ABOUT ME — Reflections by Mags

Hi there! I'm Maggie and welcome to my website.

I'm an introvert and for years I pretended that I was a social butterfly, just to fit in. This was both draining and dug me into a pit of fear, worry and feeling stuck. When I stopped pretending to be someone I was not, and started embracing a lifestyle and hobbies that energized me, I started feeling a lot better.

This is around the time when I discovered personal development. A way to continue growing beyond embracing my introverted self and venture into a realm of taking my "good" self to "great"! I love challenges and the opportunity to push myself and my capabilities. Personal development and mindset have allowed me to grow into a better version of me every single day.

PERFECTIONISM

At the end of 2019, I discovered that I was a perfectionist. It was a confusing discovery because I didn't think I was perfect- in fact, I think I'm far from it -and perfect was what I was striving and growing towards. Turns out, perfections aren't perfect people, but they are people who are scared that if they aren't perceived as perfect they will face judgment, criticism and feel shame.

This realization started my journey to overcome perfectionism and harness my perfectionist tendencies in a more positive light. I was done playing small and living a life that was so limited I couldn't possibly fail.

MY PERFECTIONIST TENDENCIES:

All or Nothing Thinking

I either do something perfectly (i.e. all ) or quit and pretend it was something I never strived for in the first place (nothing). My expectations for myself were also way outside what was realistic, which meant that it wasn't even possible to show up "perfectly" in the first place anyways.
Fear of Judgement

I've always been hypersensitive to judgement from others, I put on a brave face and take any criticism well on the surface, but I spend a lot of alone-time thinking about judgmental comments, worrying about being judged for who I am and what I create.
People Pleasing

People-pleasing was a strategy I developed to limit the amount of judgement I faced. Always making sure people think I'm nice, friendly, helpful and solving their problems for them. I always put others needs before my own and was available to them 24/7 and without any notice. This made me so resentful of the people I was stuck pleasing and made me question whether I loved myself as I was always putting others before myself.
Procrastination

Procrastination. Putting off getting started, doing other productive tasks instead (i.e. cleaning), waiting for the right time… these are all ways that I've used to procrastinate and put off starting the important tasks. There are the obvious times when watching TV was more pleasurable than studying, but procrastination can be sneaky and is something I've had to put a lot of mental energy into overcoming. Putting off the work to avoid getting told it's not perfect, and therefore I am not perfect was not serving me long term.

More Perfectionism Info

HOW I TACKLE PERFECTIONISM

SELF LOVE

I reached for personal development, and more specifically self-help books when I realized that I lacked self-love. I was always striving and achieving things to make me feel worthy, but none of it worked. Other people's insistence that I was good enough did not register with me and I needed to do a lot of work disconnecting my self-worth from my actions.

Over time I began doing the work required to put myself first in my life and my self-love grew. By embracing hobbies, living in integrity with my values and spending time building healthy habits, I learned that I am worthy of love, especially from myself. I didn't realize all this work was "working" until I was thrown into a volatile situation and realized that by default I was choosing to love myself, protect myself and not people please. By loving myself I've been able to navigate life with grace and really show up as my authentic self.

GROWTH MINDSET

Being a perfectionist, the fixed mindset comes quite easily to me. The idea that your talents and abilities are fixed helped me justify why I was so smart, I just naturally was. I think when a lot of our abilities are nurtured from a young age (i.e. intelligence in school, athletic ability in sports, creative ability from arts & crafts) we forget that we've spent time and energy learning these skills.

By getting in a growth mindset about my current abilities and potential future endeavours, I've been able to realize that I can likely learn to do anything. Being a beginner at something and not naturally talented at it doesn't mean anything negative about me. This was a bit confronting at first because I didn't love the idea that I wasn't "naturally smart", but when I realized that it meant that I could learn new skills and habits, and enjoy the process of acquiring the new skill, I realized how much my fixed mindset was holding me back.

LIFE COACHING

I'm passionate about sharing my journey with others in the hopes that it might inspire them to work on themselves and the mindsets that are holding them back. This is why I wanted to become a coach and why I spend so much time populating this blog with stories of my successes and more importantly struggles along the way.

I used to jump out of bed each morning, anxious to prove myself and start being productive ASAP. On other days I couldn’t get myself out of bed and felt paralyzed at the thought of having to be productive today. I had good intentions and started many habits, but quickly ditched them due to not having enough motivation. I people pleased so that I felt like I belonged and was appreciated, but ended up just being resentful. At the end of the day I felt so guilty for not accomplishing all my “to-dos” or following through on my good intentions. I would go to bed vowing to myself that tomorrow is going to be different because I am going to BE better, but then I woke up again anxious to prove myself.

I dove into the world of personal development and quickly found out that I lacked a lot of self-love and that I was a perfectionist. All these things I was doing to side-rail my dreams were just sneaky ways I was practicing perfectionism. I spent a lot of time and energy re-writing my perfectionist mindset so it wasn’t so debilitating.

Mindset changed so much for me. Now I have healthy habits, wake up ready to seize the day and go to sleep feeling fulfilled.

And.. it's now my mission to help as many people overcome their perfectionist mindset as I can. I help my clients ditch their perfectionist mindset, become more growth minded so they can achieve their goals with ease and truly learn to love themselves.

SCIENCE BASED MINDSET COACHING

Taking the "woo-woo" out of personal growth.

I'm a trained scientist and this means that I love to get elbow deep in the research. I teach tools that are proven to work. Mindset training can be a bit abstract, BUT with me it's not "woo-woo". With a masters in science I'm determined to find the research that supports true personal growth so we can become our best selves the well-proven way.

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