Perfectionism 101
In an ancient form of personality typing that traces back to the time of Plato called the Enneagram, there were nine documented distinct “flavors” of human personalities. I believe it’s no coincidence that the very first personality type they outlined is the One, called the Reformer, or commonly referred to as the Perfectionist.
When you read descriptions of a Enneagram One, they’re described as people who are motivated by a desire “to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.”
Their biggest fear is being wrong or defective, so Perfectionists tend to be obsessed with doing things well — but not performing at their own standards can be psychologically crushing.
If you’re a high performer in your work, you probably have a streak of perfectionism. Want to understand what that means for your daily life, or how you show up in the workplace? Here’s your primer on Perfectionism 101, and how to use its power in helpful, productive ways.
Where does perfectionism come from?
One of the main reasons perfectionistic tendencies develop is incredibly simple — and, importantly, not your fault! It comes from how you first learned to define and create your sense of identity.
You see, when you were a wee baby, you probably had caregivers around you who played a HUGE role in your development, ability to get your needs met, and sense of safety, care and protection. These kind-hearted, good intentioned people like parents, grandparents, other relatives, teachers, nannies, and babysitters would see little you do something cute — maybe like pick up one of those cardboard baby books and read it to yourself.
When they saw you do this, they wanted to affirm you and encourage you in pursuing things that you enjoyed, and as they formed the words of how to express their opinion to you, they zoomed right past a critical decision point:
Do they say, “What a good reader you are!”
Or, do they say, “Look at you, reading all by yourself!”
Subtle differences in word choice create two fundamentally different world paradigms.
The first phrasing— emphasizing that you are a “good” reader (not just a reader) — ties your behavior to a superlative judgment (your behavior is good or bad) and to your identity (you are a reader, it is part of how you can now conceive of yourself).
While this way of affirming is temporarily fabulous for self esteem (“I’m a good girl!”), it can create some problematic connections. First, that simple actions and behavior which are fairly neutral (reading versus coloring versus dancing versus staring at the wall) can be judged good or bad, right or wrong by someone else can create high sensitivity to others’ opinions and judgments that then overrides one’s own desires and opinions about oneself. Second, it means that this behavior is now correlated with your core identity, so you may feel conflicted about changing or abandoning this behavior even if it doesn’t serve you anymore.
Women who were applauded for being “sweet” when they were young may know this struggle of trying to step into an adult identity that retains their core kindness but also asserts their needs in less traditionally “sweet” ways in their work or romantic relationships
Now, let’s look at the second affirmation to the tiny tot. “Look at you, reading all by yourself!” — draws attention to the behavior as separate and apart from you. It feels much less celebratory on its face because there aren’t superlative words used like “best” “awesome” or “good,” but the lack of those words results in a more objective comment that creates space for the kiddo to make their own judgment about the merits of the activity.
It also emphasizes personal motivation and action taking — you did a thing! — so we’re acknowledging the inputs of effort rather than the outputs of a specific result. Instead of conflating action and identity, it leaves the two as distinct, so there’s room to take action without it affecting who you are (or are not) to the world.
Our words matter. Both the words we tell ourselves, and the words that the world tells us.
For those of you whose experiences in life have shown you how much words matter, you know that calling someone “depressed” versus someone “experiencing depression,” there can be a fundamental difference in the resourcefulness and hope available to us based on the way we frame our experiences. In my twisting and winding career path so far, I’ve both gotten the joy of working as an early childhood educator (or preschool teacher), as well as a crisis text line volunteer counselor, and I can tell you from those experiences alone: the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’re capable of will shape our lived reality.
The science backs this up. In a fabulous body of research on motivation, personality and development created by Carol Dweck, a Barnard alumnae and current Stanford professor, identified 2 different mindsets or world views in schoolchildren that could help indicate their future performance.
These mindsets are called the Growth mindset and the Fixed mindset.
Individuals with a Growth mindset focus on the dynamism of their hearts and minds and lives. Their ability to change and grow and evolve is the highest virtue. Fixed mindset folks, on the other hand, believed that they were “set” at a certain level of smartness and capability, and in that way ended up both limiting themselves and also being way less happy. It comes back to identity versus possibility.
(Wanna learn more about Growth versus Fixed mindsets? Watch this TED Talk from Carol Dweck.)
