Perfectionism is a Disease
What is Perfectionism?
People with perfectionism hold themselves to impossibly high standards. They think what they do is never good enough. Some people mistakenly believe that perfectionism is a healthy motivator, but that’s not the case. Perfectionism can make you feel unhappy, it can lead to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm. Eventually, it can also lead you to stop trying to succeed. Perfectionism can affect young people as well as adults. Children and teenagers are often driven to be overachievers and this can lead to a fascination and infatuation with success. Conclusively, it can interfere with the ability to achieve it.
But what causes perfectionism?
Perfectionism’s cause isn’t always clear. It’s often a learned behavior. People with perfectionism believe that they’re valuable only because of what they achieve or what they do for other people.
Frequent fear of disapproval from others or feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.
Mental health issues like anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While a correlation between OCD and perfectionism has been found to exist, not all people with perfectionism have OCD, and not all people with OCD are perfectionists.
People with a history of high achievement sometimes feel overwhelming pressure to live up to their previous achievements. This often leads them to engage in perfectionist behavior. Children who are frequently praised for their accomplishments may feel pressure to keep achieving as they age, which can also cause perfectionist tendencies.
The perfectionist mindset is a mindset where a person spends way too much time researching, improving, and polishing on one project, which takes the crucial time away from the other valuable projects. The time which is being wasted in perfecting one project is better used in preparing other valuable work which is equally important.
Perfectionism is a disease that not only causes procrastination but also puts you under great stress and restrains your health. It makes you less efficient and effective but there are some other symptoms of perfectionism and if you are a perfectionist then you must be experiencing these symptoms:
- Struggle to relax and share your thoughts and feelings.
- Become very controlling in your personal and professional relationships.
- Become obsessed with rules, lists, and work, or alternately, become immensely dispassionate and unresponsive.
- Sense of failing at everything you try.
- Procrastinate regularly — you might resist starting a task because you’re afraid that you’ll be unable to complete it perfectly.
If you can recognize anyone these symptoms in your life then it’s time to let of perfectionism because it’s liberating when you finally let go of “perfect” in everything you do. However you look at it, it’s worth letting go of perfectionism. Being a perfectionist is a downward spiral and not a sustainable way to live your life.
How can you avoid perfectionism?
To lessen perfectionism, it may help to:
- Set realistic, attainable goals. Even when others have lower standards, those of us in perfection mode can have a hard time letting go of our own super high standards. We think we must go above and beyond what’s expected. To outperform. At the same time you adjust the standards for yourself, make sure you apply these differential standards to your surrounding as well. So don’t delegate and then transfer your perfectionism to others.
- Break up overwhelming tasks into small steps. Break the daunting tasks into small pieces and then solve those pieces one at a time. It is exactly like the puzzles we used to solve when we were younger, the task which is in front of you is nothing but a puzzle so break them into small steps.
- Focus on one activity or task at a time. When we try to multitask, our brain cannot comprehend and focus on any one of them. So doing one task at a time we will be more present in the process and will focus more on the task at hand.
- The first step to letting go of perfectionism is to acknowledge that you’re doing it in the first place. Acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, by seeing it as a behavior, you can change it. It’s easier to change a behavior than something that’s imprinted on your identity. As you acknowledge, think through what situations bring out your perfectionist behavior most strongly.
- Recognize that most mistakes present learning opportunities. Perfectionism is often a way to make sure you don’t fail. But a prevention mindset is hardly the best one for creativity and innovative thinking. Success doesn’t present opportunities all the time, it’s the failure that presents an opportunity at every step.
- To confront fears of failure by remaining realistic about possible outcomes. Perfectionism creates a picture that whatever we create is perfect and there can’t be any existence of failure in them and that thought is the fear of perfectionism. Imperfection is the enemy of perfection. The truth about life is that it’s imperfect and it means to stop chasing a perfect that doesn’t exist and live in the perfect that I already have. So confronting the fear of imperfection is the best place to start and setting realistic possible outcomes is embracing and accepting.
Conclusion
The irony about perfectionism is that none of us adopt it as a way to hurt our careers, yet if we don’t keep it in check, it ultimately will. So start to recognize it in your own behavior, and experiment to find the ways that work best for you to apply it only in those situations when it’s needed.
When you fail, don’t judge the process, and don’t judge yourself. Give yourself the latitude to recover and return to a flexible focus on what you want. The world isn’t with you or against you. You create your own reality in every moment.
