How to Re-Train Your Brain to Love Imperfection (and Why You Should)

Failure is amazing because every failure is an opportunity to learn

Messes happens. Imperfection is everywhere. Let’s get over it.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and these past couple of years I have began to realize I feel a constant pressure to be perfect in (certain) things.

The truth is, I never would have labeled myself as a perfectionist. In fact, I thought I was a slacker.

I could barely dress myself, often had poor hygiene, and felt like a zombie. My mom would often say it was like I was in a “walking coma”.

And I had my reasons.

In high school, I was sick with an undiagnosed chronic illness that was affecting every part of my life. Yet, I was pretending I was normal, even going as far as joining the dance team and becoming a Social Officer President my senior year, despite the clear obstacles I was facing in normal day-to-day activities.

Everything I did felt harder to me than to everyone else.

Practices were unbearably painful, and no amount of rest in-between ever seemed to help.

Performances may have had my heart, but my body was playing ding-dong-ditch on Death’s door. I could imagine myself knocking on the door, running to hide, then doing it all over again. No rest. No sips of water. Just over and over — running, hiding, and convincing myself that I was fine.

My chronic pain wasn’t just an ache.

Sometimes it was burning.

My muscles and tissues felt like they were slowly being stretched and ripped apart, one fiber at a time.

One time I thought I was shot right in the girl’s bathroom. The pain had been so sudden and agonizing I had fallen to the ground and hit my head on the sink, and it was pure luck I didn’t pass out, bleed too much, or had a witness.

Then again, if there was a witness, I wouldn’t have gone back to Spanish class like nothing happened. I would have gone to the nurse’s office. Or the hospital. People would have believed me.

Then again, they probably wouldn’t have.

If I was lucky and the pain wasn’t there — or wasn’t as unbearable — my body and mind were numb. My appetite changed on a dime. I felt my entire body shake, like I could feel it on a cellular level — a sort of vibrating that never really went away. The hot flashes, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and the other 2+ pages of symptoms I suffered made walking, showering, and getting dressed feel like an impossible task. I think I tried to save as much energy as possible for dance practice where I would exasperate my symptoms even more and silently wish to fall into a coma.

I knew I didn’t want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. So, I often begged the universe to just let me pass out and wake up in the hospital with a diagnosis and a treatment.

Or just put me in the coma.

Maybe I’d have good dreams there.

My need to be normal suddenly turned me into becoming my own captor.

And my need to be the best forced my captor into torture.

Without even realizing it, my perfectionism had turned me into a prisoner and was ruining my life.

And my limiting beliefs were the very tools used to torture me.

I was raised to believe I could do anything I set my mind to.

And I was raised to not be a quitter.

But as I got older, both me and my mom realized that sometimes, these beliefs are more toxic than we originally thought.

I do believe I could do anything I set my mind to.

I made the dance team. I tried out for Social Officer and became President, even though I had tried out for VP.

Going in, I was the quiet goth with the older sister who was Junior Lieutenant. Coming out, people said I was a legacy. I know this because my little sister followed in our footsteps and joined the team and became Junior Lieutenant, too.

I believe that I can do anything I set my mind to, but I now have the wisdom to know that some things I shouldn’t do, and some things don’t need to be done with the “go big or go home” mindset.

This past year, I became a certified Happiness coach and learned a lot about breaking down limiting beliefs, what truly makes us unhappy, and pin-pointing what was causing my episodes of anxiety and depression.

I learned that perfectionism doesn’t always look like what I thought it would look like.

Someone who always has it together and dresses perfectly.

While many perfectionists are like that, I wasn’t. My perfectionism, along with my illness, had put so much pressure on me, I ended up house-bound and unable to do anything.

Now, success to me feels like exhaustion.

And exasperated symptoms.

And pain. So much pain.

So I don’t have a fear of failure.

I have a fear of success.

Maybe the effects of perfectionism on my life is colossal compared to yours, but even small, subtle changes can create a big and sudden impact that may make you feel like a prisoner in your own life.

If I haven’t convinced you already how important it is to let go of perfectionism, then let me share just a few more reasons why you should before I dig into the advice that worked for me and may work for you, too.

1. You start putting less pressure on yourself. Once that pressure is lifted, it becomes 10x easier to do everything else.
2. You become more creative.
3. You start doing more, and your to-do list doesn’t spark anxiety.
4. Because you are doing more, you start getting better at it in the process, and you enjoy the process instead of focusing on the results.

Now let’s get into the content you have been waiting for: How to re-train your brain into loving imperfection instead of being perfect.

Keep in mind, I’m not writing this post with the intent of saying that these tips, and only these tips, are what is going to work. In fact…

• There are plenty more tips out there for you, if that is what you want.
• These tips may not work for you at all. Or, it may be exactly what you need.
• Take this advice with a grain of salt. Some things that work for me may not work for you.
• And finally, this isn’t in any specific order.

