Clothing, appearance, personal style — these aspects of our lives are breeding grounds for perfectionism and people pleasing.

As in other areas. when we get stuck on picture-perfect visions, we often lose any and all connection to our intuition.

This week’s guest, Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet, is here to teach us both how to create our own personal style using intuition and why that process is so important.

We cover lots of ground in this conversation — from capitalism to patriarchy to toxic body ideals — so settle in and get ready to embrace what personal style looks like to you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• Developing an intuitive touchstone phrase to describe your personal style

• What it means to be an anti-influencer and an anti-capitalist when it comes to your style

• The power of the pause in purchasing decisions

• Rejecting “Pinterest perfect” and “patriarchy perfect” by rejecting the idea that womxn’s bodies shouldn’t change

• The ripple effects of rejecting toxic body ideals

LINKS

Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet on the web

Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet on Instagram

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

How much time do you actually spend considering your values?

Have you given much thought to what they are — or might be?

If asked, could you list them?

That’s values 101.

Now, it’s time for some extra credit.

Are you living in alignment with your values?

How are you embodying them and putting them into action?

Values are a lived experience, and now’s the time to live yours.

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “Values are dynamic, and they’re tied to our lived experience." — Jenna WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• What holds us back from living in alignment with our values

• Why COVID has caused us to reevaluate and renegotiate our values

• How values and identity are intertwined

• Why now is the time to live in alignment with our values

• How to take small, sustainable — or big, dynamic — steps toward our values

LINKS

Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

Resentment has been a big part of 2020 for so many of us.

We’re bound to have some negative feelings about all that we’ve lost, mourned, and missed out on.

Much as we might like to, we can’t bypass or fast forward through these negative feelings, but we can stop ourselves from falling down a bottomless rabbit hole.

How might we do that, you ask?

By tapping into resentment’s antidote, gratitude.

And if you’re wondering what gratitude even looks like in 2020 and beyond, then this is the conversation for you.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual effects of resentment — and of gratitude

• Roles and relationships between resentment and gratitude, especially in 2020

• Differences between thankfulness and gratefulness

• How gratitude works with empathy and compassion to create perspective

• Our favorite practices for embodying gratitude in 2020 and beyond

LINKS

McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Sarah Steckler of Mindful Productivity Blog

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

☑️ The new shower curtain that you’ve been meaning to hang

☑️ The replacement battery that needs to go in the smoke detector

☑️ The medical bill sitting on the counter for the past month that you’ve been meaning to pay

☑️ The low tire pressure indicator in your car that you’ve been meaning to address

These are all examples of tolerations, i.e. the things we’re tolerating — from the tiniest to the most fundamental.

No matter how big or small, tolerations nag at us, annoy us, and zap our energy.

Since we’re already scraping the bottom of the energy barrel these days, anything out of the ordinary has the potential to derail us and send us spiraling.

Get ready to exert control and influence over your tolerations where you can and join us in eliminating your most egregious tolerations within the next 30 days.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• Understanding tolerations and how they impact us

• The biggest risks when our stress buckets are perilously full

• Pandemic brain as a phenomenon and how to manage it

• Locus of control around our tolerations, i.e. what we can control versus what we can influence versus what we can’t control

• The tolerations we’re committed to eliminating in the next 30 days

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

There are A LOT of reasons why work feels neverending right now, fam.

COVID has made it really easy to become a workaholic — or to justify our workaholism.

For many of us, working from home is really testing our boundaries — or lack thereof.

What may have started as a healthy coping mechanism of throwing ourselves into our work life has likely gone off the rails 8 months later.

So, how do we renegotiate our boundaries, find ways to rest, and learn other skills for dealing with COVID-related stress and anxiety, you ask?

Pop in your earbuds now for the lowdown! 🎧

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “When you choose mindfully, there are no such things as guilty pleasures because there’s no guilt. There’s only pleasure." — Jenna WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• Setting boundaries and creating rituals when working from home

• Work as a coping skill

• Faux commutes and why you may need one

• What rest can look like

• Mindful media strategies

LINKS

Alexandra Franzen’s Tiny Book Course

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

During this particular time — in the world and in our lives — there have been a couple of B words that have been popping up repeatedly for Ashley and I, namely boundaries and burnout.

Often, burnout can result, at least in part, due to a lack of boundaries.

In this week’s episode, we explore how to battle burnout, from identifying risk factors to intervening when we’re all the way in it.

Because we know that community can serve as a barrier against burnout, pop in your earbuds, and spend some time with the Fam.

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “Burnout is the imperfectly perfect opportunity to pair awareness, curiosity, and compassion (ACC) with gentleness and self-forgiveness." — Jenna “Play is the inverse of burnout. It’s the antidote." — Jenna WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• The true definition of burnout

• Key risk factors for burnout

• The physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual cues that you might already be experiencing burnout

• What burnout brain looks and feels like

• How to intervene with burnout when you notice it

LINKS

Zyllion Shiatsu Back and Neck Massager

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

We’re diving deep into self-care today, fam, and honestly, this conversation couldn’t have come at a better time. 🙏

Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the Instagram-picture-perfect-$500-investment kind of self-care.

