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    Perfectionist Professional Woman

    Perfectionism pretends to be noble. It pretends to help you improve and grow. But in reality, it creates crippling self-doubt and leaves you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stuck. Instead of helping you grow, perfectionism limits your potential and keeps you small. Perfectionism hits women especially hard. Throw a profession, some children, and religion into the mix and then it really kicks into high gear. The Perfectionist Professional Woman podcast is for high-achieving working women who want to feel more confidence and self-worth at work and at home. If you know you’re smart and skilled but secretly worry you’re not good enough, if you consistently tweak and re-tweak your work trying to make it “just right,” if you’re terrified of failing because you’re worried others will think you’re incompetent, this is the podcast for you. In each episode, Certified Life Coach Keri Martinez will teach you how you can reduce insecurity and overwhelm, decrease fear of failure, increase confidence and self-worth, and enjoy your life more. For even more tips and inspiration, follow Keri on Instagram or Facebook @kerimartinezcoaching or download a FREE list of 7 Lies of Perfectionism at https://training.kerimartinezcoaching.com/7-lies.

    en-us18 Episodes

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    Episodes (18)

    18. How to Improve Your Relationships, Part 2

    18. How to Improve Your Relationships, Part 2

    This episode is a follow-up to last week’s episode on improving your relationships.  Everyone struggles with relationships at times, be they romantic, familial, friendship, or work.  If you’re not happy with a relationship but you don’t want to leave it, what can you do?

    In this episode, you’ll learn about another relationship concept: manuals.  Listen in to learn what they are, how they can cause problems, and what you can do to prevent problems.

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/18


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    17. How to Improve Your Relationships

    17. How to Improve Your Relationships

    Everyone struggles with challenging relationships at times, be they romantic, familial, friendship, or work.  If you’re not happy with a relationship but you don’t want to leave it, what can you do?

    In this episode you’ll learn three concepts that can help you shift your perspective and improve any kind of relationship – even if the other person doesn’t change.  You’ll also hear an important additional suggestion and caveat about improving relationships.

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/17

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    16. Calm Confidence When Things Go Wrong

    16. Calm Confidence When Things Go Wrong

    When we face unexpected challenges, it’s normal for our brains to spin out in worry and fear about potential outcomes. This mental “spin cycle” not only hinders our ability to accurately assess the probability and severity of these outcomes but also impairs our prefrontal cortex’s problem-solving ability. If you’re faced with an unexpected problem and want to stop your brain’s spin cycle, what can you do?

    In this episode you’ll learn a powerful three-step strategy to halt the spin cycle.  Listen in to hear how this strategy can help you calm down, identify practical solutions, and feel more confident handling the problem.

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/16


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    15. Outsourcing Confidence

    15. Outsourcing Confidence

    Outsourcing confidence is something all perfectionist women do.  While there is probably a biological benefit to our brains doing it, it can be quite problematic.  If you notice you’re outsourcing your confidence, what can you do about it?

    In this episode you’ll learn why we outsource confidence and self-worth and why it’s more useful to source them internally.  Listen in to hear examples of how you might be outsourcing confidence and how you can transition to in-sourcing instead.


    Get full show notes and a transcript at
    https://kerimartinez.com/15

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    14. Truth, Facts, and Cognitive Flexibility

    14. Truth, Facts, and Cognitive Flexibility

    Cognitive flexibility has a big impact on your emotional health and wellness.  In a nutshell, cognitive flexibility is the ability to appropriately switch your thinking and your actions.  It may not sound exciting or glamorous, but it directly impacts your creativity, resilience, and quality of life.  The more cognitively flexible you are, the better able you are to respond to changes in your environment.  So if you want to be more cognitively flexible, what can you do?

    In this episode you’ll learn how using The Model can help you decrease cognitive rigidity and increase cognitive flexibility.  Listen in to hear ideas, examples, and questions that will help you stretch your thinking and challenge unhelpful beliefs.


