What Perfection did to me and What you can learn from my story
I realised I was a perfectionist and it was not the best place to be.
I never really knew I was a perfectionist. Sure, I couldn’t get myself to do anything, fearing the output would not be ‘good enough’. Sure I had my issues with my nail paint getting chipped or my hair not fanning my face the right way. But that was just high standards. Not a near crippling need for perfection.
Turns out, it was! And honestly, I never would have believed it if it hadn’t been from a professional (shout out to my therapist!). I went to a therapist, told her my problems. Never in my wildest dreams, could I have guessed her diagnosis. She uttered the least expected four words, “You are a perfectionist.”
Excuse me? Didn’t you just hear me say I get nothing done? If I don’t get anything even done, how in the world am I a perfectionist? You have to finish something before you begin perfecting it, right?
Turns out, not really. Contrary to what pop culture and celebrities endorse, perfection is not just a work ethic. Perfection is not just brilliant songs, amazing movies and fantastic books. Perfection is a way of life. And not a very friendly one at that.
Who is a Perfectionist?
Perfectionism (noun): “A disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable”
Post my first few months at therapy, when I finally regained some of my mental strength, I started reading again. I enjoy research. So I picked up the first book I could find on perfection and it was How to be an Imperfectionist by Stephen Guise.
He dedicates a significant portion of the first chapter on how there’s a secret pride in a person’s voice when saying, “Oh, I’m such a perfectionist!” Like it’s some sort of positive flaw. That’s a tad misguided.
In simple words, a perfectionist is someone for whom ‘perfect’, is the base standard of expectation from their and others’ output. So for instance, for an amateur writer like me, my expectation from my first piece would be a Pulitzer or a Booker.
To put things more into perspective, I’m gonna use Guise’s analogy. Imagine your expectations are a room. The floor is the base of your scale of expectations and the ceiling, your highest. For a perfectionist, the floor (or the start of the scale) is perfection. Let that sink in for a bit. The floor is perfection. That means every single time, no matter what you do, it’s has to be perfect to meet your bare minimum expectations. Consistently. Just imagine the amount of pressure!
This meant that everytime I don’t come close to the floor of my expectations, I’m beating myself up mentally. I’m setting myself upto fail. Of course, my first post ever won’t win me the Pulitzer or any award. But that’s how the mind works! The Pulitzer is my floor. Just imagine what my roof must’ve been like.
Translation: Nothing I could ever write, would be good enough in the first shot. So why write at all?
Why was it bad for me?
There were several reasons where perfection and its family of behaviours held me back. Being a huge believer of buckets, I’ve put them all down in four:
1. Procrastination
I am a grade A procrastinator. I can procrastinate about procrastinating, I’m that good. A little bit of book reading and digging made me realise that procrastination was a shield for my inherent perfectionist. I just would not have the motivation to do anything. Just sitting passively and binging was all I wanted to do.
Now don’t get me wrong. In no way am I arming up against the binge-ers. My binging was not what I wanted. I actually wanted to do something, but I was too scared to do it. Stephen Guise puts it perfectly when he says, ‘Perfection and fear are happily married’. And you’re only afraid when you care too much and desperately don’t want to fail.
The combination of these two was lethal. I sat with a list of unfulfilled dreams, a phone with Netflix and a tub of snacks. And I sat and waited for everything to fall into place. Know this: it never did.
2. Performance Anxiety
I’d call this an elevated version of stage fright and it percolated everywhere. So a simple conversation with a stranger: anxiety. Why? If I said something wrong and this complete random stranger forms an unfavourable opinion about me, I’ve failed. Giving a presentation: anxiety. Why? If I stuttered once or could not answer a question, I had failed. I could not send out reminder mails without reading them twice over, just to avoid spelling mistakes. Reminder mails have two words in them: Gentle and Reminder.
I kid you not, I wrote down my farewell speech at my last job and practiced it for 2 days (FYI: It was an informal event at an empty bar on a Tuesday). Why? Because it needed to be the ‘perfect’ mix of dry humour, sarcasm and emotion. Who even remembers a farewell speech?!
But I did all this. I always heard that being prepared is good. I just lost the line between prepared and afraid! I was so afraid that I took myself too seriously. That failure was the end of the world. One bad review means the end. That I’m not good enough. And all of this led to Imposter Syndrome.
3. Imposter Syndrome
To me, I could do no right, unless it was flawless. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. Compliments felt untrue, achievements were a stroke of luck. Nothing I did was mine to call. It was as if I was looking at my own life from the outside.
I distinctly remember a semster in my MBA, where I got particularly good grades. An acquaintance came up to me to congratulate. I said to him, “Oh, I think it was a lucky semester. Everyone was a little preoccupied with job hunting and I got lucky.” No ‘thank you’, no ‘I did my best’, nothing. Just denial. And if I didn’t believe in my own self and my victories, what even was the point of it all? It was easier to sit with a bucket of unfulfilled dreams than it was to convince myself that I was worth the effort.
4. Aversion to Feedback
Now you’d think that with Imposter Syndrome, it would be easy for me to take criticism. Ironically, no.
You see, whatever little I did end up doing was ‘flawlesss’ to my eye. Else I’d never have done it. So how in the universe could it warrant feedback or constructive or any other version of criticism. The mind is a funny place!
I have had friends telling me things I could do to improve my writing or my work or my outfit for the day. You know what I’ve done? I’ve cut them out. Of course it doesn’t mean I’m supposed to take every feedback seriously. It just means I need to critically look at the criticism and see if there really was anything to take away from that. But then again: the criticism was an affront to my capability apparently.
Now I’m in a better place. I silence my inner perfectionist quite often. It’s a daily practice but with each blow to it, that voice becomes softer and softer. How do I do that? Well, that’s a story for next time. For starters, I remind myself that I am…..
