VBB 349 Barbara Stone: Why Being Perfect is Overrated!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Podcast, inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather. Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:20]:

I'll bet that everyone knows a woman like this, the woman who seems to be perfect at everything. She's a straight-A student, the employee of the month every month. Her home is pristine. Perfect marriage, model children. Nothing seems to faze her, nothing rattles her, and there's nothing she can't do or be, and there's nothing she can't overcome. But she's also the one who drives most other women crazy because they feel they can't compete with her. But have you ever talked with that perfect woman? Get to know her truth or what's in her head? To be fair, those women are always the most approachable or the most open. But today we get to go there because we have a perfect woman, or at least a woman who was once obsessed with being perfect. We welcome leadership development coach and author Barbara Stone to Virgin Beauty. Bitch. Welcome, Barb.

Barbara Stone [00:01:21]:

Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is great.

Christopher [00:01:25]:

I heard you laugh there, but okay, so you were once one of those relentlessly, perfectly, you know, driven towards perfection kind of women, on the outside at least, and it looked like you could do no wrong. Maybe you can walk us through how you became Barbara, the model of perfect.

Barbara Stone [00:01:43]:

Yeah, I think it's an evolution of perfectionism. It's an evolution of allowing everyone's thoughts to really be able to be projected upon you and their expectations. And so I had been. I grew up. I'm first full generation American. My parents were from Poland, and my father was from Poland. My mother's parents were from Poland. She was born here.

Barbara Stone [00:02:16]:

But I never fit in because I was of that Polish descent. We had different cultures, different traditions, and it was like, okay, when you finish with high school, you need to move on and get a job. Well, when I finished high school, I graduated when I was 16, and I graduated with really being smart. I graduated 16 out of 1400. But I was being pushed out because of. Well, it was the thing you needed to do. You need to find a trade and get it out. But the reality is, I needed to go back to school.

Barbara Stone [00:02:54]:

But all along this journey, I'm not fitting in. So that started what I needed to do, to try to fit in. I needed to look good and get it right. And throughout my career, you know. And I, again, I was just talking to people. I was doing a training on fixed or growth mindset. I didn't know what a growth mindset was then. I just knew I needed to be fixed, and I needed to do this, and I needed to follow it. There were so many expectations of what I needed to do with my life.

Barbara Stone [00:03:31]:

Then I started really working hard to be able to fill those expectations. And I filled the expectations. Yep, I got 4.0s, and I got moving forward, and I went from an undergrad to an MBA, and then I decided to get into manufacturing. And that's where the perfectionism really kicked into another level because I was a senior female leader in manufacturing, and I had to compete with the boys. And, you know, I still had that expectation that, you know, you're going to climb ladders. The whole idea of what you're doing in life is to climb ladders, make money, and it was exhausting. And I really lost who I was. I lost that voice.

Barbara Stone [00:04:31]:

I couldn't find it. And I just continued to work at it, but at what cost? The cost of relationships, the cost of my health, and the cost of not being able to really, maybe live the life that I was meant to live. And that's where perfectionism took me. And it took me on a bad road because I finally woke up one day and said, what am I doing here?

Christopher [00:05:07]:

Had you reached the goals you thought you had to reach at that point?

Barbara Stone [00:05:11]:

You know, at that point, you know, I always thought that it was more. So I ended up becoming that executive vice president, CFO, and I was supposed to take over a company because that's that, wow, you know, I can become a President of a company, a manufacturing company that had three locations. Oh, wow, great job, Barb. But the reality is, something said, no, you can't do this. And luckily, I ended up getting going back to a prior company, and then I ended up continuing to get in that same environment. And I said, there's got to be something more here. And what I did was I started searching for what else is there. And what I did was I completely went out of character.

Barbara Stone [00:06:09]:

And I went to a retreat center, started studying resiliency and positive psychology, and I started seeing there were other ways of me taking care of myself. And because, yes, one of the things I know to be true now, I didn't know then, was that success isn't another ladder. Success is really finding the happiness that you really need in your life. And I never gave myself a chance to pause, and now I was starting to pause to see what else was out there that I didn't have to look at what everybody expected of me to be able to do more, and moving the ladder up and more. So, yeah, it was. It was a journey. And I'm still on that journey because right now I'm on the journey of being a successful leadership coach, trainer, speaker, and wrote a book.

