Perfectionism is not your friend, cut it off!
Are you constantly battling with yourself to ALWAYS get things done perfectly?
Place severe pressure on yourself to be the best ALL the time?
Find it hard to forgive yourself when you make errors or when you aren’t able to be the best at a task?
Before we even dive into this, let me point out, I am an overachiever, I LOVE doing great, I LOVE being good at things and I’m unapologetic about that.
Once upon a time, I was a perfectionist too and I’m still slowly releasing tendencies stemming from this.
However, there needs to be a distinct separation between aiming for the highest and being ‘perfect’.
Do you know that very popular quote by Norman Vincent, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.’
In my perspective, that encapsulates the meaning of being an overachiever, but this is dependent on an individual’s perspective and the meaning you give to things.
Perfectionism doesn’t embrace this openness to falling short and welcoming the fact that you won’t ALWAYS be able to achieve the highest or the best. That’s the most detrimental aspect of perfectionism, as we are humans and we are not faultless.
We learn from experiences and we learn from errors.Therefore, this ceiling that comes with our everyday experiences, traps us into a room of constant performance, filling the room with doubts, insecurities, lack of motivation and self confidence issues when we aren’t able to initially break pass this ceiling of perfection that we have set for ourselves.
The focus on being ‘perfect’ often distracts us from the learning process and the lessons that are attached to different experiences.
No one wakes up and suddenly becomes ‘perfect’ at something. We often learn from observing others or learn from our own trials. To learn to be good, you must take the time to gather the essentials necessary for being good at whatever you are working on.
I remember the first day of my internship at Nationwide News Network like it was yesterday. I knew absolutely nothing about journalism, I never did it before, but here I am on the first day trying to be ‘perfect’ at my new duties.
In my head, the aim was to do great, be impressionable, be…’perfect’, basically. That’s not the word I would use to describe it at the time but based on the expectation I was placing on myself, that’s really what it was. What I did not realize and I soon would come to realize, is that I needed to LEARN how to be good at this, before I could even begin to leave any impression, or I would be leaving the wrong impression.
So, the same day after feeling almost defeated, I had to decide on how I was going to approach this internship, with a facade or an open mind. Two days later, I was writing and publishing news. I got assistance, I watched, I paid attention, I went home and researched a number of nights and almost every day I learnt something new, even after publishing articles.
If I had continued on that path of ‘perfection’, there would be less insights attained from this experience.
That’s what the obsession with perfectionism does, it distracts you from the values and insights that come from just learning. It also hinders our ability to learn from others, because often we think we have it all figured out or we know what’s best. But don’t be fooled, not all criticism is bad criticism and there is much to be gained from even the smallest interactions with others.
Be open to learning from EVERYONE, whether its valuable or new insights or observations of what not to do.
I often wonder what the obsession is with humans and appearing ‘perfect’ because we are already aware that we are full of faults, so why is it that we want to appear perfect to others?
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to this question and I don’t think there is one definite answer. My observation has pointed to the following reasons: it’s the fear of failure, the need to feed our insecurities that question our adequacy, wanting to please society’s expectations and possibly wanting to be valued based on our ranking of things we’ve accomplished.
My reason for yearning perfection in the past, was my fear of failure and oh did life have lessons for me.
Failure is a wide topic itself and I will save that for a future blog post.
I think it's important, if you struggle with this, to ask yourself why you want to be perfect. Our why’s are often what we need to hear to release circumscribing tendencies.
Find where it is stemming from, is it your parents? Family members? Society? Or you? Find the root cause of your obsession with being the absolute best at everything and never falling short, that will lead you to the avenue that will allow you to release this.
I think learning to love yourself with your imperfections while in the process of working on what needs to be improved, is such a pure love. It makes it incredibly easier to forgive yourself and to place less pressure on yourself, because at the end of it all you’ll still be able to face that reflection in the mirror and say, “This is me, I am working on me and I love me regardless.”
Perfectionism is stemming from being performative.
I saw a tweet once that said, “When I die, I don’t want to get an A+ for perfectionism and an F for how well I lived.”
It puts you in a trap and this mythical expectation of yourself that you will continuously try to fulfill as you exist. Release it, live, learn and grow without these shackles.
I will also be reminding myself of these words.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post, thanks for reading.
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