but really upon like, oh, I'm a part of the world. I'm not just this solo thing doing something. I'm. I'm connected to other people and I'm able to
have an impact. Even if I'm pursuing my own goals, I can have an impact on the world. And that's something that's much bigger than me and my, my worries about being good enough. Wow, Sonia, it's.
It's incredible to hear you scaffold that journey which starts very much with, you know, like going back to me search, you know, the, the way in which you described what your own sense of relationship to your goals was and realizing the, the kind of, the pattern of, you know, if I do it just for me, it doesn't feel satisfying, it doesn't feel good. I don't feel pride in that. And often I
often feel shamed by it. But if I do it for others, if I can see the value that I'm being able to bring to somebody else, if this is part of something that's ultimately connected to the greater good, that's, that's the thing that feels like it's worthwhile. That's kind of what I hear. Is that, is that fair? Yeah. And also, you know, that led me to Adam Grant's work, like his first book, Give and Take, I think that was his first book. I actually hadn't
read it yet. And so during my capstone I read it and I learned about his terminology other ish, where you're pursuing something, you're giving more than you're taking, but you choose when to give based on your interest and your values. And then he did all this work with Jane Dutton and they talked about like social worth and social impact in the workplace and the importance of giving people feedback and the importance of structured reflection and
how that actually impacts pro social behavior. So I'm thinking about perfectionism and how that tends to be like a self focused little black hole that you live in. But if you start impacting other people, you have more pro social motivation. I think that that does impact your sense of accomplishment. So reevaluating how we think about success, reevaluating how we define accomplishment in our lives. Like a lot of people will define success based on one thing and
they'll evaluate it based on a completely different set of metrics. So maybe they are saying I define success based on social impact and process oriented goals, but at the end of the day they're evaluating their impact based on strict measurable outcome. Like did I hit the check mark or not? Did I get the number of downloads, did I sell the number of books? Do I have the H index score? That's always going up and that's not why
you're doing it in the first place. And so something kind of weird that came out of the research was that you can't actually measure like social impact. You can't, you can't measure social worth. So, so I actually thought, well, maybe the immeasurability of it is actually helping perfectionists because they can't compare it to something. It's just a feeling and it's an immeasurable. So and, and there's,
there, you can't control it either. So I, I, it's, it's, it's interesting because when you start doing work like this, it just, you don't get answers, you get more questions. So now I have a lot more questions. There is something really interesting about the choice of what we can measure and how we pursue. And I mean especially you know, going back to elite performers of any kind, you know, people for whom performance is everything, performance is measurable
thing, right? Like I mean you, you are, you are measuring very specific things. When you are entering into a race or when you're a dancer or when you're an executive, you've got a scorecard and you're working towards that scorecard. So what happens when the things that are actually the most important things are immeasurable? Right. Like that's a, that's a profound and, and possibly, you know,
brain hurdy kind. Of revelation and also kind of paradoxical because everything says, well, you got to measure everything. And like we do measure everything. We have like rings that tell us how much we slept and what our heart rate variability is. And like we have productivity trackers. We're tracking and measuring every little thing. And that can become very overwhelming and completely strip away like the why of the, the reason why you're doing something in the first
place. I want to pause on this term that you said a little while ago, which was, it was originally from Adam Grant, this other ish concept. I'm hoping that you can unpack that for us. I mean there we just had a guest on this podcast, Ngiti Ma Sharma, who was talking about purpose and, and the revelation for her that often, you know, we sometimes think about self oriented purpose and other oriented purpose as two
separate things. Things. Or you can hide, you can have a me oriented or an other oriented sense of purpose. But she was describing that for her, and she predominantly works with first generation immigrants into the US that there's actually an integration between those things. The best way to find a me oriented purpose is actually often through the work that you're doing with others. And it's not necessarily helpful to see those two things as either or. It's more
of a both and kind of a relationship. So is that kind of what other ish means? You know, in my opinion? Yeah. Like you can, you can be going after a goal that, that is kind of a self focused goal. A performer. Right. Like I'm going to show up for a marathon and I hope to run whatever marathon time I want to get whatever outcome. But I think it, it's, it takes this like reflection piece to realize that it's okay for me to do this, but I also need to be considering how
this is impacting other people. And this could also be impacting other people in a negative way. Because if people see you out there like hustling, working super hard, that could also create this like ideal that people have to work as hard as you or that you're never resting. And that's, that's kind of a separate topic that's really been on my mind a lot. But how we're, how we're impacting other people through our own accomplishments, I think that comes down to our character,
honestly. Like how are we showing up as we're doing these things and taking the time to think about it. But also like, I also am a huge fan of Scott Barry Kaufman and I know you are too. And he has this great chapter in his Transcend book about purposeful strivings. But he also just posted something the other day about online about like how it's so important to tell people about the impact they had.