Barbara Stone [00:07:26]:

But I'm now saying, what else is there for me to do? And part of this is I've got such. I want to do more because of the creativity that we can do in our lives. So that's kind of continuing to drive a little bit of perfectionism to myself there.

Heather [00:07:46]:

I feel there are so many women whose perfectionism almost feels like this trophy. And then it becomes our chains because it's such a rigid idolization of self rather than, you know, what you've already outlined, which I really enjoy how you phrased it. You know, that success isn't just another match up the ladder or X, Y, and Z, but truly what is going to make you happy in, you know, a multitude of various elements of what makes a whole sense of self. Were there moments in your life that you felt that perfectionism was like, when did you notice it was really becoming crippling?

Barbara Stone [00:08:40]:

I think that I was starting to feel like there's something I'm missing in life. I'm starting to feel like I've been so fixated on what I needed to do in my career and in life. And I mean, literally, you know, when somebody would come to our house for dinner, I wanted that perfectionism. I wanted the table to look pretty beautiful. I want them to feel as if they're part of the family. I wanted the food to be perfect. And it just continued into my other. Outside of my work and professional life, that I just like, okay, when is enough enough? And being able to say one of the things I love, what you ended up saying about it being a chain, a ball and chain.

Barbara Stone [00:09:44]:

And it really is. It holds you down. It holds you. It does not allow you to be creative. And we are creative beings, and we need to be able to see that. But if we're going by what somebody else thinks, it is exhausting. Totally exhausting.

Christopher [00:10:05]:

You used a word there that I think is very important to revisit. The word is enough. Talk to us about enough.

Barbara Stone [00:10:17]:

Enough who? There is a bucket that is always, like, not enough. And it's always like, you're trying to fill it. But it was again, it was like me. I was trying to fill that perfectionism, that I'm not enough, that I've got to meet a certain standard. I've got to be able to be that perfect being that people are looking at. And it's really kind of interesting. And I always have to catch myself on it.

Barbara Stone [00:10:54]:

We just got back from a trip going to Iceland and Greenland, and I got back and I kind of disconnected because I needed the disconnect. But when I started connecting, I started seeing, oh, my gosh, look what this person's been doing. Oh, my gosh, look what that person's been doing. And I started thinking, I need to be doing that. Why am I not doing more? But meanwhile, people go, Barb, you gotta slow down. And it's a constant struggle for me to be able to just be getting into that present moment and experiencing the moment.

Barbara Stone [00:11:40]:

Our lives are precious. The people in our lives are precious. And when we start thinking or we can't take our eyes off of that perfectionism or achieving all those goals, we forget about who we are as a human being and what are those emotions, and how are we showing up?

Christopher [00:11:59]:

So the women you coach today, do they bring that into your sessions, this bucket that can't be filled?

Barbara Stone [00:12:07]:

Oh, absolutely. You know, I think I like to talk about the bucket. And the bucket can be in two pieces. It can be in the doing. You know, clients come to me and they think that they got to do. And they've got to think that there's a magic pill to get from point A to point B. And what happens is there isn't a magic pill because they think I just got to do step one to get to step two and step three. But the reality is they have this being. That's them. That's their values. That's their purpose. And they have to, as they're taking these steps, have to get in tune with. With that being how are they feeling? Is it in alignment with what they really want in their life to be able to show up? I recognize now I wasn't in alignment as I was trying to reach for that perfectionism, reach for those ladders. I was not in alignment, but I wasn't educated on it.

Barbara Stone [00:13:25]:

I'm just thinking, this is what I needed to do. This is the path. And that's part of why I decided to become a coach. It was because I recognized that I did not have that person alongside me to say, you know what, Barb, you are enough. You know what, Barb, you are okay. You know what, Barb, you do not need to be fixed. And we just this morning, one of my clients in the team meeting said, me, you know, Barb, you know, I need to be fixed. And I said, you need to be fixed? Why? He says, well, because you got this chart here about what a fixed mindset is and what a growth mindset is.

Barbara Stone [00:14:18]:

And I'm kind of right down the middle, so I don't fit the mold. I go, you're not supposed to fit the mold. And this is about the discovery of who you are, and you don't need to be fixed. As coaches, what we do is we reveal, we ask lots of questions. As you're asking questions today to be able to find out what's really going on for people, what I mean.

