Josiane writes about having a major epiphany: “I know one of the reasons why I don’t get around to doing some of the things I want to do is that as long as they remain undone, they retain the potential of being perfect.”

This is a huge realization. HUGE.

For a very long time I was unaware, as many people are, of the direct link between perfectionism and procrastination. In fact, it seems contradictory. Someone who strives so hard to be absolutely faultless would be sure to include following schedules and meeting timelines in that, wouldn’t they?

But that ignores how deep the perceived need to be superhuman can go. And that need is based on fear, one of our most primal emotions. Which is linked to our basic biological drive for survival. So yeah, perfectionism carries some serious oomph.

To describe what can happen, I am hereby coining a word of my own.

Procrastifectionism (noun):  Delaying action out of the fear, either conscious or unconscious, of not performing to the unreasonably high standards one desires to meet.

It works like this.

You want or need to do something that feels high-stakes for you. (It doesn’t have to look high-stakes to anyone else—it only needs to feel that way to you.) It’s so important, it absolutely has to be good. And today you just don’t have it in you to give it the amount of time, energy, or concentration that it needs to be that good.

So you put it off until tomorrow. Or Monday. Or the first of the month. Because you’ll be ready then.

Except you’re not. You can’t be, because you’re still just as intimidated about how overwhelming the project seems and how perfectly you need to do it.

So you start feeling bad about your ability to get the job done. If you can’t even get started, how will it ever be good? Your self-esteem sinks, and you don’t feel ready to tackle the task. Again.

Rinse and repeat. It’s a vicious cycle.

Until you realize, like Josiane did, that

The form in which that imagined potential of perfection exists . . . it is not what I want. That potential perfection, even if it was actualised, is deeply flawed. It is flawed, and for a very simple reason: there is no “me” in that (potentially or actually) perfect thing – it is not in any way infused with my essence, my me-ness.

Hmm. Interesting. I kept reading. Then she pretty much blew me away with this bit:

Those things I don’t create . . . can’t be infused with my essence so long as they remain within me. As long as they’re only within me, I am not within them; they have to come out of me in order to take with them – and contain within them – some of what I am.

It reminds me of when we learned about the two types of energy way back in grade school—potential and kinetic. Kinetic energy is energy in motion—acting on the world and doing things. Potential energy contains power, but doesn’t unleash it. It just sits there, pregnant with possibilities, but giving birth to none of them.

Okay, so I’m anthropomorphizing basic physics. But you get the point.

As you go through the next few days or weeks, check in with yourself from time to time and ask yourself which type of energy you’re embodying. There’s no right or wrong—this is about just noticing, so you can make more self-aware choices.

And check out the rest of Josiane’s blog post. She’s one smart woman.

Yeah, me too.

This post was sparked by Jennifer Louden (whom I am not accusing of being saccharine, by the way—she’s the real deal) and her Declaration of Freedom from Self-Improvement which she posted today to kick off a week on this theme on her blog.

I signed the declaration by leaving a comment, but it made me think about how easy it is to fall into empty-words, positive-thinking rhetoric and say, “Yes! Non-judgmental self-acceptance, what a great idea! I stand behind it completely!” and then go about your life as usual, vs. really trying to practice it.

And the ironic thing here is that trying to practice it can turn into the very self-improvement self-tyranny you’re attempting to unlearn. (“Damn it! I’m failing at unconditionally accepting myself!”)

That’s a fine line to walk, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on what has helped me to walk it.

Today’s post is about one of the most important attitude adjustments you can make toward overcoming what I am hereby naming “Superhero Syndrome.” (Definitely more to come on that!) I will follow up soon in another post with a list of specific techniques I’ve used.

So . . . how can you move past feeling that the pep talks (from others and from yourself) about how “you’re perfectly fine as you are” are empty positive-thinking platitudes? How can you start believing them?

Realize that accepting yourself as you are now is NOT the same thing as becoming complacent and lazy.

If you already set high (maybe even unreasonably high) standards for yourself, you will not suddenly turn into a person who lets things slide, produces shoddy results, and stops working on yourself. It’s simply not in your nature. You will continue to do your best, but if you can uncouple those efforts from the belief that they define your worth as a human being, you’ll gradually be able to relax into an acceptance what you really are—an amazing work in progress.

