How to let go of being “Perfect”

There is a common trait among many high-achievers: Perfectionism. Celebrated geniuses like Leonardo Da Vinci, Beethoven, Steve Jobs, and even Kanye West share an obsessive commitment toward excellence.

Perfectionism: The Good

The good aspects of being perfect are intrinsic motivation, extreme focus, ambitious goals, strong work ethic, and high personal standards. They are also highly coachable. Elite performers are often perfectionists as their activity requires error-free performance.

Perfectionism: The Bad

Self-criticism and a focus on eliminating errors impair one’s performance by disrupting the natural ability to demonstrate the learned skills.

This leads to a vicious circle where there is a loss of confidence and further critical analysis of one’s diminishing performance. The pursuit of excellence does have its pitfalls, and perfectionism does have the tendency to mutate into a constant striving for increasingly unrealistic goals, leading to frustration, anxiety, and a decrease in one’s productivity.

Perfectionism: The Ugly

The darker side of perfectionism is a form of psychopathology that has been linked to many psychological problems like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic anxiety, eating disorders, and even suicide. Other factors on the bad side of perfectionism are loneliness, depression, low self-esteem, and lack of life satisfaction.

The thing is, being a perfectionist can kill your career. And it’s easy to get sucked into the cult of the perfect. It’s a helpful trait when you’re just starting out. In fact, you get praised for it. It’s often called attention to detail, diligence, work ethic, or being highly organized. So you double down on it and pursue perfection even harder. But gradually, this becomes a bad thing. When people start referring to you as being a perfectionist, that’s when it becomes a show stopper.

Can you relate?

Trying to get everything “perfect” can mean you take longer to produce results. And I’m speaking from personal experience.

First of all, I would put off getting started because I didn’t feel I had enough time to do it properly. That’s called procrastinating. Once I got started, the perfectionist in me meant I spent way too much time researching, improving, and polishing. That took time away from other important projects as well as time to prepare how I would present my material powerfully in the meeting. Now that you know a bit about me, let us try to understand why you and I seem to crave perfectionism. We will also look at practical ways of letting it go and living a highly productive lifestyle.

“Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.” - ANNE WILSON SCHAEF

3 types of perfectionism

Self-oriented: when people are highly critical of themselves.

Other-oriented: when people are highly critical of others.

Socially prescribed: when people think others expect them to be perfect and then pressure themselves to be perfect in order to meet those expectations.

So where does perfectionism come from

One of the images that may come to mind when we discuss perfectionism is the overbearing parent who constantly criticizes and scolds their child for every little mistake. Love and nurturing are withheld and may be conditional upon the child’s “performance” of what he or she can do. It is a reasonable assumption that such a child may grow up to either rebel or become a perfectionist. Yet this is not the only scenario that may contribute to the trait of perfectionism. The following list includes other possible factors involved in creating the need for perfection.

Compensation for a perceived vulnerability or life challenge

Growing up with perhaps a life challenge can be a possible factor that causes one to become a perfectionist. Here is an example: Brad grew up in poverty, He was raised by a single mother. His dad abandoned him and his little brother at just 7 years. Eventually, Brad’s mum developed Schizophrenia. Being poor and having to take care of responsibilities at home as a teenager, eventually changed his outlook on life. He grew up thinking that in order to change his life situation someday, he would not only have to excel in school but that he had to be perfect ( be everything he was deprived of as a young man and more). On top of that many people looked down upon his mother and little brother because they were poor.

In this case, Brad felt it necessary to compensate for his life challenges by trying to stand out in his scholastic achievements. It may not be so uncommon for children who feel that they are in the minority to feel pressure to work that much harder than others and strive for perfection. In fact, this is very common. While being ambitious is great, where does the line cross on perfectionism?

Great responsibility at an early age

There are many children who are essentially mini-adults or caretakers at a very early age. Brad was such a child. He missed out on a lot in my childhood because he was responsible for his mother and keeping her as mentally well as possible.

Pride and personality

Some persons have personalities that are naturally susceptible to perfectionism. A Choleric /Melancholic personality can be susceptible to perfectionism. So it pays to understand our personalities and the pitfalls that might be associated with them

Maintaining an illusion of control

When we feel that our life is spiraling out of control, one way to deal with this overwhelming feeling is to seek control in other areas. Striving for perfection is one defense mechanism to deal with great uncertainty. If we can’t control the world and our circumstances, then we may seek to control ourselves. One way to do that is to be perfect. Perfectionism is a way to distract ourselves from the crises at hand.

“The maxim ‘Nothing but perfection’ may be spelled ‘Paralysis’ — WINSTON CHURCHILL

The need for approval, love, and acceptance

These are the basic emotional needs of every human being. But if you didn’t get these needs met in childhood or if you learned that love was conditional upon your performance or what you can do for others, then the idea of unconditional love may be an alien concept to you. Some people with a trait of perfectionism may feel that they need to jump through hoops to “earn” another’s love. In some cases, the perfectionist may unconsciously re-visit childhood trust issues by choosing friends and partners where praise, validation, and/or love are dependent upon pleasing the other person. Underneath a perfectionist’s exterior is a people pleaser. The result of people-pleasing leaves one emotionally exhausted, not to also talk of physical exhaustion.

How to let go of being “perfect”

Acknowledge

The first step to letting go of perfectionism is to acknowledge that you’re doing it in the first place. I didn’t say “admit you’re a perfectionist” because I hate labels. Labels are an invitation to buy into an idea about yourself that doesn’t serve you well and makes it harder to change. 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.

What does it feed?

Understanding why you challenge yourself with ultra-high standards is also helpful. Like any other habit, perfectionism must be serving some part of you, even if it doesn’t serve your higher self. Simply identifying the underlying beliefs that drive your perfectionist habit is a good step toward changing them.

Face the worst case

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. To get over this, I’ve found it useful to look at the worst-case scenario, and how (un)likely it is to occur. And to realize that there’s probably something you can do in that remote situation anyway.

Adjust your standards

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. Do you have any standards you think need adjusting?

Watch your self-talk

As you retrain yourself, one of the most powerful obstacles in your way will be your self-talk. When the voice in your head says things like, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” or “Don’t be lazy” or “Everything is riding on this”, it’s hard to stop yourself from going for perfect. What we say to ourselves we believe. So start noticing your self-talk and how it supports your perfectionist behavior. And when you catch yourself in that self-talk spiral, you can choose to replace it with something else.

And also look out for times when you apply positive self-talk to feed your perfectionist habit. For example, it could be when you keep cheerleading yourself (and your team) past the point of usefulness. In such moments step back and ask yourself whether that’s necessary for the task at hand before you dive in.

Give yourself a reason to move on

This one is about doing the very best you can do but within a specified time limit. That way, you won’t be able to keep re-working something until it’s “perfect”. Sometimes you just have to put a limit on how much you can work on something. If you have a tendency to strive for perfection in a task, then decide you’ll only spend 30 minutes (or whatever timeframe) on it. Set a timer and make it “pencils down” when it rings, just like those college entrance exams. Or, plan something really fun or that you have to go to when time is up.

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. That way, you can make the tendency toward perfect work for you, not against you.