So I can see we're being recorded and it's now broadcasting, fantastic. OK, we might as well get on and start, so. Welcome, everybody who's, joining us live and anybody who's watching this on demand as well.

I just want to say a big thank you to the Mind Matters Initiative for sponsoring this session and to webinar vet for hosting it, and of course to Olivia, for being here and talking to us about taming our inner perfectionist. So before I just, do a bit of intro for Olivia, I just wanted to let everybody know if you have any questions, we'll be doing Q&A at the end. And if you can just pop them down into the Q&A box at the bottom of this screen, then that'd be fantastic and I can feed them, to Olivia afterwards.

But further ado, thank you, Olivia, for being here. Olivia graduated as a vet in 2016 from a university in Poland. Then she's moved, to England to undergo both surgical and rotating internships and, has quite a portfolio actually going on here, has, experienced multiple environments, GP referral, or university research, charity, so, really quite a scope there.

But alongside her veterinary training, she's been, mentoring and providing mental health support to her colleagues, which led her to undertake a master's in this, so she did a master's, in applied positive psychology, which sounds a lot of fun. And and since then she's created the vet's gone real platform in 2020. She's a certified workplace conflict mediator, a wellness coach, and, well, all sorts of things.

So I think, I think that's enough. I'll hand over to Olivia. She can do a bit more specific intro and talk to us about perfectionism.

Today, I really can't wait, so thank you very much. Thank, thank you so much, Sylvia. I know it's, my bio is quite complicated.

It's very easy to get. Oh, thank you so much for this introduction. Thank you to Mind Matters Initiative for having me.

I'm really excited and honoured and I'm, I'm really thrilled to help our community hopefully through this lecture, and thank you, webinar Matt for hosting this, . Lecture as well. So yeah, let's start.

Today we're gonna talk about taming our inner perfectionist and as an introduction, I really like to introduce myself very quickly. So like Sylvia said, I'm a vet, but I'm also a positive psychology appreciative coach and creator of Vetone Real. I trained in Anglia Raskin University.

I belong to the International Positive Psychology Association, and this is my brand, Vetone Real. Through which I help the individuals to become their best selves, to, fight with their limitations, to finally be happy with who they are in their professional and personal life, and I also help veterinary teams. To create a very healthy culture of psychological safety.

So they are actually workplaces where people want to work, where they want, they want to remain and thrive. And here's a little map. I love putting that in there because my coaches, my teams are all over the world and I know that some, some of my coaches are watching now, so I'm sending you my love, you know, I adore you.

Thank you so much for being here today with us. And here we go, so taining our perfectionist. The subject is incredibly important, particularly in our profession, in our industry, where most of vets, nurses, technicians, they are perfectionists, and it's something very closely related to type A personality.

A lot of us suffer from perfectionism, and why do I say suffer? Because it it can have a dark side, and I will tell you more about that dark side today in this lecture. So, to start with, I would like to introduce you to this scene.

It's a scene from one of my favourite films. And there's a guy and he's saying to this girl that to him she's perfect. And that message that includes the word perfect and it's actually incredibly meaningful, much more than many of us would think when you think about that film.

And to start with, because I will ask you a lot of questions today, there's a little warm-up question. Do you recognise that scene? So if don't, you could pull up a poll asking if you recognise that scene, some of you probably will.

Some of you probably not. I'm really curious. OK.

I can see results as well, Sylvia, if you, if you have them as well. So I can see that 72% of you do know that, that scene is fantastic. So the scene is from the film, Love Actually, which is from 2003.

I can't believe how old this film is. And here we go. This is Mark and Juliet, and he is in love with her.

He's telling her that to him, she is perfect. The problem is that actually Juliet is the wife of his best friend. Which doesn't make things easier, but he is in love with her and he wants to tell her that this is what he thinks about her.

And because perfectionism and the word perfect can be applied to our personal and professional life, I will dare to ask you another question. Have you ever thought that? Or have you ever said that to someone, that to me you are perfect.

And don't worry, it's anonymous. No one will find out your answer. So you can be honest.

Have you ever thought, oh this is perfect, that the situation is perfect. OK, so some of you didn't, some of you did, but one third said yes. So to those who asked who said yes, who actually Thought that someone was perfect.

Did you actually think for sure at that time that that person was perfect? Is that what you were convinced? I will leave that one.

Hanging in the air. Another question, did you truly believe at that time that that person was perfect? And we should have the Anacin.

OK. It's very interesting because some of you, 2/3 actually did believe that it was true, and 1/3 didn't really. So very tricky, a very unusual thing to say to someone, really.

And let's focus on the word perfect because that message is very strong. If you said it to someone or not, particularly if you didn't say to anyone, it just means that, well, it would carry a lot of meaning. Perfect.

