The Addiction To Being A Perfectionist

Maybe you know someone who is a perfectionist. Someone who is never happy with any outcome because it’s never perfect enough. Perhaps this person is you. The thing that perfectionists just don’t seem to understand is that looking at situations this way will always make the outcome “not good enough”.

Jose Ramos gives you a good explanation of this and ways to battle it.

“Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there’s no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.” Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.

 

1. Burden of Perfectionism

 

Perfectionism fuels procrastination, stress, fear, and crippling anxiety. It leads to feeling overwhelmed by the thought of starting a new project.

 

You feel compelled to find the perfect strategy before embarking on a project. You conduct endless research. You consume all the information you can get your hands on about the project. You splinter your attention and focus in a thousand directions instead of taking the first simple step. You leave no stone unturned before you start the project.

 

You strive to remove all uncertainty related to the outcome before you lift off. Risk and uncertainty can be reduced to increase the odds of success. However, most dreams in life carry a large dose of uncertainty that can’t be eliminated.

 

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Remaining in the perfectionist mindset will do nothing but bring you or others, a constant sense of never measuring up. This is no way to live. Why would anyone purposely set themselves up for failure? Perhaps it’s old training or queues they got from childhood. Whatever the reason, life can be much better when we learn more.

This mindset isn’t conducive to making meaningful progress. You learn exponentially more through experience than passively consuming information without applying it. Experience is a masterful teacher.

 

When you undertake an endeavor, you do not allow yourself to stop working until it’s perfect. You make changes until you feel the end product can’t be improved. You place a paralyzing burden of perfection on yourself.

 

You focus on the mountain ahead. You dread the substantial volume of work you will perform as you chisel away at the project until perfection. You worry, stress, and agonize over whether you’ll ever reach the distant summit of your dreams.

 

You feel relentless pressure as a result of not giving yourself permission to make mistakes. A perfectionist walks through life with 100 pound weights on each shoulder. You constantly carry the weight of perfectionism, from one project to the next.

 

A perfectionist doesn’t squeeze out the lessons contained in failures. Each failure is an opportunity to learn and improve if you have a growth mindset. If you ask productive questions after failures, you turn them into your greatest teachers. What would I do differently next time? Where did the project break down? What can I learn from this?

 

A perfectionist obsesses on the end result instead. You mentally beat yourself up over not producing the desired outcome. The perfectionist mindset prevents you from looking at the situation from the most advantageous angle.

 

Learn how to change things, Steven Aitchison