Heather [00:14:48]:

With your clients and people who have noticed some of these tendencies, or women who have kind of felt how you have felt that there was something. There is something more out there for my life than the patterns I've been stuck in. Would you mind sharing with our listeners a couple of the questions that you asked to help reveal or get comfortable, to go into seeing those pieces for yourself?

Barbara Stone [00:15:16]:

So again, one of the things I do is this exercise, it gets them to start thinking because right now they're looking at what's right in front of them. They are not open to different things. So a lot of times what I will ask is, first of all, the clients need to come with a subject, what they want to talk about. Because what we're going to do is we're going to explore it, we're going to unfold it, we're going to find out. I'm going to find out where are they at now? Where do they want to be? What are some of their obstacles? And then let's start thinking about creating a plan. Well, one of my most favorite exercises that I like to do with individuals that really get stuck about just seeing where they're at and what's going on for them, and can't see anything else. It's a perspective exercise. And I actually get, I like to do this in person, and I put the issue or the problem on the floor, and I will ask them to clarify it.

Barbara Stone [00:16:35]:

And I will ask them to tell me what's going on for them right now, as they are looking at that, for the most part, they're stuck. They're really upset. They don't know how to move out. They just can't move it forward. And you know what? They embody it. I asked them where they embody it, and then go like, in their stomach, in their gut. So it's like, because it's really important to recognize that we harbor our emotions in our body. And so I said, I want you to remember how you're feeling here.

Barbara Stone [00:17:15]:

And then I'll end up saying, what I do here is I shift perspectives. And so I would, as they're looking at the problem, I might ask them, if you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be if you were looking at this issue? And what they come up with is the descriptors of that flower. And so I take those descriptors and I get them to start looking at this situation, feeling from that perspective, and then we'll move, and then we'll start feeling, and then I'll go, okay, what else is there? If you were a car, and these are just examples, because sometimes they just automatically start moving. If you were a car, what kind of car would you be? As you're looking at this problem, you know, they might say, well, I'm a minivan because I've got to, you know, carry some things, I've got to move, or I want to be a Corvette, something fast. So what happens is we'll continue going around, and all of a sudden, some of the perspectives that they start looking at start allowing them to be real and allowing them to feel that they have a solution. Because we've taken bits of the different perspectives that they've looked at, and created a reality as to how they can move forward out of this issue. And it's not me telling them what they need to do. It's just me holding them and asking them the powerful questions to be able to get them out of it.

Barbara Stone [00:19:06]:

And I make them go back to like where they started. And I asked them, can you feel the difference? Can you feel where you embodied it versus, oh, one of the perspectives? They're just feeling like they can just fly, like they're a bird and wings. And that's where we want to get the individuals to so that they can really find their own way and find their own answers.

Christopher [00:19:35]:

I hear a couple of really interesting mechanisms there. It's, we all have our blind spots, but we also have all the answers for ourselves on our own. We cannot overcome those blind spots so, but what you're doing is you're letting, you're putting them in a different, from a different angle, looking at themselves, where that blind spot isn't blinding them anymore because you've taken them out of context of what they experience on a day-to-day basis. Now they can see from a different perspective and find the answer within themselves. That's always been there.

Barbara Stone [00:20:12]:

Yes, yes. And what they do is they go, oh wow. Just yesterday, I had a client, and she's a doctor, and she's like, we started talking about different things that she could do as far as trying to change. Change the way her accounting is being done, or when the process is being done, and she's going, oh, Barb, you just gave me an idea. I didn't give her the idea. She found the idea, and she revealed it herself. Because I truly believe that clarity comes in the conversation, and we need to have conversations with others, and that's why we have a coach. I still have a coach because sometimes I need clarity. I get stuck, and I'm going like, hey, Rick, help me out here. What are you seeing?

Barbara Stone [00:21:08]:

Because we need people to help us see what we can't see. Because we're all. I want to say this one thing, and it comes from my coaches training at CTI. We are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. And that's how we treat the clients, to be able to be naturally creative and whole because they know the answers to what they need to do. We just hold them. We just hold the space. We give them that safe space to be able to move forward.