What does it really mean? And as a researcher and a person who loves having things really clear black and white and perfectly with data behind it, I look at the dictionary, two dictionaries. One is Oxford Dictionary and the other one is Cambridge Dictionary.

And the word perfect, according to the first one, it means having everything that is necessary, complete without faults or weaknesses. So perfect condition, perfect set of teeth, I love that example, or complete and correct in every way of the best possible type and without fault. And now That seems, yeah, quite positive, like amazing, no faults.

It's correct, just perfect. But is the word perfect truly positive, or is it rather strict and merciless? Without a fault.

Without any weaknesses. That sounds quite harsh, doesn't it? And then if we know what the word perfect means, what does it really mean perfectionism that I wanted to talk to you about today?

Again, a little definition from one of the dictionaries that perfection is is the fact of liking to do things perfectly and not being satisfied with anything less. And that sounds quite positive, especially from the employer perspective. I have someone who likes things being done perfectly and it's not satisfying for anything less.

That sounds fantastic. I want someone like that in my company because I want them to strive for that perfection. And what we often do when we are asked in our job interviews, what is your biggest weakness?

We said, say, I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. So we kind of know that it's not great to be perfectionist because, well, they ask us about our weakness, but that's, to be fair, sounds a bit like a bragging in disguise. So, yeah, yeah, I know it's my weakness, but I strive for perfect.

I'm a perfectionist, you know, so I like everything without flaws. And if you really think deeply about the perfectionist, if you really consider all the aspects of her perfectionism, then you come to a conclusion that actually, I would really not say that to my future employer because no one would really want someone like that in their company. So, to find out why we need to reveal the truth about the perfectionist, we need to understand what it truly means, because that word is absolutely overused.

There are two phases of perfectionism, one a bright one and one a little bit darker. Let's start with that bright one. So the adaptive perfectionism, in other words, a healthy perfectionism, that type of perfectionism strives for excellence.

It is deriving satisfaction from achievements made from intense effort but tolerating the imperfections without resorting to the harsh self-criticism. In simple words, adaptive perfectionism strives for excellence. We want things to be done amazingly, but we accept that we are just humans, and some things are not possible.

And we don't resolve to self-criticism because we accept that we might have little failures on our on our way. And then on the other hand, a maladaptive perfectionism, it is a little bit like that road, road to nowhere, or road to disaster. And let's find out what that maladaptive perfectionism is.

In other words, neurotic perfectionism, it is characterised by the setting of inflexible, unattainably high standards, the inability to take pleasure in one's performance, and uncertainty or anxiety about one's capabilities. And again, in simple words, it's striving for something that's impossible to achieve. And not taking any pleasure throughout the process itself and also being very unsure about our capabilities.

So loads of doubts, lots of anxiety, loads of suffering really. The maladaptive perfectionism has plenty of results, repercussions, and they can be both individual and social. Let's look at the individual ones.

So obviously it takes a lot of self-criticism, and that leads to self-doubt. If you see that you are failing and you think I'm not supposed to be failing, you start doubting yourself. That leads to low self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy means That basically I am confident that I will handle the situation. So low self-efficacy, I doubt my ability to handle the situation and that as a result, leads to low self-confidence. Further, inability to delegate, if I think that something has to be done perfectly, well, it must be me.

I am the only person who can do that that certain way, so I won't delegate because I don't trust others. Another issue is controlling issue. So again, even if I give someone a task, I will be micromanaging them.

I will be making sure that they are doing that exactly the same way I would do that. And that is obviously exhausting. So it leads to mental exhaustion.

It's just overload of pressure, stress, it's just too much, and that takes us to anxiety, especially social comparison, because if I'm a perfectionist, I think that everyone else is capable of reaching that perfection that and I'm not doing this, so what's wrong with me? I'm worse than others, so I compare myself. And that can lead to depression, eating disorders, if that is a perfectionism around your body image and other mental health problems.

And social repercussions of maladaptive perfectionism pushing away people willing to help and making them feel redundant. There are people out there who could help us, but we doubt that they could do that the exact way we want them to do something, so we push them away. They feel unnecessary.

Also, we might make others feel inadequate. So yeah, I don't think they are good enough to fulfil the task, even though we don't mean it. This is how they see it.

In a worst case, we could be patronising, especially if that is mixed with a bit of arrogance, some environments, they kind of support that type of mindset. We could criticise others in the worst case scenario, it could end up as belittling or even bullying. And my bully, a person who was my bully in my life, she was, or still is, a bully.

