The Perfection Trap: Pressure, Mental Illness, and Growing from Failure
“Even the ugliest junctures of our lives can eventually be beautiful ones if we change our perspective and choose development over stagnancy.”
It took me way too long to write this article. Actually, it took me way too long to even begin writing this article. I bounced ideas around, glanced at the deadline swiftly written on my whiteboard, put it on my to-do list, and then off my to-do list. You see, I’m a perfectionist. Now, most of the time people believe perfectionists to be the ones who get the articles done quickly and error free but I’m not that type of perfectionist. I’m the type that will procrastinate to all ends if I know it won’t be as perfect as I imagined it to be. Well, I was that type.
Processing Mental Illness and the Pressures of Perfection
My entire adolescent life was spent struggling to balance the pressure I had placed on myself to be perfect and my mental well being. Years were spent in deep depression and occasional stays in the psychiatric unit for self-harm. Aiming for perfection led me down a dark path of self-injury and hatred. Suddenly, one by one, the things I had fervently worked for were crashing down around me. My great grades, participation in sports, leading of the student council — all of it — didn’t matter if it wasn’t perfect in my own eyes and it never was. I was completely losing myself. Perfection had become an obsession and the pressure of it had become a monster of my own creating. Instead of striving to be the person I dreamed I one day could be, I gave up trying and assumed I never could. If I couldn’t be what ‘perfect’ was in my own eyes, why be at all? At 18, that pressure led me, once more, to the emergency room from an overdose. At the time I remember thinking, I couldn’t even do that right. One more thing I wasn’t good enough at. As a much more wise adult, I know now that I have a purpose.
All the time spent in the hospital, recovering, allowed for me to pursue my artistic interests. My passion for design was immense. So much so that even though at that time in my life I couldn’t attend university, I spent all of my free time for several years learning every necessary thing I could about graphic design. I put all the emotion I was struggling to cope with and understand into learning. I spent time coming to terms with my mental illnesses, allowing myself to get lost, rediscover myself, and learn along the way. Hours were spent practicing basics in Adobe programs, watching YouTube videos, reading articles, and staying in on weekends to hustle. I studied, wrote notebooks full of notes, self-quizzed. I slowly built up a portfolio of work, had work and pieces featured in galleries — even featured officially by Adobe’s portfolio website, Behance. I got the internship, got the job, went full time as a freelancer, then launched my own creative studio. All of these things happened because I allowed myself to be imperfect, to risk and to flourish.
Failure and Allowing Imperfection
A bittersweet fact about adulthood is you have a life to look back on and think about. You can look back cringing at your gaffes or you can look back knowing you’re flawed and human, just like everyone else. Each mistake you have made has led you to where you are today. In order for the good to be worthwhile, you must have the bad.
As a small business owner and a human, everything I was led me to become everything I am today. By choosing to realign my expectations of myself, and to stop striving for unrealistic perfection, I have become a woman I never envisioned I could be. Having experienced, traveled, and accomplished so much, when at one point in my life I so strongly felt I never could that I tried to end my life before it had truly been lived. By choosing to remain imperfect I became my best, leadership worthy version of myself.
“There’s far more power in the fuck up than the perfection.”
Often times, we don’t realize how striving for perfection can ultimately lead us to our most important failures. We are taught we need the perfect business model, relationship, or plan. With such a subjective topic as perfection, how can we possibly obtain what others tell us it is? When we are reaching for such an unattainable thing, we are bound to slip. Sometimes the pressures we put on ourselves are what cause us to fail. Failure is a mental fork in the road. It’s an opportunity to grow or to remain stagnant. Life is often imperfect, messy, and beautiful if you allow it to be.
Even the ugliest junctures of our lives can eventually be beautiful ones if we change our perspective and choose development over stagnancy.
Remember when I told you I was that person who would have procrastinated this article? The me I was then would have come up with an excuse as to why she couldn’t write the article. She would have doubted her abilities and settled for nothing, instead of imperfect. The worst part is she’d have known damn well this article would have been great for her. Had I not decided then to really look inward to study myself and the possible paths I could have gone down, it is very likely I would still be her today. But failing taught me to dust myself off, take a good look inward, and grow from there. Growth for me is writing this article — being confident enough to put my experiences and words out there into the world.
The Power of the Fuck Up
We as humans need failure to experience development. Had I not failed, I wouldn’t have the mindset I have today to own a business or the confidence to put myself out there and go for the things I wanted. Society’s ever wavering definition of terms like failure or perfection is the reason we all grew up believing failing was a terrible thing. If we weren’t perfect, we were failures. Well, thank goodness for growth, right? Due to growing from past failures, we can now use our future failures as opportunities to grow. This, in turn, allows us to see things from perspectives we never thought we could — because we truly couldn’t then; we hadn’t grown to where these perspectives were visible yet.
Each and every one of us will fail. We will probably fail again after failing. And that is okay because it keeps life real, not perfect. Welcome your failures in, ask what they have to teach you, and grow out into the world with new found perspective. Ignore the looming pressure of perfection and allow yourself to be purely flawed. Allow yourself to fuck up. There’s far more power in the fuck up than the perfection.
Natalie Hanes is the founder and creative director of Clairvoyant Creative, a design studio based in Portland, Oregon specializing in branding + identity for passionate entrepreneurs. With more than 6 years of experience, she strives to share her knowledge regularly and help others grow. You can find her exploring Oregon’s natural beauty, stirring up a homemade lavender latte, or relaxing with her pup, Noodles.