So I think for this like, other ish. Other ish orientation where it's like I'm pursuing my goals, I know that they're also positively impacting other people hopefully. But I also need to, to tell somebody if that that has impacted them. Because if you're doing, I, I said that Savoring is the moderator and like looking at not only like, oh, how good am I, but how did this thing I did impact other people as part of my process and evaluating and
realizing my accomplishments. Just saying like thinking, oh, I impacted people, like, that's probably not going to generate like a very strong emotion. But if you think about like the story that I gave about that guy that sent me an email, like, that's still like, it's been years and every time I tell that story I still get this like warmth in my chest and goosebumps and this like weird like feeling almost out of body experience.
So when you're giving somebody feedback about how they impacted you, being very specific about that instead of just saying, oh, you impacted me. So I, I think it's a complicated thing to talk about this like meaningful other ishness. I, I, I called it in my research a meaningful other ish goal where like you've done something but you have to think about how there's like a collective component of that or a role modeling or a leadership component of that.
But it also, it also kind of means that people have to tell you, which is kind of a limitation because people are uncomfortable telling people about, you know, you impacted me in this way. And then it's also hard for people to accept compliments from other people. So there's, there's a lot of limitations to this. So I would actually love to hear from Reb and, or Adam about this because maybe they would probably be a lot better than me about unpacking how to actually make this work in the
real world. Hear that? Reb Rebelie and Adam Grant, you have been challenged. I think this is so, I think it's so interesting and relevant and relevant in a really cross cultural way. I mean, my initial point of view as I was listening to you speak was that this is such a challenge in a very Western, industrialized, educated, rich, democratic, AKA North America, American context.
Because people feel so much pressure to demonstrate their sense of worth through performance, through achievement, through success, right through that, through that kind of a goal orientation. And I think that, you know, what your research definitely makes clear, what lots of other research makes clear, is that just relentlessly pursuing achievement often just leaves you lonely and miserable. And that constant drive for perfection can actually just gut and
destroy wellbeing, not necessarily build to it. Even though there's many people like Martin Zeligman who would say, you know, achievement or accomplishment is actually a fundamental part of what wellbeing is all about, which to me is a little bit like meaning. Right? Like, and I think this is where this podcast, you know, why are we talking about this on a Meaningful Work Matters podcast? Because I think people who do a lot of meaningful work do so with a, you know, high degree of
perfection tendency. They care, they're really passionate. They're often obsessively passionate about the work that they do, which is different than perfection, but probably not that different than perfection. There's probably a lot of, of overlap in, in, in these, in these kind of ideas and constructs. But I think that what you're showing us is that they're like, you can't just do one. You can't just focus on meaning, you can't just focus on achievement.
You have to think about the relationship between all of the pillars of well being in our lives. We have to think about purpose. We have to think about personal growth. We have other ishness. We have to think about the potential for beneficence in our world. We have to think about the whole spectrum to actually allow ourselves to see the things that we're accomplishing as contributing to our well being, contributing to a balanced life.