And she is the horrible, horrible perfectionist because of all those reasons that we can see the individual and social ones. And also that can lead to losing others' respect and friendship. Loneliness and increased sense of self inadequacy because, well, if people leave me alone, if people don't want to be next to me, then again, there must be something wrong with me.

I criticise myself more and I feel even less confident in myself. That sounds horrible OK, so perfection is is an adaptation to the feeling that I am inadequate. And that was said by Peter Cron, who calls himself the mind architect.

He's a very famous speaker at the moment. And another person who describes perfectionism is Kara Loewenthal. I love her podcast.

That is the name of the podcast, and she says that being a perfectionist is seeing everything that is wrong with your life and hating it. And that sounds horrible, even though we don't speak about perfectionism in such depth usually. So I probably all of you wonder, OK, what is the first step towards tackling that inner perfection?

We know how horrible it is. I need to know what to do with that perfectionist. Right, let's see what we can do.

So again, let's go back to the definition and what that actually tells us. There are two elements that are really, really important in that definition. That is the fact of liking to do, to do something and to do things perfectly.

Let's focus on that liking. Liking is a thought. It's a thought that I like things being done that way.

It's a thought that actually I imagine things being done in a perfect way. It's a thought. And a thought ignites a feeling, a feeling ignites action.

It's a cycle that I present in every presentation lecture that I have because that is actually a key to change any behaviour that you don't like about yourself or amplify the behaviour that you actually like. And the thought, I like that. It's a choice.

Which means good news guys, that you can change it. That is your choice, being a perfectionist. And the second element perfectly again.

Like, look at that definition, having anything, everything that is necessary, complete without faults or weaknesses. What are those faults really or weaknesses? Who defined them?

In some situations, something can be a weakness in my eyes, but it can be a strength in your eyes. That is completely, completely unclear. It's again like talking about something very theoretical without any details.

So, if we know that perfectly is actually very unclear. How do we define it really? And to show you one of the most important features of perfection, I would like to conduct a little experiment as a researcher again.

It's a voting time. I will show you a series of pictures and I would like you to say yes or no. Do you think that this thing, person, situation, somebody's work is perfect in your opinion?

And we're gonna start with this one. So this beautiful beach, the sounds of waves, perfect sand, and yeah, you just feel amazing. Tropical island, is this perfect.

I've got a pom And I'm really curious, how many of you really love the beach? Yeah, 71% of you guys think that this is perfect. I think so too, yeah, it looks amazing.

Especially in the sweat it raining like crazy in Cambridge now. OK, this cat. Is this cat perfect?

Fluffy black, is it bad luck, is it good luck? I'm really curious what you think about this cat. Is he perfect?

Yes or no? 0, 50/50. That's very interesting because actually this cat is a she, this is my cat, Muska.

Everyone meet Muska. I, I think she is perfect. She's cuddy, lovely, she doesn't destroy anything.

She's a little bit late, but she's absolutely perfect to me. And then this woman, her name is Devon Windsor, she's one of the Victoria's Secret models, perfect body, beautiful hair, beautiful face, just, yeah, like all those models. Do you think she is perfect?

No, wow, 81% of you said that, no, she is not perfect. Interesting because some maybe men especially would say, yeah, she is perfect. OK, and what if I told you that the same person, Devon Windsor, she actually has loads of acne.

This is the legitimate picture that she pointed, posted on Twitter, I believe, and those who voted that she's perfect, do you still think she's perfect? OK. So, yeah, 51%, yes, no.

So some of you actually changed their minds. Interesting. OK, what about this woman, Winnie Harlow?

She's also one of the models from for Victoria's Secret, perfect body, amazing hair. But she suffers from vitiligo, which means the lack of pigment in some parts of her body. Do you think she's perfect?

61% says yes. Interesting because more of you guys actually think that she is perfect, even though her skin is uneven and she suffers from a disease. OK.

What about this piece of meat? Sorry for the change of direction. It looks like perfect medium rare.

I like, well done, but some of you might like it this way or wrong, or some of you might be actually vegan, and it's like, meat. I don't want to look at that. How many of you think that this meat is just perfectly done?

That was somebody's work. It's difficult to make it that way. Again, 50/50, interesting, so we have some vegans in here, some people who don't like it raw at all.

Lovely. And let's get a bit more veterinary because we are still for my manners initiative and some of you are vets as well. This TPLO, this is the X-ray, just to give you a background, patient is doing perfectly well, walking very quickly after the procedure.

No pain, no lameness, doing fantastic. The wound healed perfectly well. Do you think this TPLO was done perfectly?

How many of you are in orthopaedics? OK. Interesting answer.

So 42% said yes. 58% said no. OK.