#1: The Quality vs. Quantity experiment

There’s a story about how a professor at the University of Florida divided his photography students into two groups: Quality and Quantity.

One group, the Quantity group, were being graded on the volume of work they produced.

The Quality group were to be graded on one photo alone — their best piece of work.

Hearing the results of this experiment is what made me realize that the only thing that perfectionism does is hold me back.

The quantity group got to experiment with all sorts of things — lighting, composition, subjects, angels, you name it. They took as much pictures as they can, and got as creative as they could.

The quantity group was able to witness their mistakes, get better, and find what works for them.

The quality group felt pressured into delivering the best, and ultimately ended up delivering their worst.

The best photos came from the quantity group — not the quality. And it makes sense. They got to practice without pressure. They got to learn and experiment.

They also got to enjoy the process rather than focus on the outcome.

Moral of the story?

Make sure you enjoy the process, and not just the desired end result.

Experiment, have fun, practice, and try not to stress about every little step being perfect.

Which brings me to my second point…

#2: Make tiny steps to purposely be imperfect.

Otherwise known as exposure therapy.

When I started doing this the first time, I didn’t realize how utterly terrifying it would be.

As I said before, I was kind of in denial of being a perfectionist.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was certain things I was putting pressure on myself to be perfect, and identifying and acknowledging it was the first step.

For me, I strive to be perfect in things related to my career, money, future, or hobbies.

So instead of trying to perfect a blog post, I published it even when I spotted several minor mistakes.

Instead of putting pressure on myself to not spend money on fast food at all, I purposely went out and spent money on fast food fairly often at least for a little while.

I now write more than I did before, and I even eat out less.

Sometimes, I feel that pressure returning, and I start doing exposure therapy again.

For certain things, this has worked so well that I don’t often fall back into old habits. For other things, it was harder for me to do.

If you find your task difficult to talk yourself into doing, go even smaller.

Take baby steps.

You’ll get there.

#3: Change the type of content you see

Sometimes, I’m insecure about my weight.

Other times, I have confidence that friends and co-workers say they desperately want.

I blame my intense highs and lows of Manic-Depression, but that’s not the point.

My self-esteem used to be terrible to the point of even developing an eating disorder back when my depression was really bad.

But I started to change what I see.

In a way, it’s like a parent censuring certain things on the internet to prevent their child from seeing.

I do it on Instagram the most.

Instead of seeing a lot of skinny girls in bikinis sitting on beaches, I follow more plus-size woman in bikinis sitting on beaches.

Or body-positive accounts. Really, anything that doesn’t make me feel bad.

And the more I start seeing this type of content, the more I start to see the beauty in myself. It helps that I already think that plus-size woman are beautiful just the way they are, but thinking that I am not because I’m bigger is hypocritical of me.

And now I love my body.

And if I start to have negative thoughts again, this technique has always helped me.

#4: What’s the worst that can really happen — and why am I really scared?

I publish an article that is imperfect, and maybe I get negative comments, trolls, and an opportunity lost of working with someone as a freelance writer.

But negative comments happen because many people are negative. That’s out of my control, and I shouldn’t take it to heart.

Trolls and trolls.

And well, if I happened to have a few minor mistakes and missed an opportunity, that certainly sucks. But also, I’m not entirely sure I want to work with someone who forgets I’m human, either.

#5: Do I just want the end result, or do I actually enjoy the process?

I used to have a lot of “dream jobs”, only to realize that it wasn’t the jobs I liked — just the money that came with it.

My eyes were always on the prize. But then I would realize I hated doing certain things, and suddenly it felt like the road to that prize was getting longer and longer. Like a scene in the movie where the character is in a hallway, and as they take a step forward it just gets longer and longer.

That feeling makes me impatient. Overwhelmed. Frustrated.

But if I just focus on taking one step at a time — and enjoy every minute of it — then it’s 10x better.

If you don’t like the process — the journey — then the prize isn’t worth it.

I’m going to leave you with one more tidbit here.

Let’s say there was two applicants to a job.

Person A has no certificate/degree and no previous experience in the industry.

Person B also has no certificate/degree and no previous professional experience, but shows an interest in the industry, maybe even some basic knowledge or even a portfolio of their “experience” the have from working in their spare time (like, a writer’s portfolio, for example)

Person B would probably be hired over person A.

Of course, in the real world there’s always lots of other applicants, many with actual professional experience, but sometimes what Person B have is enough to get your foot in the door.

Why am I saying this?

Because maybe Person B shook off that anxiety they felt and decided to just do it.

They made mistakes, learned, and grew, and doing everything had helped them land a job and rise in the ranks.

But Person A wanted to be perfect going in, and ended up not doing anything at all.

We live in a world that loves “natural” talent, but the truth is, natural talent or not, practice is a good thing.

And if you have a belief that failure is amazing because it helps you learn from your mistakes, thrive, and grow — then you’ll get there in no time.