Yeah, like, it's complicated and you said we need to think about it. We need to think about it. I also think we need to feel it because the emotional piece is, is something you feel in your body. And I, I've actually been re reading this book. There's this researcher named Jessica Tracy who's written, she's done a lot of work on pride, like authentic pride and hubristic pride. And hopefully I'm getting this right. But it seems to me that she's saying that emotions are what drive
our motivation. So not feeling our emotions, not being aware of our emotions, and then not being aware of our motivation as it shifts, I think that's another important nuance. But like the work that we're doing in the world as practitioners, helping people, like, think about all these things and realize that what they're doing is already right there. Like, you don't have to do anything extra in terms of
doing to realize all of these things. You just have to kind of put on, put on a different, like, mindset almost and spend some time considering these different areas. And I think that a lot of people, they want to feel good in their lives. They want to feel fulfilled, not in the sense that they become complacent, but they just want to feel good about the things that they're doing. So taking the time to do things that so key. And I just want to add one
more thing. We talked about Martin Seligman's like, saying that accomplishment is an important part of wellbeing. I'm a big fan of humanistic psychology and like, how growth orientation, growth motivation, that's an important part of, of pursuing potential and even trans. Self transcendence. Like Scott's book, Transcend was a huge book for me and I've been now reading some of Maslow's work and he talks about the fact that, like, we always hear, oh, the goalpost moves, like it's some bad
thing. But Maslow, I think, is saying in his book that like, the goalpost is supposed to move. There is always supposed to be, he calls it, pleasurable tension in our, in our striving and in our, our pursuits. So what do we need to do to keep our growth and our, our striving pleasurable in a way that is conducive to meaning and purpose and, and in an other orientation, a we culture, so that it's not just this, like, kind of lonely, dark hole where we're never,
never matching up to what we think we should be. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I mean, it makes me think about yoga, which is something that I practice a lot. And like, one of the, one of the philosophies of yoga is that yoga is a constant relationship between total striving and total letting go. Like, you need to be able to do both of those things ideally at the same time. And if you don't, then there's just no, there's no possibility for harmony. There's no
possibility for liberation. Well, okay, we've got. We've got a what? We've got a. So what now? Let's move to the now what? So I am sure that there are probably people who are listening to this podcast who resonate, who are like, oh, yeah, I, I hear you, Sonia. I'M I'm doing stuff that I think is pretty important, and at the same time, I'm a total perfectionist. And maybe, just maybe those people are not totally happy all the time in what
they are doing. Maybe, just maybe those things are making them miserable, incredibly stressed, maybe burnt out, et cetera. What adv. Advice would you give them? I mean, based on your work? What, what kind of interventions do people need to be thinking about for themselves to, to get to a more harmonious place in their lives? That's a great question, and I feel like this is a really big question. My work is just a tiny little sliver
of what they can do. First. I'll say that perfectionists are very reluctant to, to give up on their strivings or to reduce their strivings because that is kind of what's keeping them safe. Like, what if I don't keep working as hard as I'm working? What if I let go of that a little bit? And that's, that's pretty scary. And you know, a lot of the, the research says perfectionists need to practice self compassion, which is very true. That's helped me a lot. The self compassion piece also helps
you matter in the self domain. My work is about how they're realizing their accomplishments, how they're thinking about their goals, how they're thinking about their success, how they define success. So from a, from a practical standpoint, talking about this stuff with somebody else that you trust is really important because whenever you're stressed, whenever you're like, I, I feel bad in my works, I make perfectionists sound like these villains who are these like, selfish jerks. And they're,
they're not. This is just this, like, behavior that comes out. But it doesn't mean that they're bad people. Like, I'm one of them. Right. But being able to get, get somebody to like, help generate a broader perspective and to use curiosity so that you can tolerate uncertainty a little bit better, so that you can see a bigger picture than. I didn't get this outcome I wanted. I think that's a really important thing. And the other thing is this, this notion of savoring Fred Bryant
and Joe Veroff's work. And I kind of proposed a different type of savoring where you do need to spend some time with somebody because as a perfectionist, you might not be able to talking about the thing that you did and talking about how that might have impacted somebody else, something bigger than you, and how that might contribute to what your purpose might be. And I know there's like purpose anxiety and there's like big purpose, little purpose.