So for anyone who is a bit more into orthopaedics, you can see that, well, some of those screws could definitely be shorter. They are a bit longer and also that cut line where the bone was cut, it's not perpendicular to the bone, so these are just two of some things that make that X-ray not perfect. By the way, where's the marker?

Is there even a marker? Probably that's, it's not really technically that perfect. And another question, a bit more veterinary.

So these are beach space. The one on the left hand side has a bit of antiseptic cream over it, but it was intradermal sutures. The one on the right, intradermos with few staples.

Do you think that is a good job, that someone did it perfectly? And both dogs are doing great, recovered well as normal routine procedure. Do you think that it it is a perfect job?

OK, wow, 78% said no. OK, interesting. Well, on the left hand side, it is the sutures looks all right, they are the incisions OK.

Some would say, oh, it's so long, you can spray a dog with like 2 centimetre wounds. Some would say, ah, no, maybe not. And staples, I don't like staples.

Some people might like them. As you can see, we are, we don't agree. We have different opinions.

Fantastic. Through this little experiment, guys, I wanted to show you how incredibly subjective perfect actually is. It's not only that we didn't agree 100% on any of the pictures.

Some of you probably don't know much about orthopaedics, and that's fine. How can you assess that as perfect? You have limited knowledge, but still you can have your opinion.

You can say that it's perfect or not. Or some of you change your mind when you found out more details, so even one person could see something as perfect, but then when you get to know something a bit more, you say no, it's not. So the fact that it's incredibly subjective, it's really freeing because there's no universal perfect in anything.

So somebody's perfect depends on many, many things, on their aesthetic sense, on your personality traits. So if you go to the restaurant, you want to have your service being done quickly, promptly because you're that type of person. I want things right here right now, or you don't mind.

And you still would say that the service was perfect even though it was slow. Past experience. Maybe some of you have a really bad connotation with the, with the beach.

Some people hate beach because something horrible happened to them. Future expectations. Again, we all want something different.

We don't have the same expectations from one object from one situation. Social influence, obviously, if you are in a room filled with critics, it's very difficult not to be a critic as well. Your current mood.

You can be happy with something today, tomorrow, you won't like it, just depending on your mood, and many, many, many more. So going back to our picture, the key, the crew of that message is that to me, you are perfect. That were perfect, it doesn't have to be there.

He could be saying to me you are an angel, to me, you are amazing. To me, it's the most important. So what is your perfect?

All of you, the 94 people who are listening to to us. Now, what is your perfect? Who dictates your perfect, and how to find your authentic and adaptive, so the healthy, perfect.

Well, who dictated? It can be a lot of things that actually impact your perfect. One of them is fashion, and this is a quick history lessons starting 16th century.

These are the Rubens' shapes, so really curvaceous, full bodies, that painter, he believed that they were amazing, that they were perfect. Then fast forward 1960s, really tiny petite body that was perceived as sexy, beautiful, perfect. Then 2018, CrossFitt, whoever is into CrossFit like me in here, yes, this type of body muscles, very sporty, strong, strong is the new sexy.

This is what we perceive as perfect. And then 2021, we started. Looking at different shapes, different types of bodies, and again, we can say, yeah, this is perfect.

Why not? So fashion is very, very influential. It's not only in among models and clothes and in cosmetics and things like that.

It's also in the surgical techniques. Who will tell me that TTA is much better than TPO or MMP? All of those techniques, they can have complications.

It really depends on your skills, or sometimes what you learned first. It's just what you think it's what you prefer, what is more common in your area. So it's not only fashion, fashion fashion, but also medicine.

And obviously politics. I'm not going to dive deep into that, but we all know what this can mean. And education.

Was your class classroom like the one on the left hand side? Was your teacher a lovely, motivating, inspiring person or a bully? And you have horrible, horrible memories from your school, or maybe it's like on the right hand side that you had a very limited resources.

So your education would shape who you are and what you perceived as done perfectly. Economics. So you could be a lucky girl in that bedroom on the left hand side that has everything that she needs, or your bedroom could be like the one on the right hand side.

If we don't have fulfilled very basic needs, our physical needs, then we perceive the world differently. Every, everything has an impact. And our upbringing, and that applies to boys as well, of course, that's if we were treated as we are trained to be perfect, polite, always with nose in the books, or maybe we're wild and playing in a, in a mud and being just happy and wild and free.

It doesn't mean you can't be happy with your nose in your books, but it just means that it's different, that your upbringing has a huge, huge impact on your life and your perception of perfect. And the last one peers, especially in a workplace. Particularly in the places that are veterinary hospitals that are literally like high school.

Gossip, people liking, not liking others. I often compare our workplaces to school because this is what it really is. Peers have a huge impact on us, and again, if you enter the room when people are criticising someone, it's incredibly difficult to not be like one of them.

