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)

Tags: achievement, letting go, self-worth

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