Perfectionism Could Be Your Worst Trait
Why we should all abolish it and focus on the process and effort instead.
I am in my early twenties. That’s usually the age when have your world upside down. There’s more chaos than there’s order. Achieving balance in life is as hard as it gets. However, the good news is that that’s the way it should feel.
It’s a period of a brutal, yet a beautiful transformation. As your age progresses (and hopefully your knowledge and intelligence), you start to get to know yourself better and the world around you takes a more familiar shape. That’s a slow and steady process, or if I may refer to it as an imperfect one.
Hold on, I’ll get to the point.
By definition, as seen on Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word perfection means “being entirely without fault or defect,” “satisfying all requirements,” and “corresponding to an ideal standard.” Let’s start with the following thought — Perfection is an impossible goal.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “master the craft,” hence meaning to reach the highest possible stage of a specific area, so you’d be at your best. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, estimates that to do that, you would need 10,000 hours of hard work. In some other places I’ve also heard the phrase “perfect your art,” which fundamentally means the same thing as the example above. However, I think the latter phrase might not reflect reality.
Yes, after 10,000 hours of grind you might just reach your highest potential, but that does not merely mean that you would be perfect at what you do. Perfection is a mirage.
According to the Harvard Business Review, today, young people (just like me), put excessive standards that they hold for themselves, or in other words, put the bar too high, which is usually combined with a self-punishment routine. This is argued to have an ill effect on the individual’s mental health.
By holding such ideas for oneself, the person engages in unrealistic forecasts of the future (or as Malcolm Gladwell would referred to as affective forecasting), irrational ideals, and unjustifiable criticism when it comes to academic & professional life, looks, and possessions.
Young people are seemingly internalizing a pre-eminent contemporary myth that things, including themselves, should be perfect.
Let’s start with a basic, yet a fully illustrative example. A circular shape. I’ve heard people say “a perfect circle.” Well, it’s either a circle or it isn’t…right? If an object does not have a circular shape, then it’s not a circle at all. There’s no “perfect circle.” I’ll try to relate that to real life:
Take writing, for example. Usually, the people who write (including me), always want to craft the “perfect” piece, be that article, book, or the like. We would loved it if people admired every single sentence we wrote down and every single word choice we made. That would be the perfect scenario.
Alas, this can never happen. It’s either good, OK, or bad. It might be perfect in your eyes, in the sense that you’ve done everything you could, and you are not responsible for what happens afterwards. Acknowledging the fact that you’ve given your best shot, regardless of what comes out as a final product, is a true revelation.
When you realize that nothing you do has to be perfect, then you somehow become softer towards yourself when it comes to self-criticism and self-judgment. This can be explained with the cognitive-based approach. There’s something called the confidence cycle. Here’s how it works:
It illustrates the cruel circle of self-critical thinking, decreased self-confidence, and the resulting negative behavior. It all starts with a self-critical thought, like: “I can’t do that. I will fail again, because last time I wasn’t perfect.” Then, what follows is that your self-confidence drops, because of the negative thought towards yourself. That, on the other hand, triggers negative behavior, be that avoidance, procrastination, inactiveness, and so on.
I’ve experienced this numerous times. It all comes full circle, which repeats itself until you do something about it.
Perfectionism comes in many forms. It’s not just that report for your job, it’s not just that yoga shape, it’s how you cope with life. When I think about this, I always try to look at the big picture.
The perfectionist dreads mistakes. Loathes them. If you were one of them, you’d think that every failure is an indicator of how wrong you are, and of how far you are from your “perfect” life. Actually, it’s quite the opposite.
It took me years to even start to think about all this. To acknowledge stuff. To observe my behavior. I’ve reached the conclusion (which has a room for growth) that it’s important to pat yourself on the back for the hard work you’ve put in the process. That’s the only way you would later on appreciate your final product. Otherwise, you risk punishing yourself for nothing if you happen to fail, which usually happens very often during your twenties. :)
Thank you for reading.
If you’re further interested in mental health & psychedelics, you can follow me on medium:
Also, if you’re interested in the topics mentioned above, you can check two of my previous articles on LSD-assisted therapy and whether being high makes you more creative and productive:
