Do you feel that you expect a lot from yourself and always want to achieve the goals you have or say the right thing? This can be good. It can motivate you to perform and try your best. However, it can also be a sign of perfectionism. You may not even realize you are a perfectionist. Today, we will focus on perfectionism, it's definition, causes, what it does to us, and how to overcome it.
WHAT IS PERFECTIONISM?
Perfectionism can be confused with healthy high standards for yourself. It is a rigid belief on how you should act, perform and behave. Comparing perfectionism to healthy high standards is like comparing apples to oranges. Being a perfectionist is destructive because perfection is absolutely impossible. Healthy high standards allows for mistakes and failure. Perfectionism never does, even if you are the only one that perceives your words or actions as wrong. As a perfectionist, you have excessively irrational high standards that do not allow for mistakes and failure. You fixate on what others think of your performance, attitude, words, actions, and beliefs. You become detrimentally self critical of everything you do and say. Where you think being perfect will protect you and gain you love and acceptance, you will actually find that you are the only one that sees yourself as unlovable and unacceptable. You can alienate people with perfectionism, causing you to try harder at being perfect, but never succeeding. It is a vicious cycle.
CAUSES OF PERFECTIONISM
There are several causes of someone becoming a perfectionist. If you had abusive parents that pushed you to always be perfect, you will learn to be a perfectionist. Parents are responsible for nurturing your self worth (a future blog will focus on our self worth and how to improve our beliefs about ourselves) and teaching you have to handle mistakes and failures. However, when they expect nothing less that perfect and/or is accompanied by abusive language, your development is stunted and your self worth will tell you that you are never good enough.
Today's society can cause perfectionism, especially television, movies and social media. Models are thin and beautiful. People tend to portray themselves as very successful on social media. Television and movies show relationships as unrealistic and perfect. You sense of reality soon becomes one of expecting this from your life as the only way to be successful and worthwhile.
Relationships with controlling partners are another way you could become a perfectionist. In a controlling relationship, you are not allowed to have your own thoughts. You bend to the will of your partner, what they think of you and what they expect of you. Your partner will make you feel not good enough if you don't behave in the way they think is important and you will do anything to become accepted by them, even if they demand unrealistic behavior out of you. You will just try harder and harder to become something perfect to them to gain their approval.
Perfectionism can be self imposed and you won't accept anything less than perfect from yourself. This is also directly linked to your self worth. You will feel worthless with each mistake and failure, when in reality, you are worthwhile as a person simply because you are born. Self worth is not something you attain. It is something you are born with, but learn differently due to a host of experiences.
Believe it or not, too much praise from achievements as a child can cause perfectionism. This is especially true when you are made to feel bad about mistakes and failures. You will begin to think you are only acceptable when you succeed. You will think you have to perform to exceptional levels every time you do or say something.
WHAT DOES PERFECTION DO TO YOU?
Perfectionism causes low self esteem, depression and anxiety. It has also been linked to eating disorders and it feeds stress. You are never going to be perfect. It simply isn't possible. You are human like the rest of us. Life as a perfectionist is an endless judgement of your accomplishments, mistakes and failures. You feel like nothing you do is good enough. You will find a way to minimize your accomplishments and never be satisfied. You may feel good at first about something you did, but will eventually find something to find fault in.
Being a perfectionist will paralyze you at times because the task will seem so overwhelming since you expect yourself to complete it perfectly. You will put things off until the last minute. If you think you are procrastinating, it may be that you are exhibiting signs of perfectionism.
Perfectionism will cause you to lose friends. As a perfectionist, you have beliefs on how you should treat people. You have the tendency to try to always be there for them. You answer their phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. quickly. You put them before you regardless of your mental health. When you aren't treated the same way, the friendship will suffer. You will blame yourself for not being worthy of their time. Perfectionism will drain the relationship and cause a strain. Many times, you will eventually lose that friendship.
OVERCOMING PERFECTIONISM
Recognize yourself as a perfectionist. Do it without judgement. Instead, do it with self love. You are giving yourself a wonderful opportunity to improve your quality of life. Become realistic about your thoughts and goals. When you set a goal, try to look for where you may have trouble achieving it and plan for how you will handle the obstacle. If you look for the potential obstacles, you will have an easier time accepting mistakes and failures. If you feel paralyzed by the goal, recognize it as your perfectionism and adjust the goal to something simpler. Start by setting goals that are easily met. Build from there. And if you make a mistake or fail, remember you are imperfect and move on. Healthy high standards allow for mistakes and failure. A person with those kind of standards accepts mistakes and failure and learns from them so they can try again another time. A person with healthy high standards is flexible.
Accept accomplishments. Count it as a victory when you perform well and refuse to look for negatives. If you perform imperfectly, concentrate on where you did well. You will have to take your negative thoughts and work through them instead of believing you have just failed on a grand scale. Mistakes and failures can be a great teacher. To do this, look at what happened. Where could you have acted or approached it differently? Plan to include that the next time you take on a task like the one that you made a mistake or failed at. And, when you do that, celebrate another victory. You just beat perfectionism for once! Practice this and you will overcome perfectionism for the long haul. Some of the greatest achievers in history made many mistakes over and over. The difference between them and you is that they took those mistakes and failures and learned from them instead of beating themselves down over it.
Make it an effort to focus on the bigger picture. Don't get caught up in the small details. If you are critical of something you have said, look at what the overall thought was. Do not look at each word and analyze how it could have been said better. If it is a goal, categorize what are milestones towards the goal and what are small details that do not effect the desired end. This is where you will bog down and become paralyzed. So, focus on the bigger picture and the parts that are crucial to a goal's success.