So how you see perfect also depends on your peers. And many, many more. So depending on the case, there can be plenty of other reasons you can have a childhood trauma, a lot of other situations that will twist, distort your vision of perfect.

So who dictates your perfect? Yeah Who influenced your life? It's very important to realise that, and that is the very first step to figure out how to stop being a perfectionist, to know who built me, who shaped me.

And now another voting time, so we have another poll. The question is, should we listen to our dictators? Should we really, really take them into account or maybe we should ignore them?

What do you think? What is the best outcome, knowing who your dictators are? Should we just like close off, just, you know, distance ourselves from them, or should we listen to them?

How do you think? Very interesting, 50/50 basically. So some people think, yes, we should listen to them, some people think, no, we should leave them behind.

And well, the truth is that Yes, we should listen to them, but not blindly. What does it mean? How we are social creatures, and some of our reactions, things like shame, they are built within us into our genes for a reason.

We need to be able to live within the society, in a group. So when people influence us, when there are economic, social interactions, anything that shapes us, they are for a reason, and we need to fit into our world. So yes, we should listen to those who are around us because we want to live with them in the same world.

But we are too smart to take that on board blindly. We are too intelligent to just listen to them and believe anything. We can listen, assess, analyse, rethink, and we can decide ourselves.

We have that power. We are definitely intelligent enough to do that, and we should. And the second part of this pursuit of our healthy perfectionist is how to find out your authentic and adapted perfect.

The first step is to get to know yourself, and the second step is to get to know your circumstances. What do I mean by that? You need to know yourself deep enough to figure out what your values are, what is important to you, and also what gives you energy and what consumes it because it's also something that differentiates people.

For me, spending time with my family can be. Quite energy depleting, but for you it could be really energising. And what is really important to you is spending time with your partner or exercising.

Is it your priority? Is it really your value or not? So it's not selfish to sit and think about yourself.

It's actually life saving for you and for everyone around to know yourself. And the second, get to know your circumstances. What is within your power and what is out of your control, and that is the key to defeat that perfectionism.

So let's reflect for a second that there won't be any poll with this one, but I would like to give all of you maybe 1530 seconds to think about your biggest success. What was it? Can be personal, can be professional, could be giving birth to your child, be, you know, getting that job, completing your studies.

What is your biggest success? And I'm sure you have one, at least one. I hope that all of you have it.

And now, Was it absolutely perfect? Was it great enough to make you proud of yourself? Was do you think someone could have done that better so it could be more perfect, but it was great enough to still make me very happy and consider that my success.

Cause the thing is that's great enough. Can be enough. Great enough is great.

And it's still enough. So how about we swap the word perfect, that is unclear, subjective, doesn't make any sense, basically, with the words great enough. And to make it easier for all of you and what I teach my coaches when I really help them build build on is a little template that is called a great job template.

And then it's basically a checklist. So a set of questions that you can apply to any situation, your private life, your professional life. Let's say it's your case.

Let's say it's a patient with diabetes, and you are just starting to manage that case. You ask yourself, what is within my human power, realistically, what can I do in that case? I can read about it, I can ask my colleagues a second opinion, I can spend loads of time in CPD so I will prepare myself to, to do everything that I can for that case.

I can explain it to the owner, everything. I can do everything that a vet can do, but what is out of my control? Well, client compliance, the dog or cat, it could run away, never get that easily.

It could be a lot of things that are really, really outside of our control. And what is the expected outcome? This is where our perfectionist will be like, hello, this is me, it's gonna be perfect.

He's gonna manage that perfectly. But what is the most realistic outcome? Well, probably this patient wasn't managed properly for a very long time.

There are some side effects and secondary infections, things like that, that's maybe I won't make them perfect. So where can I get with my management? How far?

What is realistic? And the last and the most important question, how will I know that I did my possible best? And that is literally what I would check in the end of my work.

That is what I will judge myself based on. If I told myself I'm going to spend that much time reading about the case, this is what I'm gonna do, talk to the owner, check on them every week, this, this, this and that. Did I do that?

Because that was within my power. If I did all of this, great. That is a great job.

And it can be applied in, you know, any personal situation. Did they check on my, my parents? Did I take care of someone?

Was I a good mom? Was, was I a great mom? Did they do everything that was within my human power, realistically?

So rechanneling our energy into the the area of our control. So literally things that I can do myself. That is the key.

Because if you decide from the very beginning, some things are not in my control. I have nothing to do with them. Then you spare yourself a lot of headache, a lot of pressure, a lot of pain.

So what can I do? I'm going to put all my efforts into what I can actually do, still accepting that I'm a human being. I could have flaws.

