“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it” Salvador Dali
All too often we are brought up to think that striving for perfection is the ultimate in performance.
The pursuit of perfection is laden with problems. The idea that something can be perfect is flawed straight away because perfection doesn’t exist and therefore striving for it is already an empty pursuit.
Perfectionists spot mistakes, have trouble seeing anything other than imperfections and are likely to be critical of themselves and others. They tend to be pushed toward their goals from a fear of not reaching them rather than being pulled toward goals by a desire to achieve; they often set goals that are out of reach and see anything less than a perfectly met goal as a failure.
Procrastination is rife with perfectionists because fearing failure as they do, they will sometimes worry so much about doing something wrong that they become immobilised and fail to do anything at all. There’s no grey area in this all or nothing thinking, it either has to be right or not at all. It can also lead to an inability to see alternatives in a situation or solutions to a problem.
The trouble with striving for perfection is it will usually end in disappointment. The lows will be enormous due to the tendency to constantly see failure and be self-critical. Because perfectionists are so hard on themselves it can lead to poor self-esteem and the rigidity of their critical nature can lead them to push others away.
This leaves perfectionists at higher risk of mental disorders.
The alternative? Striving for excellence, set high standards, learn from mistakes, be realistic and strive to continuously improve. Here are five ways to get back to being good enough:
- It starts with resetting your internal language “what feels possible” rather than “I must” or “I have to”.
- Have a healthy description of excellence in your own mind and check in with others on their perceptions of excellence to reset your barometer.
- Consider how you judge yourself and others. We are all mostly doing the best we can and that’s normally good enough. Setting too high standards for yourself and others will easy alienate you from your colleagues.
- Understand your limits and become aware of how you can stretch yourself without setting unrealistic targets or expectations.
- Allow yourself permission to fail. Being authentic and showing that you aren’t perfect is one way to connect with and deepen relationships with others.
When we stretch ourselves realistically, we grow, but it only ever happens outside of our comfort zone. Innovation requires risks and therefore failure is assured if you have the courage to take risk often enough. This is all entirely possible without being perfect, so go on, model your imperfection today!
