Overcoming Perfectionism & Relinquishing Control

"Perfectionism will kill curiosity. Control will kill curiosity. Comparison will keep you from being curious about the things God wants your curiosity spent on."

Jun 12, 2025

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Laura Padgett (73), a multi-published, multi-awarded author and dancer who knows a thing or two about struggling with perfectionism. Laura shares what she has learned about perfection, how to overcome it, and why it’s so important to relinquish control. She also offers words of wisdom on learning to love ourselves, walking in reliance on God, overcoming fear, and more. If you prefer listening, you can listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

What have you learned about God that you wish you’d known when you were younger?

He's just full of surprises. I mean, He has a pattern of sorts. But when I think I have the answer, He comes in with a completely different question. And that's where I think I've had to learn to yield to Him. And that's certainly true in the arts.

I've been a secular dancer. I've been a praise dancer for the Lord. I've been a teacher and I've been a competitor and a performer. And when you're on stage in a secular dance form – whether it's clogging, tap, Irish, jazz, ballet, whatever – it is about the dancer. It is about the skill. It is about the art.

When you are on the altar for the Lord, you drop perfection, you drop precision, and you drop the pursuit of self. Now it's worship, praise, prayer, and oftentimes lament.

Talk a little bit more about perfectionism and why it’s so detrimental to our walk with God.

The way I've come to see perfection is as a queen. She's a queen who has held up my three handmaidens: competition, comparison, and control. So if you envision a crown with three pillars to hold her up, that seems to me to be a pretty good visual of who Queen Perfection is. And once we begin to look at those three things and how destructive they can be outside a parameter of usefulness, it doesn't take long to knock the Queen off her throne.

But she will always try to get back up there. And she's brilliant. She's enticing. She's seductive. She's all these things that invite us into her court. And the court is maintained by those three things. So if we really feel like we have to compete with other women especially, we say, ‘I have to be better than you. I must always be better than you.’ If we compare ourselves, we're saying, ‘I want to be you.’ If we are trying to control everything around us, we are devaluing you.

Those are destructive to relationships, but look at what it says to God. It says to Him, when I look in the mirror, ‘You didn't do a great job here, God. You didn't do a good, nope, nope, nope, you didn't do a good job here. No, you didn't.’ What a disrespectful, ungrateful posture.

So the thing I want to do is start each day with gratitude for who I am, what I am, and the gifts I've been given. And then I am able to not compare myself to someone like you who's doing this lovely podcast and you're young. And I could just certainly do the old retro reach, which is another topic about reaching back for my 40s. But it's completely irresponsible when I'm trying to say I'm walking in the direction God's giving me. You can't walk with your head turned to the back.

So I could compare myself, I could compete with other women, but when I say I'm grateful for who and what I am as this little person here and what God's given me to do and the gifts He has given me, those two go away. Now the control issue…that is just so debilitating to other people and to ourselves because the fact is we don't have control. We put pressure on ourselves to have an outcome that nine times out of ten we cannot mediate.

But perfectionism will kill curiosity. Control will kill curiosity. Comparison will keep you from being curious about the things God wants your curiosity spent on.

What do you do when you find yourself wrestling with wanting to control things?

For me, it is an awareness. I’ll say, ‘I'm dancing with the third handmaiden.’ That immediately brings us into a self-inventory. An inventory is like if you go to your spice cupboard and you say, ‘Ok, I gotta look at what I got. I gotta look at what I need. I gotta look at what I don't use. I gotta look at what needs to go.’

That’s an inventory and that can be done on a spiritual and mental level. You can sit and go, ‘Ok, I really don’t need that.’ Now, let me also say it can be done with people. So I can say, I don't need to control that child's decision. I don't need to control my pastor's desire to go in that direction. I don't need that. So that can go out of the cupboard.

And then asking the question, ‘Why do I do that?’ Getting to the why of my behavior. Oftentimes, it has to do with something way back there [from the past].

There was a beautiful woman when I was young, last century, and her name was Ella Fitzgerald. And Ella Fitzgerald had a voice that was so beautiful that when she hit a certain note, she could crack crystal. So the advertisement was on television for a certain 8-track tape. It was a tape that they claimed was so precise that you would not be able to tell whether it was actually the person or it was a recording.

The way they did that is they had Miss Fitzgerald record a song in that pitch that broke glass. Then they would play it and their question was, is it real or is it Memorex? And that's what I do. Is this real? Is this today? Is this about now? Or is this about something else that needs to be brought up, relinquished, addressed, and then given up?

What’s the most important Lesson the Lord has taught you over the years?

Rely. Not to the point of complacency. Like when 2001 came and there were actually people who done packed up their bags and sat out on the porch waiting for Jesus to come. So it’s not reliance to the point of idiocy, like I'm just gonna sit here wait for God to cook dinner. But rely when things hurt, rely when things are strange, rely when things are uncertain. And go back to a verse that you memorize. Mine is Jeremiah 29:11: ‘I know the plans I have for you. They are plans to prosper not to harm.’ Rely. Rest in that promise.

It ain't easy. But you know what it does? It walks the Gospel. I can't remember who they credit with this, so I'm not going to credit this. But, “always preach the gospel and when necessary use words.” Reliance walks it. Kindness in the face of unkindness walks it.

Other wise words worth echoing:

- “Begin to ask God, what are my gifts? And then take a chance. Step out. And if you don't get the gold medal or you're not in the symphony, no one cares because loving yourself means acknowledging who you are. You're different from everyone else, as they are different from you. And you get to be loved in the manner of acceptance.”

- “Get a mentor. When it comes your time, be a mentor. Because this is how we continue to share that beautiful, sacred, feminine truth that we are all mothers to each other.”

- “Fear is an acronym for false evidence appearing real.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

P.S. Eternal Echoes is free today. But if you’d like to partner with me in passing on faith and wisdom to future generations, I’d be so grateful if you consider supporting my work. I thank you truly, kindly and sincerely.

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