Letting Go of Perfectionism Got Alysa Liu a Gold Medal. You won’t believe what it can do for you!

The lie of perfectionism is that it will give us the things we so desperately want: aliveness, connection, and mastery. The reality of perfectionism is often the opposite: anxiety, self-criticism, and “choking” under pressure (Huang et al., 2015).

After the short program, Alysa Liu talked about dropping perfectionism. She’d just ranked third, and was completely unconcerned about where she’d end up (or if she’d get a medal at all) after the free skate. She said that, for her, it was a win just to be out on the ice, showing her art. She said something completely radical, “ Even if I mess up and fall, that’s really okay too.”

It was a stark contrast to the other athletes, who were laser focused on a perfect performance and getting a medal.

Of course, Alysa went on to win the gold, but somehow even a gold medal seemed to be secondary to the unbridled delight of her performance. It was a clear illustration of what can be possible when perfectionism isn’t part of the equation.

For Alysa, the skating was the win, there was no way to lose.

Her skating was magnificent. It was excellent, free, and fun. It was a joy to watch because it looked like it was so joyful for her to perform.

So how can you tap into a little bit of this for yourself? Is there a way that you could drop your perfectionism around fitness, nutrition, or other health behaviors? Is there a way you could both let yourself be more human and tap into a little more joy?

Fortunately, there is. The aliveness and connection and excellence you’re looking for requires dropping perfectionism on three levels:

• Perfectionism versus pursuit of excellence
• External versus internal motivation
• Rigid goal focus versus broader life values

Alysa Liu’s performance at the 2026 Olympics in Milano Cortina. Gif from Tenor.
I could watch this spin a million times =)

Perfectionism versus Pursuit of Excellence

You’re probably reading this post because you already know perfectionism has derailed your fitness or nutrition, multiple times. This is super common, and as we’re seeing, perfectionism plagues all of us from us regular folks all the way up to elite athletes.

If we look at Olympic figure skating, we see skaters who are the best in the world who are performing at the absolute edge of their ability. We see a lot of amazing performances and we also see a lot of mistakes. Every Olympics, we see mistakes from the absolute best people in the world. It’s human to make mistakes sometimes.

Alysa, on the other hand, wasn’t looking for perfection. She was looking for excellence. She wanted to perform her routine on the Olympic stage, even if that included mistakes. That kind of personal expression and process focus is associated with flow states in competition (Stavrou et al., 2015).

For most of us, it’s a lot lower stakes than that. Maybe we have a 60 minute workout planned, but our schedule got pushed back and now we only have 30 minutes to workout. Perfectionism would be skipping that workout. Pursuit of excellence would be doing a 30 minute workout to the best of your ability. This kind of excellence orientation is associated with more internal motivation, more effort, more positive emotions, and more physical activity (Lochbaum et al., 2019)

Excellence isn’t some kind of impossible mind-trick or magic hack to not care, it’s a simple choice to do what we can do, even imperfectly. We care about showing up and doing the thing intensely, it’s the outcome we loosen our grip on. That in-the-moment focus on the task at hand is where we find enjoyment or satisfaction in the doing of it.

External Motivation versus Internal Motivation

If you’ve ever driven your workouts or nutrition entirely for an external goal, you know that it’s exciting for a while… and then it becomes exhausting.

Alysa clearly was motivated by her own internal sense of what mattered. When everyone else was focused on the external reward of a medal, or the external validation of a perfect routine, Alysa was focused on how she wanted to express herself as a skater and the joy of the experience of skating.

There’s a continuum of motivation from external to internal. External motivation includes things like rewards or contingent self-esteem. Internal motivation is more like things you personally value or you just enjoy the experience of doing (De Francisco et al., 2020).

Because her motivation was internal, Alysa made different choices. She mandated that she would have final say on her routine and her music. She said she wouldn’t diet. She set boundaries around who could or couldn’t be involved in her training. She even made sure she could stop a practice session, when it was too much. Then, in competition, she focused on her self-expression instead being perfect for a medal.

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Making decisions from what mattered to her inside, was the key. That’s the key for you, also. People struggle with internal motivation because it feels like a magic trick. It’s not magic, it stars with making decisions from what matters to you inside.

We often end up with choices about being perfect (because it’s the shortest path to an external goal and looking good for others), versus doing a thing that really matters to us. Maybe you have a weight loss goal and your family is having pizza night. Diet perfectionism would tell you that the goal is everything, and to skip pizza night. Your values might tell to to have pizza with your family, but stop at a reasonable number of slices.

When you make those kinds of choices, not to be perfect, but to honor the things that deeply matter to you, it’s both satisfying and enlivening.

Rigid Goal Focus versus Broader Life Values

The fitness industry often makes it seem as if the only way to hit your goals is to wrap your whole life around your fitness. 12 week challenges, 75-hard, Carnivore… there are so many fitness trends that are all encompassing and promise the world. But if your fitness dominates your world, you’re opting for a much narrower life than you probably actually want.

Alysa made skating a part of her life, not her entire life. She’s able to zoom out and also prioritize her friends and enjoying her life. This kind of “harmonious passion” is associated with both mastery and well-being (Vallerand et al., 2008; Verner-Filion & Vallerand, 2018). It’s drastically different from the complete and total focus that elite figure skating has traditionally demanded.

Similarly, many of us have found perfectionism creeps in when we’re over identifying with a goal. We forget about all of the other things we do well, the other things that matter to us, and importantly, all of the other people who matter to us. Perfectionism narrows our experience of life.

In those moments where we notice perfectionism consuming our experience, we have do some perspective taking. We have to pause and do some mindful perspective taking — we deliberately zoom out. When we notice perfectionism narrowing our experience, we need to make choices that expand our life. It might be once in a while missing a workout to connect with a friend. It could be trying all of the amazing food on a night out with friends, instead of locking it down for some arbitrary diet rules or perfectionism.

It’s about making specific choices that honor all of the things that matter to you, including connection and experience. That’s how you make fitness and nutrition work in your life. That’s how you feel really good about the choices you’re making.

Now You Have a Three-part Framework for Beating Perfectionism

If you want to drop perfectionism for good, you just need to practice these three levels of perspective taking:

If you notice yourself getting caught up in trying to be perfect, see if you can take a step back, and let making mistakes be part of the process.

If you find yourself getting consumed by an external goal, see if you can step back, think about the kind of person you want to be, and then make choices based on that, instead.

Finally, if you notice your goals are isolating you or taking too much focus, see if you can pause, zoom out, and make some decisions that prioritize other people and things in your life.

Whether it’s elite ice skating or your own weekly workouts, the same three perspectives apply. You can absolutely break free of perfectionism and find completely new joy and satisfaction from your health and fitness routines.

— Josh

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