We’re talking real deal, what-works-best-for-you-not-someone-else self-care.

Our guest this week, Christy Tending, is an activist, educator, writer, and self-care mentor who helps people-pleasers like us create sustainable, anti-capitalist self-care in service of collective liberation. Dayum!

Get ready for a big ol’ permission slip to own your inherent power and get a little inconvenient. 💪

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “Capitalism teaches us that our worth is bound up in our productivity, our achievement, and our convenience to others, especially as a woman." — Christy Tending “You can’t buy yourself into self-love." — Christy Tending WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• What anti-capitalist self-care looks like

• The trial and error of finding our own individual self-care practices

• Being inconvenient in our self-care

• The meaning behind freedom and collective liberation

• How to uncover the root causes and root solutions of self-care

LINKS

Middle Finger to Perfection Episode 35: The Quiet Storm

Jenna’s website - jennateague.com

Jenna’s Instagram - @jennateague

Jess Hobbs of Social Savvy

Lindsey Allen Designs

Adria DeCorte, Mentor to Messengers

Christy Tending on the web

Christy Tending on Instagram

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

So, we’ve made it to the 10th (or 100th) month of 2020, and the hits just keep coming.

The effects of allthethings — COVID, quarantine, police violence and protests, the election — are compounding, and our standard coping go-to’s just aren’t cutting it anymore.

We need to switch up our practices, so pop in your earbuds and get the scoop on what exactly is getting us through right now.

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “We need to switch out our detention slips for permission slips. There’s no detention during 2020, only permission." — Jenna LINKS

SHOWS

Game Show Network (A)

America Says (A)

Dateline (J+A)

American Murder: The Family Next Door (J+A)

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (J)

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (J)

Late Night with Seth Meyers (J)

Desus & Mero (J)

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (J)

PODCASTS

Crooked Media (J)

Pod Save America (J)

Lovett or Leave It (J)

Keep It (J)

Casefile (J)

The Vanished (J)

Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations (A)

Entrepreneurial Outlaws (A)

Unlocking Us with Brené Brown - Sonya Renee Taylor on "The Body is Not an Apology" (A)

BOOKS + BLOGS

Nomad: Designing a Home for Escape and Adventure by Emma Reddington (J)

Global Bohemian: How to satisfy your wanderlust at home by Fifi O’Neill (J)

I Can Cook Vegan by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (J)

Post Punk Kitchen (J)

The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life by Lynne Twist (A)

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams by Deepak Chopra (A)

To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret by Jedidiah Jenkins (A)

FOODS

Chao Cheese (J)

Treeline Cheese (J)

DRINKS

Activated You Morning Complete (A)

Suja Lemon Love (A)

Pumpkin Spice Chai Latte (J)

Brew Dr. Kombucha, especially Clear Mind (J)

House Kombucha (J)

APPS

GO EFT TAPPING app (A)

Calm (J)

Voxer (J)

NEWSLETTERS

What A Day (J)

WTFJHT (J)

Unique Holistic Happiness (J)

Alexandra Franzen (A)

Nicole Cardoza’s Anti-Racism Daily (A)

Danielle LaPorte (J+A)

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

Us perfectionists, people pleasers, artists, creatives, and empaths, we’re sensitive souls, and we often tend to gravitate toward service-based work as part of our worthiness seeking.

In order to avoid one big B on our path of service, burnout, we need lots of the other big B, boundaries.

Today’s guest, witch and coach Cait Byrnes, is here to teach all of us sensitive souls how to harness the power of the moon and its energy to supercharge our healing and personal growth.

Get ready to learn about all of Cait’s favorite woo practices, which are just another set of tools for self-reflection.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• What it means to be a witch

• How to use the energy of the moon and lunar cycles for healing and personal growth

• Avoiding burnout by setting healthy energetic boundaries

• How to sidestep savior complex as a perfectionist and people pleaser

• Why woo is just another tool for self-reflection

LINKS

Cait Byrnes on the web

Cait’s New Moon Healing Circle

Cait Byrnes on Instagram

@witchhealerschool on Instagram

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.

Always. Be. Upleveling.

Always be striving.

Reaching for more, more, MORE.

That’s the perfectionist way, right?

Can we focus on our own growth without being perfectionistic, radical, or rigid?

Is that even possible?

In this episode, we explore ways to uplevel with more ease, sustainability, and flow.

HERE'S A SNEAK PEEK OF THE GOODNESS… “Upleveling is incremental." — Ashley “An overnight uplevel is a guaranteed future backslide." — Jenna “If you let go of what’s not needed, you’re going to rise more easily." — Jenna “Believe that you’re worthy of your next level." — Ashley WHAT YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE…

• What it means to uplevel without being perfectionistic, radical, or rigid

• Dismantling in order to uplevel

• The benefits of being in a community of uplevelers

• What stops us from upleveling

• How to step into upleveling

LINKS

Jenna’s new website

Share the Eff Perfect love with a fellow perfectionist, procrastinator, or people pleaser by hitting those buttons on the right, babe!

And because we’re in this together, be sure to take the Eff Perfect Pledge.