And what if I made a mistake? Well, again, the template is really useful because I can think about all the steps. I can reconsider, did I, you know, make that list properly.

Maybe my expected outcome was still too high. Maybe it wasn't a mistake in the end. Maybe my expectation was a bit too high anyway.

So let's take a step back and it was a mistake. But if it truly was, learn from it. What and how differently will you do the next time?

Reflect and learn and grow. And that is called failing forward, and that is called growth mindset. Because when we fail, we get up and we learn and we grow.

And I love this picture because that is a beautiful, beautiful presentation of failing forward. This gentleman, his name is David Neville, and in 2008 Summer Olympics, he won bronze medal on a 400 metre run because he stumbled on a finishing line and he threw himself forward. And that's why he still got a medal.

So if you fail, throw yourself forward. And then you can still succeed. And the last advice that I have for you in tackling that inner perfectionism, perfectionist, even if it's still knocking on the door of your subconscious, your subconscious door and telling you, oh, I'm still here and you have to be perfect, find your role model of imperfection.

What does that mean? It means to find someone who you admire, who's still amazing, but they show their mistakes. They show that they are not perfect.

And one of the examples is this one. So, it's the website created by Julius Lipte. He's an amazing double boarded American and European Board of Veterinary Surgeons, really amazing person who presents his cases and he presents his complications, how he dealt with them, and if he failed, he will show that as well.

So, you can find your own person, your own role model of imperfection who will allow you to learn on their mistakes and feel human as well. And privately, there's a lot of people on Instagram and I love people who show their mistakes, their flaws that they get up and they continue, that they are not perfect. So, I know it's a lot of information, but here are some take home points that I really hope will help you with tackling that inner monster.

Perfectionism can be healthy or unhealthy. Adaptive perfectionism means thriving, striving for excellence, but accepting the limitations of human nature. Maladaptive perfectionism sets up unrealistic standards and it is accompanied by harsh self-criticism.

And it can lead to severely harmful personal and social consequences. Your perfectionism originates from certain thoughts, and it can be controlled. That is great news.

It is really, really changeable. Perfect is completely subjective as we could see through a little experiment, and there are many factors that influence your version of perfect, and some of them can be harmful if they are not well thought through. We have our brains, we are intelligent enough to take that into account and make our own decision.

And a few more to know what your very own perfect means, you need to get to know your values and your circumstances. Perfect can be replaced with great enough. That is, maybe the most important thing today in this lecture, that's great enough is great and it's enough, and it's much more authentic, healthy, and achievable.

Getting to know your circumstances means recognising what is within and outside of your control. We can re-channel our energy into our control zone, and that can be truly freeing. If you fail, fail forward, get up and grow, and find your role model of imperfection, because in the end, we are all humans, and there are no exceptions to that.

No one is perfect. But To me, you guys, you're all great enough. And that's the only last thing I wanted to show you and tell you today.

And thank you so much for being here with me. I don't know how long that took. Yeah, 45 minutes.

That's good. If you have any questions, then now will be time to answer the questions, and here are the contact details, my email address, my website, and you can follow me on Instagram where there are all updates, all the news, many tools, other things that you can find on there so you can follow uhettone Real on Instagram. And you can message me, you can send me an email if there's a question that you have, but it's a little bit intimate.

You don't want to ask that publicly. That is all fine as well. I'm here to help.

And if you would like to work with me individually or as a team, you would like me to help you change your work culture, I'm happy to help as well and contact me through email or website. So yeah, thank you so much. Wow, amazing.

I absolutely enjoyed that and thank you comments, coming up in the chat box, it seems like everybody's really enjoyed it. So thank you so much, Olivia. Oh thank you, absolutely fantastic.

So many takeaways and just presented beautifully, and I, I really like the engagement with the polls. It really made you sort of think. About yourself.

So guys, yeah, if, if you could pop any questions you have into the chat, not into, sorry, not into the Q&A box, at the bottom of the screens, that'd be great. I have plenty of questions myself, but there are some here. So, I'll, ask this first one here, from Hillary.

Thank you, Hillary. She's saying in management, giving positive feedback can be a problem if someone asks if the job is perfect or excellent. As if you say, you know, it's good enough.

It's not really often, accepted with joy. Oh yeah, that was good enough. It's not, you know, the connotation is different.

So do you have any suggestions for this? Do you mean when someone asks you and if the job was perfect for you and then expect the answer from you to to come under that. But he says, yeah, that was good enough, because from what our, from the session today, good enough, is, is actually great.

It's great enough. It's not perfect. That's absolutely fine.

But actually, sometimes when somebody tells you, right, a boss tells an employee, Oh yeah, that. Suddenly, I would probably be a bit like, oh, so was it actually what you expected or not? Or?

