You might be a perfectionist. But be careful despite the glorious look of this attribute you probably want to seek for treatments rather honoring it.
So now we have a few questions to begin with

  • Am I perfectionist?
  • How is this affecting my life?
  • And how to stop being one?

so I’m going to answer these question in rest of this blog.

Also keep in mind, having high standards and seeking for greatness is different from obsession for perfection. The second one is a trap, placed by the first one.

Who’s called perfectionist?

Perfectionism like other personality traits includes a wide spectrum of behaviors.
Including but not limited to being highly critical, having unrealistic standards and fear of failure. I know this list seems like being taken from content of the book “Three Traits Of successful People” but many studies have shown that unfortunately, perfectionist are performing worse, and of course never as good as themselves expect.

So how do we know if we’re perfectionist? As said it’s part of human’s nature and an aspect of our personality. Which means all of us experience some sort of these-and-those symptoms but it doesn’t mean we’re all perfectionist. You realize you’re a perfectionist when you limp at parts of your life. When you start seeing a problem. When you feel being crushed by tasks. You do a lot, but still haven’t done anything. At this time, solution lies inside.

If you want to understand where are you standing, you need to start questioning yourself. I can help with three questions.

1. Do you procrastinate A LOT?

Procrastinating for hours, days or even months is highly common among people who are frantically looking for the right time to start.

2. Do you think you’re not enough?

Well, no one is perfect. I don’t have to test every human on the planet to get to this conclusion. It’s natural, and poor perfectionist assume it’s not.

3. Are you afraid of failure?

Yes, everybody does. But do you afraid so much that you don’t even try to get better?

If your answer to any of the questions above is yes, then probably you’re also with us in this train. Sit tight, and continue reading.

How does it affect your life?

Perfectionism is a perspective, it’s a standpoint where you see everything from, therefor it affects everything you do (or never do), and most importantly it brings pain and that’s what hurts.
Perfectionism makes everything painful. Imagine it’s the first time your friends are inviting you to play golf with them, everyone knows it was your first time and no one has any expectations of you, no one but yourself. You were forced to be good. So obsessed to perform well that you forgot to enjoy the experience of playing golf with your friends for the first time.

Life of a perfectionist is full of struggles and fights for getting perfect that she forgets to breathe, and enjoy her activity. To for once, do it for herself.
And this is where getting better comes from, you can’t find a guitarist who trained thousands of hours and enjoyed it, but still is a bad guitarist. However there is another side to this, a perfectionist will spend all of her day trying to become great at everything but finds herself doing nothing so great.

But it is curable, we’re not born perfectionists. Imagine if a baby was stuck with perfectionism, he could say if I’ll never will be able to fly, why should I even try crawling? But hey! Humans eventually learn to walk in early ages.

Then How to get free?

Perfectionism can be both cause and effect.
It can be a symptom itself, a siren that informs of a more serious issue. ADHD is one of mental disorder that can trigger perfectionism on given person.
Or it can only be the result of a wrong mindset. A mindset that tells you’re so great, that you don’t deserve to be bad at something. But that’s not true! (you’re great) but you have the right to be wrong, to lack at something and to perform bad.

You want a solution? It’s fairly simple, tell your brain to shut up. Tell your brain that you have the right to do or publish something only because you like to. Let your mind believe if you’re sharing your art online it’s not because you are trying to show world how good you are (this can be) but you’re doing it, because you’re enjoying it!

If you don’t know where to start, You can pay more attention to your daily activities. Before starting, or write them down at the end of the day and think about them. How could you do that activity if you had no perfectionism? What went wrong?
And next time that you were in the same position. Just remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be fun for you.

thanks to sEpidE, for sharing her ideas with me

Thanks for reading; please let me know what do you think.
Good luck.