Guys, I've never thought of myself as a perfectionist. I've never thought that things have to be perfect. But I'm thinking more and more that I am perfectionistic, at least in certain areas. For example, I write things, do school assignments, play pieces on the piano, do a project, or whatever, and if the job didn't meet my standard of "complete" or "good", then when people compliment me, I tend to shrug my shoulders and say, "it wasn't that good." I don't even give my good-but-not-perfect work the distinction of being good.
While this mindset of mine plagues most aspects of the work--school, hobbies, talents, etc.--that I do, the area where it is most annoying is evaluation of myself. Elements of my personality combine to annoy, pester, and even torture me a bit about the mistakes I have made. Why did I lose my temper like that? Why did I slack off like that? Why did I allow myself to be thoughtless that way? It would have been entirely possible not to... I can see clearly the things that should have been done differently and wonder why I didn't do it right the first time.
A couple weeks ago I had a realization in the midst of an emotional breakdown.
I have always been told that personal perfection is humanly impossible. Yet that's kind of what I had been expecting of myself, and I was frustrated that I wasn't living up to that. I was expecting perfection, or close to it, which obviously isn't possible. For whatever reason, human beings are not capable of sustaining a state of perfection for very long at all--we are simply not strong enough. But for whatever reason, I had been ignoring this. (Ignoring reality is another special talent of mine. *cough*)
Now that I realize I have this perfectionism problem, I realize how big of a problem it actually is, and I think I know what I will be geekily researching for fun this weekend.
How do I fix this, though? I have this unreasonable expectation of perfection, but I'm not going to be perfect tomorrow, nor the next day, nor within the next year, nor within the next lifetime. I was thinking about this in a rather depressed mood the other night when the voice of my fitness instructor, Kelly, came echoing back to me from that morning: "Like I always say. If you want to lose 20 lbs, you've got to start by losing one."
I guess in that way, perfection is like weight loss. You have to go just one step at a time, or otherwise you get overwhelmed and pass out. My personal perfection will be worked towards one step at a time, too. Which is a lovely concept that looks good on paper, but it means I scrutinize myself and decide what it is I want to change first. Which is not easy. It's painful, in fact. But it's worth it. And I've already begun.
Perfectionists or not, most of us realize there are things that need to be changed in our thoughts or behaviors. Let's have the courage not to ignore them and not to let them overwhelm us, but to overcome them--one step at a time.
While this mindset of mine plagues most aspects of the work--school, hobbies, talents, etc.--that I do, the area where it is most annoying is evaluation of myself. Elements of my personality combine to annoy, pester, and even torture me a bit about the mistakes I have made. Why did I lose my temper like that? Why did I slack off like that? Why did I allow myself to be thoughtless that way? It would have been entirely possible not to... I can see clearly the things that should have been done differently and wonder why I didn't do it right the first time.
A couple weeks ago I had a realization in the midst of an emotional breakdown.
I have always been told that personal perfection is humanly impossible. Yet that's kind of what I had been expecting of myself, and I was frustrated that I wasn't living up to that. I was expecting perfection, or close to it, which obviously isn't possible. For whatever reason, human beings are not capable of sustaining a state of perfection for very long at all--we are simply not strong enough. But for whatever reason, I had been ignoring this. (Ignoring reality is another special talent of mine. *cough*)
Now that I realize I have this perfectionism problem, I realize how big of a problem it actually is, and I think I know what I will be geekily researching for fun this weekend.
How do I fix this, though? I have this unreasonable expectation of perfection, but I'm not going to be perfect tomorrow, nor the next day, nor within the next year, nor within the next lifetime. I was thinking about this in a rather depressed mood the other night when the voice of my fitness instructor, Kelly, came echoing back to me from that morning: "Like I always say. If you want to lose 20 lbs, you've got to start by losing one."
I guess in that way, perfection is like weight loss. You have to go just one step at a time, or otherwise you get overwhelmed and pass out. My personal perfection will be worked towards one step at a time, too. Which is a lovely concept that looks good on paper, but it means I scrutinize myself and decide what it is I want to change first. Which is not easy. It's painful, in fact. But it's worth it. And I've already begun.
Perfectionists or not, most of us realize there are things that need to be changed in our thoughts or behaviors. Let's have the courage not to ignore them and not to let them overwhelm us, but to overcome them--one step at a time.
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