Impossible Standards, Feelings of Failure, and Unmet Goals – the Perils of Perfectionism.

 

It's Not Good Enough! 

I dreaded writing this blog. I dreaded it because it’s about being a perfectionist and I’m a perfectionist. 

In it, I provide some ideas to help you overcome perfectionist tendencies. These are the very steps I have taken in my journey.

As I sit here, I can’t help but wonder how life would be different if I was perfect. What if my career was perfect, what would that look like? What if my relationships are perfect? Why, oh why can’t things just be perfect.

I have struggled many years with being a perfectionist. A goal that I have yet to achieve. I have beat myself up, cried many nights with thoughts of failure. I distanced myself from those I cared the most about so that they wouldn’t see me as a failure. I felt worthless. I felt ashamed.

As a precrastinator, which you can read more about here, I would say “yes” to things to please others, I would say “yes” to make myself feel better by achieving more, I would say “yes” because I didn’t want to say “no” and be rejected by my friends and family. 

In the end, I was burnt out. I was exhausted. I became motionless. I became someone that I didn’t want to become. I became a motionless, exhausted, stressed-out overachiever who lost sight of what’s important to me. I became a failure. At least in my own eyes.

The truth is, I was an overachieving, precrastinating, perfectionist.

I was striving for acceptance amongst my peers and in the end, I was pushing others away from me and myself further and further down a deep hole.

Perfectionism at its basic is a tendency to set standards so high that they cannot be met. Even when you achieve those grades, even when you land that high ticketed client, even when you receive that cheque you’ve been waiting for, it isn’t enough. 

There is always the thought of “now what”.

Below are two steps I have personally used that I found were helpful.

Step 1: Recognize your perfectionism for what it is.

Although there is nothing wrong with having standards. But when they are so high that they can’t be achieved, they can get in the way of your enjoyment of life. Ask yourself the following, and if you answer yes to any of them, you might have perfectionist tendencies.

• Am I a precrastinator or procrastinator? (Check the links to find out!)
• Am I overly cautious and thorough in tasks?
• Can I start and stop a task? Or do I need to finish it in one sitting?
• Excessive reviews of presentations, emails, letters, etc.?
• Constantly trying to improve things by re-doing them?
• Problem with making simple decisions. (What show to watch, what vegetable to have with dinner, what font to use, what colour to use.)
• Making to-do lists, on top of to-do lists?
• Avoidance of trying new things in case you make a mistake.

Step 2: Redefine Your Standards

Yes, it sounds difficult. It will require some deep reflection, some analysis, and some acceptance. I promise you though that it will be worthwhile in the end. Here are a few ways to redefine it.

• Start with the end in mind. Ask yourself, what grade, what amount of $ in my bank account, what level of interaction with my friends/family can I be comfortable with. What will make me feel comfortable?
• Take your main areas in life like health, friendship, family, financials and write out what you want to achieve. For example, in health, I’ll be comfortable knowing I can jog for 10 minutes.
• Write action items for each of those areas. Again, taking the health example write out a goal with specifics
• In my journey to be able to jog for 10 minutes comfortably, I’m going to start by jogging around my yard for one minute. (Hell, it’s one minute more than you were doing). Once that becomes comfortable and you’re not struggling to breathe, increase it by 30 seconds and so on and so on.
• Reward the behaviour, not the outcome. All too often we reward ourselves when we reach our outcomes, outcomes that are difficult to achieve. Try rewarding your behaviour instead. For jogging for one minute, you might reward yourself by having a nice hot soak in your tub that evening.
• Thinking outside of the box. This is an overused phrase I know. But when you are struggling, visualize yourself looking upon your situation and ask yourself are these standards realistic? Is it logical? What is more logical? And finally,
• Ask yourself, “what does success mean to me” in the main areas above and write it out. For me, I know life coaching is successful when I uplift, empower and motivate women to start their dreams. It is evident when they start going after their dreams when I get feedback such as “guess, what I did today?” “I finally registered my company name” “I wrote a page for my book today.”

The above are merely only ideas to get you started. If you want to divulge into changing your life I welcome you to schedule a consult.

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