Heather [00:21:47]:

That is really, really beautiful. I adore that. Because sometimes when you feel lost, to not feel those things, but to even hearing them starts you on a path of getting there. One of the questions we love to ask our guests, Barb, is, What does Feminine mean to you? Because it really is at the heart of the three archetypes in the title of our show. Yes. Would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Barbara Stone [00:22:16]:

So what Feminine means to me is that we can live into what we, what are our values? You know, I mean, everybody has different perspectives of different things, but I want to be seen in the feminine light. But a strong feminine and being recognized for who I am, and not being compared to someone else. It's all about, you know, what am I looking at from there?

Christopher [00:22:53]:

I'm glad you said it that way, because what Heather and I have experienced is that the world history, whatever society you're in, has a definition of what feminine should be, and that a lot of women get stuck with that perspective. But you're saying that you define that from your values.

Barbara Stone [00:23:17]:

Yes, we should. We should. We should be recognized for being. Whether we need to be recognized as humans, and we need to be recognized for our strengths, we need to be recognized for what we've done. That's where I think the true femininity comes in, is that when we can find that voice and stand in our presence and stand for what we need to stand for in our values.

Christopher [00:23:46]:

We agree with you 100%, because that word has become something to be avoided, even by women. Yeah. When it is, as you say, a strength. Your strength.

Christopher [00:24:02]:

Tell us about your book. Tell us about what that's all about.

Barbara Stone [00:24:06]:

Oh, my book. So my book. So Much to Drool About. This is about life lessons. It is meant to be an inspirational read. It was one of the things that I really love to do is to inspire people, to bring people along, to be able to uplift.

Barbara Stone [00:24:33]:

I work for a, one of the lanes of what I do is I work for a women's business center because it's really about allowing women to put their voices out in the world and really put their good work out in the world. And one of the things I found as I became a coach is I needed to identify what were some of the issues going on in our lives. And it became clearer as we were going through the pandemic that we lost a lot of the movement of identity, lost the movement of our purpose, and lost the movement of our intention. And I, you know, we get up and we look at the phone, we look at what's going on with TV. And what I needed to do was I needed to get myself centered and standing in me again. My voice, I needed to be inspired. And so what I wanted to do was because I blogged and because I did posts, I extracted different stories from those posts and then started putting it through the eyes of my Great Danes.

Barbara Stone [00:25:51]:

And I've had four Great Danes. And I wanted to be able to give people the wisdom, to be able to be intentional in their lives. And this is all about life lessons. And it really doesn't matter who you are, what you're doing, what your status is in life. And this can be for 4 to 104, my readers. And because they can be inspired. So. And it was one of those goals for myself, you know, you.

Barbara Stone [00:26:27]:

You need to become an author. So I did this. And along the journey, I didn't know the process. And writing a book is a whole other industry and whole other way of doing things. So it's been a learning process for me.

Christopher [00:26:48]:

It's interesting that we started off this conversation with perfectionism being somewhat of a hindrance at times. However, it can also be something that inspires us to reach our goals. So it can be. It's nothing you judge as good or bad. It is how you use it or how you let it use you.

Christopher [00:27:15]:

And if someone wants to touch base with you as a coach, how do they go about doing that?

Barbara Stone [00:27:21]:

So they can reach out to me on my website, Barbstone Me, or they can email me at barbildyourpathllc.com, and I’m willing to have a conversation to help individuals, help women, help teams, help organizations move their lives forward so that they can live their best life. Because that's really what we need to be doing. They need to be living their own best life instead of them the best life in front of what everybody else wants them to do.

Christopher [00:27:56]:

Fantastic. This has been very inspiring to get to hear your experiences and how you've interpreted and turned them into such a positive life. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Barbara Stone [00:28:09]:

Thank you. Thank you both for doing what you do.

Heather [00:28:12]:

It's really been a pleasure to have you, Barb. Thank you so much. And what a great full circle to land on. So thanks for bringing us there, Christopher.

Christopher [00:28:20]:

Thank you. And I want to let people know to listen out for Barb as well, Barbara Stone, she will be on our Bitch series that's coming up, so keep an ear out for that as well, as we revisit with her on that topic. So you have been listening to:

Heather [00:28:37]:

The Virgin,

Christopher

The Beauty

Heather

And the Bitch.

Christopher [00:28:41]:

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Christopher [00:28:45]:

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