Parting Ways with Perfectionism
Raise your hand if you’ve ever struggled with perfectionism. Though I can’t see you right now as you read this, I have a hunch most of you have your hands up, either literally or figuratively in your heart where no one else can see you and wonder if there are bigger problems than perfectionism at stake. Oh, I’ve got your number, I’m a recovering perfectionist.
Perfection is so elusive, yet so tempting, especially for all you creative, high-achievers out there. It’s a vain and futile attempt to attain the unattainable.
And guess what?
It’s impossible. Perfectionism is an overt, egoic striving to fill a covert, bleeding insecurity. If we’re really honest, perfection is just a scared man’s game.
I write these words with emboldened authority only because I’ve had a lifelong, enmeshed relationship with perfectionism. I don’t know the magic potion I sipped on so early in life to fuel the flame, but boy was it potent. I’ve been incredibly judgy and hard on myself from day one.
As a complex and sensitive kid (read: dramatic), being understood and well-received always took precedence. Acceptance, personal significance, and value were—and still are—my drug. I know, classic Enneagram four move.
The temptation is always: “I’m doing pretty good, but something’s missing.” This kind of thinking has kept me double bound in the fetal position of literal and figurative dark corners in life many times.
Anne Lamott is spot on:
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”
For creatives especially, this phenomenon is mass genocide. I believe this is because ideas and concepts are birthed in our thinking mind, which can be an absolutely lovely place to be. We have a brilliant idea for a lyric, a new workflow, a painting, a proposal, and we run with it, executing it immediately and seamlessly, right? Bam…so easy.
Wrong. My experience as a writer and working with other creatives is this: that brilliant little idea gets locked up in the thinking mind, stewing and marinating in all kinds of saucy possibility and grandeur, so much so that it never even sees the light of day.
Our minds are meant to be the sacred birthplace of ideas. Our minds were not meant to indefinitely house them, ultimately squeezing the life and breath out with quenching fumes of perfectionism. Social media doesn’t make this pursuit any easier as we get caught up in comparison games with people we don’t even know posting highlight reels from their otherwise normal life.
This can lead to such worthlessness and defeat, we either want to numb out somehow (drugs, booze, sex, shopping, busyness, work, what have you) or we abandon our creative calling all together. This is around the time therapy sounds like a promising option.
David Foster Wallace said it this way, “Perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.”
I suspect you want to do great things: to be seen, known, and truly loved. I do too. The only problem is, this requires tons of courage…and vulnerability. Perfectionism doesn’t leave much room for them.
What if we could aim for better instead of perfect? To slowly build on the baby steps of gradual improvement—choosing the next best thing? This type of growth mindset leaves room for the successes, the failures, and the stalls. Best of all, you hold the keys to your life, not some elusive, phony version of you.
This week, what would it look like to choose better over perfect?