It all depends how you present it. So. I believe that explaining things and knowledge is a power.

So if you say that, well, yeah, nothing is obviously ever perfect, but to me what was important was this, this and that, and this job had that. So amazing. I'm really, really glad, that was perfectly enough for me, even though nothing is 100% perfect because we know that things like that don't exist, don't exist.

So if you present that in an open, honest way. And being detailed also really helps that this is what I liked. Make a list, and people will see that you are honest, that you really think that that job was absolutely great enough.

I wonder actually sort of a follow-up question you made me think of, you know, in our profession, of course, I'm a vet as well, so we sort of have this thinking of prevention is better than cure. So would it be useful in some way for let's say employees to go to the boss and say, what does perfect look like to you? So that you're kind of matching expectations and you might not achieve the perfect, but you kind of know what you're dealing with.

Is that something that's part of your advice when you're coaching teams or individuals or how does that factor in? So absolutely. I literally had that conversation yesterday with one of my coaches, she's a practise manager and she was like, OK, can I be a perfect manager?

I have to be a vet as well. I have to be this, this, this and that. I was like, it doesn't exist.

You cannot be everywhere in the same time. You can do anything, but you can't do everything at the same time, and it's like a very common saying. And that is very true.

So, knowledge again is a power and communication is key. So if you don't know what is expected of you, at work, ask. I'm doing this job and you like, listen, Betty, whoever your boss is, how do you expect me to do that?

I need to be clear on my role, so there's no additional pressure, there's no unknown, there's no doubt that I did everything I could. And if you have an agreement that this is what I expect from you, considering that you're human and you're OK. This is what I should be doing.

If you fail, you know you failed, but if you did everything that was expected, perfect. Clarity. We want communication.

So I was just going to use that word as well. Like I I I feel that you've given us so much depth into this space, but then you have to also, you're not only needing to be aware of that, but also know how to communicate it to within the team or to whoever you need to. That's the whole other lecture I'm happy to to tell you about.

All communication vet students are taking communication lectures for granted in vet schools. They just want to do all the surgery and the cool petty stuff, isn't it? And then it sort of, hits, real life and you're like, hmm, that would have been useful.

Couple more questions and we have plenty of time. So, From Suzanne asking, so you say that changing your thinking is a choice. How does authentic thinking factor into this?

So, what I mean by authentic thinking is a thinking that is not influenced by Others or maybe it's not dictated by others because like we establish the influence will be always there. But you choose to think for yourself, we take that into account. If I have an opinion.

Is it really true to myself, or I'm, I'm a people pleaser. So I choose to like something to do something because I think this is expected of me, or, you know, in people pleasing, it's all about how confident you are within yourself. We tend to people please when we crave attention, when we crave acceptance.

So if we decide that I'm happy with who I am, I accept myself as I am and I don't need anybody's approval. To say that I'm worthy, then that becomes authentic and what do I actually like? And it could be exactly the same what people try to impose on you, but it's still your decision.

So you can decide and change. You just need to reflect on it. Sorry, I don't know if I've made a mistake saying I meant the question meant autistic, not authentic.

I don't know if I pronounced it wrong, reading it wrong, or whether it was misunderstood. So the question was what about sort of autistic people? How can they, they obviously have a different perception when it's, you know, when it's to do with.

That is a much more complex issue because autism has so many elements that is a work within itself, that it's great to have a counsellor or a therapist who will help that person to open up. There's a lot of other things, not only, it's not just a choice of perfectionism or the way of thinking in terms of perfectionism. Mm.

Those people we need to overcome many, many other hurdles. So once those are under control, then we can focus on perfectionism, so it's a bit too complex issue to discuss that now, but absolutely it can be approached, but with the help of a lot of other specialists. No, I, I, I found that question really interesting because it, it's not something that crossed my mind as I was listening to, but such a valid, valid question, but as you said, I think there are many more other factors playing, playing a role there.

Let's see, there's another one from somebody who posted anonymously. I was asking, how would you approach working with a team to improve work environment if you're not in a management position. So this, anonymous attendee, says they're a nurse and are really concerned about the state of the work culture at the moment, and how how it is affecting the mental health and relationships in the team.

So. Yeah, I love this question because if we might think that we are not leaders, we are our title, job title is not the head vet or practise manager, we are all leaders still. At home in a group of friends, and it's easily visible through a venting session.

So if you have a few people meeting in a staff room and it starts and we start venting, and it gives you a pleasure and a kind of relief for a second, but it doesn't bring any solutions, so people just tend to vent and if you are within that group, you can be a micro leader. You can say, OK guys. We've ended for 5 minutes.