And this is a very nuanced conversation about purpose. But how does the thing that you're, that you're doing, how does that accomplishment, even if it was perfect, even if it wasn't perfect, like, who cares about that part? Like, how is that impacting the world on a broader scale? How is that contributing to your generativity? How and how does it feel
whenever you start focusing on those things? And a lot of people might be critical and as well they should, saying, like, well, that's not gonna work for me. So I think that there, there needs to be different ways to help people. This is just one, like, there's no one size fits all approach to helping people realize greater wellbeing in their life. But I
just encourage the perfectionist listening. Just try to think about one time where somebody told you that they impacted, that you impacted them in a way through your work that has nothing to do with how well you did it has nothing to do with how perfect you were. And just to think of how that might feel and to start noticing that more as you go about your future goals, because I think that that starts changing how you view the world. It changes your perspective and it won't take away
the dissatisfaction. Like you're gonna feel negative emotions around some of these things because that's just sort of a trait that you have that can coexist with these other emotions, this other idea that maybe I do matter on the, in the world, maybe the things that I'm doing are making a difference, just not in the way that I initially anticipated. Really well done. I, I really, I really think that it is so helpful for you to articulate
what that path is. And, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna paraphrase back kind of what I heard you say because I think it's so important. And I'm going to leverage kind of my interpretation of the four, the kind of framework that you introduce in your capstone, which kind of is like four steps. And maybe that first step is just balance your goals. Like, know what meaningful other ish goals are. Know what fulfilling personal goals are. Know what other kinds of striving goals are in your life.
But just like start by recognizing you need a balanced portfolio of goals. Then two, make sure you take the time to pause and savor, like stop and smell the roses of like what you are achieving as opposed to just relentlessly moving forward all the time. And then three, just know that you're one size Fits none. Like, know what you need along the way to make sure that you are dealing appropriately with those different goals. And then kind of step four
is just make sure that you're measuring what matters. Don't, you know, don't just get completely hung up on like the metrics and the scorecard that you think, but make sure that it is a balanced scorecard and that, and that your full well being is part of the equation. I'm going to chime in on number four is maybe don't keep score. Keep score of some things, but some of the things don't keep score because then it becomes about the score.
It's so true. I mean, we've talked about this podcast, we've talked about each of our podcasts, and one of the deadliest things to do in a podcast is measure how many people are listening to your podcast. And I totally get why that's a really important thing. And it completely destroys everything about the joy of making a podcast. I mean, I'm sure that there are places where, where it can be very exciting, but that's
not the point. Like when it becomes about purpose, when it becomes about growth, when it becomes about that other ishness, that is when, when this process of making podcasts becomes genuinely a joy, genuinely something that is, that feels significant and worthwhile. That's, that's truly when it becomes meaningful work. As soon as you start, you know, getting too deep into those metrics, like, it's like, oh God, this is, why am I doing this? What's the point?
I'll summarize with something that Adam Grant said as I was trying to ask questions about this and he was generously answering them. Like, those measurements are not a proxy for impact. Like we think the number of downloads, the number of books, the number of all these things is a measurement of our impact. But you can't measure impact. That's just some number. Like people might have downloaded the podcast and listened to five
minutes, they might have bought your book, but never read it. Or maybe they read it and they never applied it. So this is this like abstract area. And I'll quote one more little research study that I found so
helpful. It was a research study with people that have low self esteem and it was in their relationships and whenever they were given feedback and compliments, just abstract things about how they made a difference, they felt better and it improved their self esteem and it also like made them more receptive to seeing the, the things that are meaningful in their lives moving forward. So the abstract is not always A bad thing. And turning off the likes.
