Progress Not Perfection

Often we get wrapped up in trying to be perfect: the perfect parent, the perfect spouse, the perfect employee, the perfect boss, the perfect person, the perfect community member… The list goes on and on. Striving for perfection can be an excellent motivator to work hard and do our very best at anything and everything we pursue in life, but having a perfectionist tendency can also lead to burn out.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism comes in different forms but has been narrowed down to two main versions. An article I found recently in the Behaviour Research and Therapy journal explains this really well.

Personal Standards perfectionism means that you set then work toward extremely high standards and goals for yourself.  This form of perfectionism can be useful if not taken too far. It increases your stress-level while pushing you to do better.

Self-critical perfectionism is the long way of saying that you have a habit of being overly judgmental of yourself and worry a lot about what others think about you while always wanting to get approval from others. This form of perfectionism has been shown to lead a person to have more anxious and depressive symptoms.

Effects of Self-Criticism

Being extremely self-critical can cause you to have a hard time dealing with stress and difficulty managing negative emotions. Along with self-criticism, a person who has the habit of this form of perfectionism tends to experience more distress over time, fall into the pattern of avoiding uncomfortable situations, and often has trouble with rumination. Rumination is the fancy way of saying that you over think and almost obsess about conversations and interactions with other people to the point that it makes it hard to have healthy relationships.

The saying that we are all our worse critics is all too true for those who fall victim to self-critical perfectionism. Excessive worry about how others think of us and that we are not good enough can deeply impact the way we interact with those around us. This tendency can lead a person to spiral into depressive and anxious symptoms that can impact many parts of everyday life.

Depression can come in many forms: emotional numbness, constant sadness, not wanting to get out of bed, wanting to isolate from loved ones, getting mad easily and snapping at little situations, feeling extremely tired all the time, increase or decrease in appetite, thoughts of wanting to hurt oneself. These are a few of the ways depression can be expressed, but it is a truly individual experience that might look very different from one person to the next. Anxiety comes in various forms as well, but the main indicators are constant worry, difficulty sleeping, avoiding others and certain situations, being extremely fearful, and nervousness or panic.

Pressure to be the Best

Society pushes us through social media and ideologies to think of ourselves as not good enough unless we are the best. Being successful in life is defined in many ways other than just working toward the goal of being the best. Success is feeling fulfilled, happy, and healthy. It is finding balance between striving toward goals and recharging when you need it.

Society tends to push us into is the idea that if we aren’t first we’re last. This way of thinking is called all or nothing thinking and can increase the negative feelings that a person has about themselves. Another example of all or nothing thinking is when you are trying to lose weight and tell yourself that you can never have any cookies ever again because even eating one will make you gain weight. The idea that all food fit into the categories of good or bad and that if you are going to get healthy you cannot eat anything from the bad category ever again.

In life, this may look like a young professional who starts working so many hours that they tend to just sleep at the office because they have to prove they are the right person for the next promotion. It may look like the mom who works fulltime and feels obligated to be the sole caregiver for her children when she’s home and do all the housework despite the fact that she has a loving husband who says he is willing to help lighten her load.

Perfectionism can lead a person to burnout because they are so wrapped up in being perfect and doing everything themselves that they do not take the time to breathe or accept help from the people in their life who care for them.

My Journey

In my own experience, the journey to learn balance has spanned over the past few years. Striving for perfection while getting more and more overwhelmed led to extra stress that was unnecessary and a work life imbalance that has taken some time to dig myself out of.

Transitioning from a highly demanding position to one that allows me to spend more time at home with my children and husband has been the best thing that has ever happened. Making changes in career might not be an option so there are other ways to manage feeling overwhelmed and reduce perfectionist tendencies.

I have adopted the moto progress not perfection which has opened up so many possibilities and ways to better manage stress and anxiety in my everyday life. This moto means that as long as you are working hard to make improvements every day, it is okay to not be perfect.

Wrap Up

Although self-critical perfectionism can lead to extreme stress which can impact you mental and physical health and wellbeing. Personal standard perfectionism can help you to push yourself past your limitations and can be helpful if you do not go too far. Pushing yourself to achieve and try your hardest can be a great way to drive yourself forward to meeting important goals and lead to better self-esteem and accomplishing things you may not have thought possible.

When working toward these goals that push you to your limits, it is so important to establish short-term, achievable goals while making time to relax and recharge. Although it is often easier to focus on the bigger, scarier goal and get overwhelmed by the size of it, by breaking it down into bite-sized pieces you can accomplish more than you thought possible.

For more ideas about self-care to help manage stress and ways to break down big goals into smaller and achievable pieces check out my upcoming posts.

If you are interested in reading more about perfectionism, I have included the reference for the article by Tobin & Dunkley below.

Reference

Tobin, R., & Dunkley, D. M. (2021). Self-critical perfectionism and lower mindfulness and self-compassion predict anxious and depressive symptoms over two years. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 136, 103780. doi:https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.brat.2020.103780

Simply,

Soberry

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