    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/14


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    13. My Favorite Problem-Solving Tool

    13. My Favorite Problem-Solving Tool

    According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), nearly 58 million U.S. adults live with mental illness like anxiety and depression.  In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m dedicating this episode of the podcast to a coaching tool known as The Model.  This tool helped me improve my mental health and learn to better manage my brain.  Can it do the same for you?

    Listen in to learn the relationship between your thoughts and your results and how The Model can help with any problem or goal.


    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/13

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    12. Confidence Blockers

    12. Confidence Blockers

    Women face a host of physiological, neurological, cultural and other factors that inhibit their confidence.  Beyond the strategies discussed in last week’s episode, what can women do to overcome specific confidence blockers?

    Listen in to learn why confidence is especially challenging for perfectionist women, six confidence blockers all women should watch out for, and practical strategies to combat each one.


    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/12

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    11. Improving Your Confidence

    11. Improving Your Confidence

    Confidence is foundational to accomplishing goals and dreams in life, but it doesn’t come easily to most women. This is due to a variety of reasons – some biological, some environmental, and some cultural.  So, if you’re a woman who wants to improve her confidence, what can you do?

    In this episode you’ll learn the challenges women face in developing and maintaining confidence, why confidence comes more easily to men than to women,  and six things anyone can do to improve their confidence.


    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/11

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    10. Dealing with Difficult Coworkers

    10. Dealing with Difficult Coworkers

    Most people struggle with difficult coworkers at some point in their career.  Conflict and tension are natural components of all human relationships.  What can you do when the conflict or tension undermines your ability to do your job or negatively impacts your mental state?  How can you handle a difficult coworker in a way that decreases stress and frustration?

    In this episode you’ll learn a variety of ideas and strategies to help you handle difficult coworkers.  Listen in to hear mindset ideas that can help you reframe your thinking about your coworkers and a five-step process that can help you resolve a conflict.  


    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/10

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    9. Choose Your Hard

    9. Choose Your Hard

    Everyone experiences hard things in life.  Sometimes we choose the challenges (like when we go after a goal or try to learn something new) and sometimes we don’t (like when we experience natural disasters, job loss, or the death of a loved one).  Whether they’re of our choosing or not, what can we do to better handle them?

    In this episode you’ll learn a strategy I call “choosing your hard” that you can use to better handle difficulties in life.  This strategy can help you reframe how you think about challenges so they’re easier to handle and you’re better able to persevere through them.  Listen in to hear how to apply the strategy and how it can help increase your capacity to make decisions, get things done, accomplish goals, and get through difficult situations.

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/9


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    8. Collecting Evidence for What You Want

    8. Collecting Evidence for What You Want

    Every day our amazing brains automatically and subconsciously collect evidence from the world around us.  They collect evidence of what is and isn’t safe, what works and what doesn’t, and what’s important and what’s not – all to help us survive and navigate the world.

    Our brains are better and faster at collecting negative evidence than positive, though, and the over-collection of negative evidence often causes us to believe things that aren’t useful.  What, if anything, can we do to change that?

    In this episode you'll learn one of my favorite self-coaching tools you can use to override your brain’s default evidence collection process.  This tool is incredibly powerful, universally applicable, and simple to use.  Listen in to learn the four-step process that can help you improve any area of your life.

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/8.

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    7. When Progress Is Slow

    7. When Progress Is Slow

    We always think we want quick progress and that slow progress is bad, but what if that’s not true?  What if slow progress is okay or even useful?  In this episode we’ll explore why slow progress isn’t a problem, and I’ll share six tips to help you handle slow or even no progress.

    If you’re working on a goal, trying to change or build a habit, or going through a challenging situation and things aren’t progressing as quickly as you’d like, this episode is for you.  Listen in for a different way to think about slow progress that will leave you feeling empowered and motivated to keep going.

    In this episode you'll learn:

    • How to handle slow progress in goals and challenging situations
    • Six tips to help you feel empowered and motivated when progress is slow
    • How no progress can still be progress
    • Why you don’t need to be further ahead than you are
    • The difference between “the gap” and “the gain” and why you want to focus more on “the gain”
    • One of my favorite self-coaching tools that can be used to improve any area of your life

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/7.