Turning off. Don't look at the downloads very often. Maybe look at the downloads once a quarter. Don't check it every single day, because that can become this, like, dopamine, horrible experience, this roller coaster that actually you don't have much control over. So why are you checking? So that's something that I have stopped doing, is I don't check anymore because I don't want it to take away from the reason why I'm doing it
in the first place. We packed a lot into this conversation. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you think I should have asked you about perfection, about meaningful work, about mattering about anything? I just want to ask you all the things. Do you have any last questions you want to ask me? It would take a long time to answer them. Probably. I'll ask you one and
we'll see. We'll see. There's all these different kind of frameworks of meaningful work that I'm just starting to learn about thanks to you and your podcast guests. So how does perfectionism and meaningful work. How does that overlay? Because I feel like perfectionism can take away from meaningful work, but it's so probably rampant in the workplace. So how can people still have, like, the bright side of meaningful work
with their perfectionism? I don't have a great answer to the question, but I'm just thinking about some of the recent guests that we've had on this podcast. And one of the. One of the people, Carrie Olberger, talks about work devotion. And so specifically for people who are doing deeply, deeply meaningful work, the devotion to that work ultimately becomes an
overriding sense of identity. And so my guess is that if we looked at people who see their work as their sense of identity, there's probably a high relationship between those people and the perfectionist tendencies that you described. Like, their standards for themselves are extremely high. Right? Their standards for others are extremely
high. Like, another one of our guests, Mijiang Kwong, talked about the ways in which when people feel their work is deeply, deeply meaningful, when they are incredibly passionate about their work, they'll look at their peers, and especially their peers who don't demonstrate a real deep, meaningful connection to their work, and they'll actually do things very concretely to basically throw them off the track. They'll ruin those people's lives in different kinds of ways.
Sometimes intentionally, sometimes not intentionally because they don't reach up to their standards. And. And then I think that there's a lot of guests who have come onto this program who have talked about the societal aspects of perfectionism and, and what meaningful
from an outside looking in. You know, whether it's nonprofit, whether it's social work, whether it's nursing, whether it's educators, you know, especially kind of the more meaningful the work, the more there is a societal expectation that you are ultimately going to do what it takes to be able to make it happen. You care a lot about it, but also
you just kind of expect that society does too. And that going back to like the David Bluestein conversation that you introduced earlier kind of intersects between kind of the meaning and decency question. So, you know, the more perfection that you're bringing to the table around that, the more societal expectation, the more, the more you feel like you're going to put yourself in less decent situations and contexts.
And all of that is the thing that I think leads people to kind of misery, frustration, regret, stress, burnout, you know, that, that really kind of, you know, negative spiral that, that I spent a lot of time on this podcast trying to talk about. So how do you think I did? I think you did great. And I think it comes down to like the narrative identity that comes with your striving and your work. We talked about performance based identity a little
bit. There's kind of some new research coming out about this stuff which is really interesting. Like Ben Walker has a theory, performance based identity theory. And then like Ben Holtberg's done some work on performance based narrative and purpose based narrative. So becoming aware of these narratives, like, is it like a performance based identity is based on personal meanings
and self definition? And so whenever I think about that on like the, the decency and meaning matrix, like I, I just start thinking about that and my mind starts worrying. And now I probably won't be able to sleep tonight because I'll be thinking about it so much. But I think the answer, like, the answer is like, we need more work here, we need more discussions.
I think it was episode you had with Mike Seger. He said like, since 2019, there's been all this, this meaningful work research and you can't possibly even read it all. There's so much. So that's very exciting to me because all of these things impact our lives, all these things impact our work, and you're doing such a great job, like bringing all this out so that people can learn more about it. So thank you for doing that. Well, thank you very much.
I guess the podcast isn't ending yet. There will be more episodes. I guess that's the point. Sonia, thank you so much. Wow, you have. You've been able to articulate a lot and condense it in a way that is, I think, very accessible and really, really useful. If someone wants to learn more about your work or listen to your awesome podcast, which genuinely is awesome, how. How do they learn about it? Where should they go? My website is sonyalooney.com and there's just
a bunch of stuff on there. And my podcast we're rebranding, but it's currently called the Sonya Looney Show. It's going to be rebranded into the Grow the Good podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I just really appreciate it. Thank you. Sonia Foreign. Thank you for joining us. For another episode of Meaningful Work Matters. If you haven't already done so, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform. And if this episode resonated with you, please take
a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us make this podcast better and reach more listeners. You can connect with me, Andrew Soren. On LinkedIn or visit www.eeubd.ca to learn. More about Eudaimonic by Design. Finally, if what you heard today spoke to you, tell your colleagues and people in your community about our podcast. We really appreciate your support in making Meaningful Work matter. See you next time.