What do we do about that? What can we do? What is within our power?

So you can always be a microlea for wherever you are setting the example. And also, well, we are a team. Talk to our leaders, talk to our practise managers, encourage them.

Listen, there is a way, there's a course, there's there's a coach, there's a group, there's something that we can give our team. Do you want to bring it on board? We build the team.

It's not that we perform for the team, we are the team, so we can encourage people to reach out for more resources. That's very nicely answer. And what, what what it made me think of is sometimes, perhaps what might be one of the issues that there's some sort of a a worry of saying what you think, right?

So would, would you suggest that that can sort of overcome by asking questions, so you're not necessarily imposing your opinion or you know, this is making me feel this way, but just kind of ask questions to the team or to your boss. I don't know if that's sort of an approach. I've heard that sort of approach somewhere else, but I don't know whether that would work with the situation.

It's all about psychological safety within the team, and psychological safety starts with the leader and there's no doubt about that. So if the leader shows to the team that I am open to your opinion, I am open to your beliefs, and you won't be criticised for them. I will take them into consideration.

You can come to me with whatever bothers you. Then that sets the tone from the beginning. And that kind of spreads all over.

It's all about also compassion, and I'm really passionate about the creating culture of compassion when it's not only from top down, it's everyone around. So if we let know our colleagues. That we are open enough to like adults listen to one another without jumping into criticism and conclusion, then those opinions will come to the surface, and opinions are important because they change the situation, and everyone deserves to be heard.

So psychological safety is the key, and that's my life mission to introduce psychological safety to the teams. Perfect. And as you say, you know, we all have opinions.

It's not like we are robots. So that's the beauty of this world. So, let's take full advantage of that, huh?

Absolutely. There is one other question. I'm not quite sure I understand what SOP means in this context, but I'll read out the question.

The question is, is there a difference between controlling issues and having SOP so that if many different people have to do the job, everyone can work together. Mhm. So if I understand you correctly, it's like SOP for, yeah, exactly.

So SOP, so they are a standard, right? So this is something that we know if someone performs and acts in that way, it's going to be safe, it's gonna work, it's gonna be successful. But things can be done differently and be successful as well.

So controlling issues means it has to be done that way. Like literally this is the only way. I want you to do like micromanagement.

So it's imposing your opinion on someone your way on someone. SOP, I would say they have more flexibility around, so. For example, my mom can be like that.

She will have things done at home exactly her own way, and I did it differently, but the outcome is the same. She will still not be that happy, really. So that, yeah, this is what I mean.

We need to allow flexibility around. We need to give people autonomy. We need to allow people that freedom of choice within safety, within the same good outcome.

Yeah, I think, I hope that answers that question. I answer that question. And, yeah, no, I think that made a lot of sense.

I was, I had, a number of different, bosses and one throughout my career was particularly, big on micromanagement. So there was no SOPs, but that was definitely a big micromanagement. And management is important.

It's good, but it needs to be performed appropriately. So I have an example of that. One of my coaches, brilliant, wonderful, really experienced vet.

She's been working for I think 20 years in profession, and she is mentoring young vets and she operates with them, so she assists with them and they ask her, OK, so how do you want me to do that? It's like, no, no, no, you do it your way, and if you're doing something wrong, I will, I'll tell you that it might be harmful. Let's not do that.

But you figure out your own way and take a little bit from different vets showing you the same thing. And that's the beauty of learning and taking examples, but creating your own way that can be as successful as theirs. That's amazing you said that because I, I have experienced exactly that when I was a student on rotations.

I went to one small animal practise and they asked me to do or it was a very hands-on practise and I did a a castrate, a dog castrate, and rather than them telling me, or this specific way telling me step by step what to do. I was like, Well, you know the theory. Go and do it.

Have the confidence. I will not say yes. I will only say no.

I will stop you if you're doing something wrong, but I will not encourage you with the yes, because you have to build your own. And I thought that was an amazing technique. Well, that was fantastic.

So, it's so funny you have a similar story. And, well, I think with that, we should wrap up, positive stories to end. So, Thank you very much, Olivia, for, today's session.

I really enjoyed it, and from all the amazing messages, please have a read through them. They're very uplifting. I think everybody's really enjoyed it.

For those of you who are still listening, the session was recorded and it will be available on the website shortly. If you have any more questions or we've not answered any, some of your questions here, then, you see on the slide where you can get in touch with Olivia directly. I would love to thank, the Mind Matters initiative again for sponsoring this and the webinar event for hosting it, and obviously for Olivia for being here.

And thank you very much. Thank you so much, everyone. My mother's webinar at NTU Sylvia.

It was, it was a pleasure as always. So thank you so much.