This is not easy, but it’s well worth the effort. Personally, I get there by:

• Self-talk. I remind myself over and over again that the essence of me is more than the sum of my actions and how successful I think they are.
• Self-observation. When I act as if the above concept is true, I notice that I feel more peaceful and happy. The more I notice that I do not, in fact, become lazy and complacent when I let go of my attempt to be 100% perfect at everything, the more I build up evidence that I’m not going to turn into an unmotivated lump.

One important thing to keep in mind here is that if you’ve been riding yourself into the ground for a long time, once you begin to realize that you can stop trying so hard all the time you may find yourself sleeping a lot. Or vegging out and staring at walls or the television. Or reading novels. Or playing lots of computer games. Or whatever you do to relax and unplug.

This is fine. You are not becoming a lethargic slob. You are catching up on much-needed rest and rejuvenation, which you may have been denying yourself for years or even decades.

When I finally admitted that I needed to slow down and nurture myself, I slept for 10 hours or more per night for four straight months, with many daytime naps on weekends. And when I came out the other side, I had more energy and enthusiasm for life than I’d felt in many years. I was able to do more.

Go easy on yourself. Don’t be like the saying on one of my all-time favorite t-shirts.

And stay tuned. There’s more to come on this reeeeeeally important topic.

Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

—Ben Okri

Perfectionism is rooted in feelings of shame and inadequacy. We’re afraid that we are somehow not good enough, not worthy enough, to be loved and respected simply by being our natural selves. There are many reasons why this happens, but the upshot is that we feel the constant need to justify our own existence to ourselves and others. Whatever we have achieved thus far is never enough; we must prove ourselves over and over and over and over again.

Talk about a recipe for stress, depression, and burnout.

An article in Psychology Today entitled “Pitfalls of Perfectionism” (March 1, 2008) states:

But the biggest problem with perfection may be that it masks the real secret of success in life. Success hinges less on getting everything right than on how you handle getting things wrong.

What if we were taught that from early childhood? Wouldn’t it have been great if our school grades weren’t based on how well we scored on tests, but on how gamely we worked back through the problems again to figure out what we’d done wrong and how to do them correctly the next time? Or if our parents had asked us how we felt or what we’d learned when our softball team lost the game, rather than saying things like, “Too bad, better luck next time,” planting the unspoken and therefore insidious conclusion that losing was to be considered a 100% negative experience?

What if we were taught that it was (*gasp!*) perfectly okay to express our unhappy emotions, and that if we learned to do this appropriately most of the time, without attacking others in the process, no one would stop loving us?

The quotation continues:

This is where creativity, passion, and perseverance come into play. . . . you don’t make people powerful by pushing them to be perfect but by allowing them to become passionate about something that compels their interest.

When we are very young, everything is play. We don’t worry about failing because we’re so excited about the trying. We haven’t yet learned that we’re supposed to think of ourselves as being on trial before the world.

Think back to your childhood and the first time you rode a bike. Or jumped off the high dive. My guess is that the giddiness and excitement you felt outweighed any bumping-into-curbs or belly-flopping that you might have done. You didn’t do it perfectly, but you had a blast making the attempt. And because you had so much fun, you did it again, and again, until you improved. But the improving wasn’t the goal. The fun was.

So here is the reason why I’m saying that it’s vital to screw things up once in a while. You must learn that it is not the end of the world. That you can recover, and keep trying, and get better.

You must learn failure-resiliency. You need to know, deep in your bones, that you can always bounce back.

And maybe even have some fun in the process.

For any innate talent or learned skill, there can only be one best-in-the-world (or school, or company, or whatever) at a given time. And let’s face it—chances are pretty high you’re not it. That’s not a put-down; it’s simply me making a guess based on the odds without knowing exactly who is reading this.

But what if I’m wrong about you? What if you really are the best at Whatever-It-Is? Even then there’s no surety, because there’s always the chance—pretty much the certainty—that someone will improve on your best performance some day.

So if your sense of security comes from being king or queen of the hill, you’ll either be disappointed when you don’t get there, or when some newcomer knocks you off your throne.

If your sense of self-worth is synonymous with your performance, you will never, ever feel safe.