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    6. Seeing Each Other as God Does

    6. Seeing Each Other as God Does

    Seeing others as God does can be challenging. Our brains are hardwired to make snap judgements of others based on their outward appearance and behaviors.  How can we go beyond "looking on the outward appearance" and get closer to "looking on the heart" as God does (see 1 Samuel 16:7)?  

    Whether you’re Christian or not, this episode will help you be more open and accepting of others – even when you don’t agree with their political, religious, or other beliefs.  Finding common ground is easier than you might think, and you can do it without changing your own beliefs and standards.  The benefit in doing so is that YOU get to feel more peace and calm and help others to do the same.


    Note: this episode is a presentation I gave to my church's local women's group.  If you’d like to see a video of the presentation, you can watch it on my YouTube channel.

    In this episode you'll learn:

    • Why it’s normal, natural, and healthy for our brains to make snap judgments of others
    • Why it’s worth it to learn to override this default behavior
    • Two tools that have been highly effective for me in overriding this default behavior, including:
      • The concept that completely changed how I think about this
      • A powerful question that can immediately shift your perspective about someone else

    Get full show notes and a transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/6.

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    5. 3 Strategies to Accomplish Goals and Resolutions

    5. 3 Strategies to Accomplish Goals and Resolutions

    If you set New Year’s resolutions or goals in January, there’s a decent chance you’ve already slipped up or abandoned them completely.  But that doesn’t mean failure is inevitable.  In this episode, we’ll explore three common obstacles to achieving goals and resolutions and three simple strategies you can use to overcome them to make success inevitable.

    If goals and resolutions feel overwhelming or heavy or frustrating to you, if you don’t like setting goals and resolutions because you feel like what’s the point – you never accomplish them anyway – this episode is for you.  Listen in to learn a different way to think about goals and resolutions that will make it easier and more fun to achieve the results you want.

    Get full show notes and transcript at https://kerimartinez.com/5


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    4. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 3

    4. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 3

    This episode is part three of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism.

    Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?   

    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism creates crippling self-doubt and leaves them feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stuck.

    If that sounds like you, I invite you to question your beliefs around perfectionism and consider how they’re impacting your life.


    Get full show notes and the free PDF of the 7 Lies of Perfectionism at https://kerimartinez.com/4


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    3. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 2

    3. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 2

    This episode is part two of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism.

    Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?   

    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism creates crippling self-doubt and leaves them feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stuck.

    If that sounds like you, I invite you to question your beliefs around perfectionism and consider how they’re impacting your life.


    Get full show notes and the free PDF of the 7 Lies of Perfectionism at https://kerimartinez.com/3


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    2. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 1

    2. Lies of Perfectionism, Part 1

    This episode is part one of a three-part series on the Lies of Perfectionism.

    Do you identify as a perfectionist?  Do you think perfectionism helps you do better work and be a better person?   

    Perfectionism pretends to be noble.  It pretends to help you improve and grow.  But for a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism isn't helpful.  For a lot of high-achieving women, perfectionism creates crippling self-doubt and leaves them feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and stuck.

    If that sounds like you, I invite you to question your beliefs around perfectionism and consider how they’re impacting your life.


    Get full show notes and the free PDF of the 7 Lies of Perfectionism at https://kerimartinez.com/2


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    1. Question Your Brain's Authority

    1. Question Your Brain's Authority

    Have you ever found yourself thinking you’re not good enough, you don’t fit in, you’ll never be able to accomplish your goals, or that life shouldn’t be happening the way it is?  Most of us have limiting and painful thoughts like those that we automatically accept as true and feel powerless to change.

    But what if you didn’t have to accept them?  What if you could question your brain’s authority, challenge the thoughts, and choose to think something different?  

    In this episode, I share a 3-step process you can use to do just that.


    Get full show notes and more information at https://kerimartinez.com/1


    Grab the free worksheet for the 3-step process - https://bit.ly/3-steps-examine-thoughts

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