Fixed mindsets perpetuate Perfectionism
As you may already know, it’s not always fun to hold yourself to the right/wrong, black/white standards of performance for a perfectionist.
“Pressuring oneself to achieve unrealistic goals inevitably sets the person up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they fail to meet their standards.” Wikipedia
Perfectionism is the sister of neuroticism, which psychology can’t really land on a universal definition of, but can be loosely defined from M. Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled, as the tendency to think that when something goes wrong, it feel catastrophic and it’s all your fault. In fact, everything is your fault, and you are broken, useless and never able to do anything right. (As a recovering perfectionist myself, I’ve certainly had moments (or months, or seasons) in life where I’ve felt that way.)
First cousins to Perfectionism are shame, a perpetual need for control, and a lack of vulnerability (lest someone see your “weakness”).
Now, if you’ve gotten this far and you’re thinking “oh shit, this is me and I am totally doomed,” take comfort in knowing that this way of being has existed and been documented in humankind for literally thousands upon thousands of years — long before Carol Dweck’s research started. So, perfectionism is typical — and as I’m about to show you, can turn from being your biggest liability (and barrier to happiness) into part of your superpower.
How to integrate a Growth mindset into daily life
If a Growth-oriented mindset feels like a more open-ended, exciting path forward than the Fixed manifest destiny of Perfectionism, you can encourage yourself to test out a Growth mindset by reframing painful black-and-white identity-based thoughts from being about you to being about a situation.
Trying to adopt a Growth mindset isn’t often immediate or easy, so sometimes using baby steps into a Growth mindset can be helpful. In the psychotherapeutic approach of Internal Family Systems work, painful thoughts like those from your inner perfectionist are designed to pop up to protect you. You have many voices or desires or ideas swirling around in you at any given point, and Perfectionism is only one voice in the bigger choir — but it really knows how to stand out.
If you’re struggling to work with your Perfectionistic inner voice, the first step is listen to it. Hear it out. Let it speak.
By trying to stifle it or suppress it, you’re usually only giving the perfectionism more power to derail you when it is finally heard. Let every weird, uncomfortably, ugly, crazy thing it has to say out.
Then, imagine that you’re responding to the Perfectionistic part of you with another voice inside of you. Maybe that voice is Self Love, or Compassion, or Confidence, or Diplomacy, or Reality. But allow that part of you to hear what the Inner Perfectionist is freaked out about, and affirm it.
“You’re right to be scared of that! Anybody would be nervous/afraid/timid/anxious about that.”
And then keep responding with the other things you know to be true:
Most career experiments aren’t fatal, you’ve done a magnificent job taking care of yourself for your entire life, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, and perhaps most importantly: if you don’t get it perfect, you know how to fix things. You have messed up before (many times!) in your life, and you know how to clean up a mess.
If you don’t affirm that the Perfectionist voice has some logic (and try to write it off or ignore it completely), it will build up pressure and force and become volcanic and explosive when it finally finds its way to your surface. Let it be right. And let your love and trust of yourself also be right, and be the dominant force in your decision making.
Treat it the same way you’d treat a friend you disagree with: with respect, but without deference. It’s a part of who you are, but it isn’t your identity. You’re capable of incredible growth and evolution, as long as you believe it.
And finally, allow these two voices inside of yourself to have a complete conversation. Can they come to an agreement about an experiment you could try or a way you could give yourself permission to try out a slightly riskier path?
Perfectionism can absolutely be a feature, not a bug, of who you are — especially when you teach yourself how to harness its power for good.
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Lisa Lewis is a career change coach who helps unfulfilled individuals create lucrative, soulful, and joyful new career paths. Don’t love your job? We should talk. Learn more at GetCareerClarity.com or check out The Career Clarity Show podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.— — — —
Want to learn more about Perfectionism and how it relates to your career? Check out this other article I wrote on Medium.com.
To read more about Perfectionism and its impacts in your career and life, here are additional studies, articles, and resources to learn more about this part of yourself — and how you can use it to your advantage:
https://www.16personalities.com/articles/two-kinds-of-perfectionism-and-how-they-might-affect-you
https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/The_perils_of_perfectionism
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ab.20183
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0300653
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916300162