Be kind to yourself. If someone you love comes to you and discusses their mistake or failure, do you think badly of them? Not likely. You probably are very supportive and think nothing more of what happened. Talk to yourself like you talk to other people. Be your own cheerleader!
To balanced and productive days my friends,
Laura
WHAT IS PERFECTIONISM?
Perfectionism can be confused with healthy high standards for yourself. It is a rigid belief on how you should act, perform and behave. Comparing perfectionism to healthy high standards is like comparing apples to oranges. Being a perfectionist is destructive because perfection is absolutely impossible. Healthy high standards allows for mistakes and failure. Perfectionism never does, even if you are the only one that perceives your words or actions as wrong. As a perfectionist, you have excessively irrational high standards that do not allow for mistakes and failure. You fixate on what others think of your performance, attitude, words, actions, and beliefs. You become detrimentally self critical of everything you do and say. Where you think being perfect will protect you and gain you love and acceptance, you will actually find that you are the only one that sees yourself as unlovable and unacceptable. You can alienate people with perfectionism, causing you to try harder at being perfect, but never succeeding. It is a vicious cycle.
CAUSES OF PERFECTIONISM
There are several causes of someone becoming a perfectionist. If you had abusive parents that pushed you to always be perfect, you will learn to be a perfectionist. Parents are responsible for nurturing your self worth (a future blog will focus on our self worth and how to improve our beliefs about ourselves) and teaching you have to handle mistakes and failures. However, when they expect nothing less that perfect and/or is accompanied by abusive language, your development is stunted and your self worth will tell you that you are never good enough.
Today's society can cause perfectionism, especially television, movies and social media. Models are thin and beautiful. People tend to portray themselves as very successful on social media. Television and movies show relationships as unrealistic and perfect. You sense of reality soon becomes one of expecting this from your life as the only way to be successful and worthwhile.
Relationships with controlling partners are another way you could become a perfectionist. In a controlling relationship, you are not allowed to have your own thoughts. You bend to the will of your partner, what they think of you and what they expect of you. Your partner will make you feel not good enough if you don't behave in the way they think is important and you will do anything to become accepted by them, even if they demand unrealistic behavior out of you. You will just try harder and harder to become something perfect to them to gain their approval.
Perfectionism can be self imposed and you won't accept anything less than perfect from yourself. This is also directly linked to your self worth. You will feel worthless with each mistake and failure, when in reality, you are worthwhile as a person simply because you are born. Self worth is not something you attain. It is something you are born with, but learn differently due to a host of experiences.
Believe it or not, too much praise from achievements as a child can cause perfectionism. This is especially true when you are made to feel bad about mistakes and failures. You will begin to think you are only acceptable when you succeed. You will think you have to perform to exceptional levels every time you do or say something.
WHAT DOES PERFECTION DO TO YOU?
Perfectionism causes low self esteem, depression and anxiety. It has also been linked to eating disorders and it feeds stress. You are never going to be perfect. It simply isn't possible. You are human like the rest of us. Life as a perfectionist is an endless judgement of your accomplishments, mistakes and failures. You feel like nothing you do is good enough. You will find a way to minimize your accomplishments and never be satisfied. You may feel good at first about something you did, but will eventually find something to find fault in.
Being a perfectionist will paralyze you at times because the task will seem so overwhelming since you expect yourself to complete it perfectly. You will put things off until the last minute. If you think you are procrastinating, it may be that you are exhibiting signs of perfectionism.
Perfectionism will cause you to lose friends. As a perfectionist, you have beliefs on how you should treat people. You have the tendency to try to always be there for them. You answer their phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. quickly. You put them before you regardless of your mental health. When you aren't treated the same way, the friendship will suffer. You will blame yourself for not being worthy of their time. Perfectionism will drain the relationship and cause a strain. Many times, you will eventually lose that friendship.
OVERCOMING PERFECTIONISM
Recognize yourself as a perfectionist. Do it without judgement. Instead, do it with self love. You are giving yourself a wonderful opportunity to improve your quality of life. Become realistic about your thoughts and goals. When you set a goal, try to look for where you may have trouble achieving it and plan for how you will handle the obstacle. If you look for the potential obstacles, you will have an easier time accepting mistakes and failures. If you feel paralyzed by the goal, recognize it as your perfectionism and adjust the goal to something simpler. Start by setting goals that are easily met. Build from there. And if you make a mistake or fail, remember you are imperfect and move on. Healthy high standards allow for mistakes and failure. A person with those kind of standards accepts mistakes and failure and learns from them so they can try again another time. A person with healthy high standards is flexible.
Accept accomplishments. Count it as a victory when you perform well and refuse to look for negatives. If you perform imperfectly, concentrate on where you did well. You will have to take your negative thoughts and work through them instead of believing you have just failed on a grand scale. Mistakes and failures can be a great teacher. To do this, look at what happened. Where could you have acted or approached it differently? Plan to include that the next time you take on a task like the one that you made a mistake or failed at. And, when you do that, celebrate another victory. You just beat perfectionism for once! Practice this and you will overcome perfectionism for the long haul. Some of the greatest achievers in history made many mistakes over and over. The difference between them and you is that they took those mistakes and failures and learned from them instead of beating themselves down over it.
Make it an effort to focus on the bigger picture. Don't get caught up in the small details. If you are critical of something you have said, look at what the overall thought was. Do not look at each word and analyze how it could have been said better. If it is a goal, categorize what are milestones towards the goal and what are small details that do not effect the desired end. This is where you will bog down and become paralyzed. So, focus on the bigger picture and the parts that are crucial to a goal's success.
Be kind to yourself. If someone you love comes to you and discusses their mistake or failure, do you think badly of them? Not likely. You probably are very supportive and think nothing more of what happened. Talk to yourself like you talk to other people. Be your own cheerleader!
To balanced and productive days my friends,
Laura
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