Now what happens if you allow yourself to be—and appear—fallible? A few pretty nifty things:

• The intense pressure is suddenly off. You can relax a little. Or even (shhh!) a lot, if you want or need to.
• You now have room for improvement. (If you score 100% right from the get-go, how can you ever do better than that?)
• People will not expect 120% of your effort all the time, so there is leeway when you’re operating at less-than-normal capacity for any reason.
• People will feel connected to you because they’ll feel you’re one of them, not up on top of (or trying to climb) some kind of pedestal.

Now I’m not arguing for deliberate mediocrity here. I’m not saying that you should be lazy, or that you should stop setting and striving toward goals. That’s probably not in your genetic makeup anyway. After all, here you are at a blog about perfectionism, right?

All I’m saying is that if you can surrender your need to appear so unremittingly perfect, to yourself as well as to others, you’ll probably be able to loosen up and enjoy the ride a whole lot more.

You’ll also get to define success and happiness by your own internal yardstick rather than society’s external benchmarks.

Granted, this takes practice. A lot of it. You can’t shuck all of your conditioning with a single shrug of the shoulders.

Hence the name of this blog. ;o)

I’ve been pondering why it is that I always feel as though I have to meet a higher standard than anyone else. How did that requirement sink in? What, in my genetic makeup or my upbringing, makes me feel like I must be flawless in everything I do, to the point that I’m often so paralyzed I can’t even start?

I may have gotten some fresh insight into this. I’m currently in an extended phase of physical decluttering at my house, and yesterday I unearthed a bag of stuff my parents had sent me a few years back when they were decluttering. I’d tossed it in a “things to deal with later” box and forgotten about it.

Now here it was again. I opened it up to find a pair of my baby shoes, a baby book with entries by my mother, and an assortment of old report cards, poems I’d written, plus a couple of clippings of myself in the local paper. Curious, I started flipping through the baby book. There were pictures, a few locks of my hair taken at different times, and glowing entries about how cute I was. Then, as I read about myself getting older, I noticed an interesting pattern.

First medical examination: “She was so good and didn’t even cry.” Six months old:”Such a good girl!” And more through the first years of my life, in my mother’s handwriting: “Her nursery school teacher is continually astounded.” “Michelle is a really good girl.” “At a fifth-grade reading level already.” “A teacher’s dream.” “Michelle is still a very good girl.” (As if they were poised for me to become something else?)

Then an undated entry under “Likes and Dislikes” (about school) reads, “Michelle loves to learn. She seems to expect perfection from herself and others.”

Many people develop a sense of perfectionism because they are taught to feel inadequate from early childhood, and the only way they think they can be worthy of love is to strive (or at least appear) to be flawless. That was never my problem. Nope—I was always being told how smart, creative, wonderful, artistic, and ahead of my peers I was. You’d think this would be absolutely fantastic for a young child to hear, wouldn’t you?

In many ways it was. I’ve always had a lot of self-confidence, and I’m very grateful to my parents for instilling that in me. But it certainly set the bar high.

I clearly remember my parents telling me that they would be proud of me no matter how I did in school as long as I tried my best…but that they were very glad I always brought home As and Bs. College, they continued, was very expensive, and it would help a whole lot if my grades were good enough to earn some kind of scholarship.

This was when I was about 10 years old.

I don’t blame my parents for pushing me—they were honestly doing what they felt was best, and I certainly never balked. I was one of those geeky kids who really did love school. Why? Well, I truly did love learning things. But I also liked all the ego strokes I got for being such a good student. Who wouldn’t enjoy all that praise?

So I must have become terrified of not getting it anymore. I became a people-pleaser. First my parents and my teachers. Then anyone in authority (religious leaders, college professors, employers), and friends who might take away their approval and acceptance of me if I failed to be the person I thought they wanted me to be.

I created a series of costumes to wear in different situations. They don’t completely cover me—I wear them so that just enough of me peeks out to give my appearance a stamp of originality. The zany sense of humor. The jaunty confidence and outgoing nature that so often hide the yearning places and the sadness in my heart. The tightening of the mouth that I can’t allow to reveal what I want and need, because that might not be acceptable. And then people might not like me anymore.

Underneath it all, there’s still the little girl who so desperately wants to be included in the hopscotch games at recess not because she’s smart or creative or a good little girl, but simply because she’s herself.

I think I need to find out some more about who she is.