Women's Health Uninterrupted Season 3 Episode 3 Caitlin Cady: Can meditation cure perfectionism?

Perfectionism can be a bitch. We convince ourselves it’s what helps us succeed in life, but more often than not, it results in total burn out. An American Psychological Association study found that perfectionism is linked to anxiety, depression and other mental health problems.

Someone else who does – or correction: did – suffer from the same affliction is self-confessed recovering perfectionist-turned-meditation teacher Caitlin Cady, who admits her own obsession with overachieving was making her “more burned out than a roach in Snoop Dogg’s ashtray”.

Yeah, she might live in Byron Bay but she’s not your usual meditation teacher. For one, she loves hip hop as much as she does Tibetan singing bowls. She also owns a bar in Byron and a street mag, and has a new book out, Heavily Meditated: Your Down-to-Earth Guide To Learning Meditation and Getting High on Life (Hardie Grant, $29.99), where she proves “Meditation doesn’t have to be boring as shit or narrated by an annoying looooong draaaaawn ouuuuut meditation voice”. And she’s done all this while raising three kids under the age of six. “It’s a straight up circus at my house!” she tells us.

So how does she do it all without letting her perfectionist and overachieving sides take over? Well, you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out.

In this chat, Caitlin covers:

How living imperfectly leads to a much cooler life
Why “change happens when you get fed up with your own bullshit”
How she healed herself after suffering from eating disorders, depression and Lyme disease
A simple breathing meditation you can try
How to get into a flow state

Great sources she mentions in the chat: