Perfectionism

My name is Rob, and I'm a perfectionist. Feels good to get that off my chest. You may be a perfectionist, too. How do you know you are one? 

Few years ago, I had a project in my house where we've got this wall that was put up in a foyer. A year ago, they had put in a closet to be able to create this space because this house didn't have a closet in the foyer. So for a number of years, I always wanted to replace the closet doors alone and just kind of revamp the closet a little bit. And it took me a long time to get to that point. Because I'd think about it, I'd figure it out and have to kind of look at it, measure it, how am I going to do this? What am I going to do? Finally, it took me a while and I got to the point of starting the project, while it wound up that I couldn't just do work on the doors of the closet and that the ceiling had a problem because there had been a water leak. And there were some things I needed to do. So I had to drop a false ceiling and below it just with studs and sheetrock. So that was fine, I was able to do that. Then I started to take the old doors out of the closet. And I found out that that wall was awful, it literally was moving. When you pulled the doors out, it's the only thing holding the closet together. So I wound up having to literally rebuild almost the entire foyer, the shelves inside the closet bar, all that kind of stuff. There were things that just showed up that I wasn't prepared for, but that I was able to handle. And even today, the project's not completely done because I still have some trim I need to work on to get up around the new closet doors. 

And why am I telling you this story is because I wanted that whole thing to be perfect. I had an idea of what it needed to look like, I knew what I needed to do before I got it started. Took a while for me to get past my procrastination. And just say I got to just start, I think that's part of being a perfectionist is how we respond to things, how we think of projects, how we think of things we're going to do. It isn't that it's going to be perfect. But we have to have some assurance that what we're going to put out is going to be perfect. And if I can't, I may not want to do it. 

So the question is, how do you know if you're one, and there's probably a good chance you are one, or at least have some perfectionistic tendencies, if it can't be perfect, I don't want to do it, which is kind of dumb, because there's very little in life, that's actually perfect. But that's one of the things I do if I can't do this perfectly, whatever this is the closet, running an event, hosting a party, whatever it is, I don't want to do it. I just don't want to do it. And it really can kind of paralyze me. Coupled with that is procrastination. Since I can't do it perfectly. I'm just going to put it off. I'll focus on other things. I'll do some other things along the way. But I'm really just not going to start this because I have no good guarantee that I can do it. So I'll just procrastinate. I'll just push it off a little bit. 

A big one for me that I've had to deal with over the last number of years. Is that I overthink. I overthink everything, right? And it's okay, when you're doing the project. I'm working on the closet. It's okay to kind of think it through How's a good way to do this? How can I save wood? How can I build this the best? How is it going to last the longest but the problem is I overthink about every situation. I overthink about every relationship, every job, every task, everything I'm going to eat, my brain doesn't stop. So I'm overthinking about everything and trying to get it so its perfect. And I waste a lot of time and effort overthinking.

 I think we all have unrealistic expectations. I think we have them for ourselves. And I think we have them for situations and circumstances right? I think so much of life is just managing the expectations that we have. And when they become unrealistic, and we're clinging to those, they become pretty hard. You know, for example, an unrealistic expectation was going to be that this closet was going to go very well. And when I opened it up, there was actually very little about it that went well, you know, and that's a simple one because that's just a physical project. But we have that with relationships, with our job, with circumstances, with other people. We have these unrealistic expectations for ourselves, which is hard. And for others unrealistic expectations, oh, I'm going to lose 20 pounds in two weeks. It's not going to happen. We have to be realistic about what we expect. Because then what happens is we get to the end of two weeks and we're really disappointed and we're mad at ourselves when there was no way we were ever going to meet that. And we do the same to other people about what they can do or what they're supposed to do. We can be very hard on ourselves. We can expect things from ourselves that Just can't happen. And then when they don't happen because they, they wouldn't happen anyway, we're really, really hard on ourselves, we don't forgive ourselves, we don't let ourselves go, we don't cut ourselves a break. Because we're already starting with an unrealistic expectation. And then we're really hard on ourselves for something that could have never been met, there's very little in life that goes on, that's perfect. 

There's stuff that's really, really good. There's stuff, that's great. But very few things are perfect. There's only one perfect human that ever lived. We're not Him. 

Over the last number of years, the level of anxiety in society has gone up. When you talk to people, there's a lot more people that are anxious. There's people that are just in these certain circumstances and situations where they're just anxious, there's so much pressure, because we expect so much of ourselves, we expect to get things done in a certain way, we expect things to go a particular way. So what's one of the responses to that is anxiety, we get anxious over stuff, especially stuff we can't control. 

Procrastination, I think is, at least in my life, and I've seen it with other people is tied directly to perfectionism. If I can't do it perfectly, I don't want to do it. And so we find ourselves kind of spinning in circles, or maybe working on things that we shouldn't be working on or spending time doing things that we shouldn't be spending time on. Because we're not doing the things that we need to do. We're not focusing on the task on the thing on the person, maybe that we need to focus on, and we just procrastinate, and it's once you start procrastinating, it's really easy to continue procrastinating.

 Fear is a big one, I'm afraid it's not going to go well, I'm afraid that this is not going to reflect well on me or well on others. But I'm going to say it probably is more about it not going to reflect well on me. I'm just really afraid that I'm not going to be good enough. How are people going to think of me when they see this? And it's not perfect? How am I going to move forward if I'm not perfect? And I'm really afraid that people are going to see me for what I am. Maybe I feel like a fraud because I'm not able to do things perfectly. 

What are some of the antidotes to perfectionism? One thing I saw, believe it or not, in my dentist office a number years ago, strive for excellence, not perfection. And when I read that, that really resonated with me, because I can do excellent, I can do really, really good. If I'm talking to somebody about doing a task, or there's a project or there's an event, get to 85%, because there's always going to be 15% of something you can't predict you can't be on top of. But if you can get to 85%, if you can get to 90% and really have good control over it, and then be flexible enough to deal with those last percent knowing things are gonna go wrong, then you're in good shape, right? And there's been times I've planned things well, and everything goes very smoothly. But that's honestly a rarity, decide, plan and start. So you decide on a course of action, what do I need to do? How do I need to move forward? Then you plan it? What do I need? Do I need to go to the store and get things? Do I need other people's help? And then just start I can delay a task or a project for weeks, when really you sit down to just try to do it? I'll do it. A lot of times, it's even a project that won't take that long, it'll take 10 or 15 minutes, I get it done. Like what was I waiting for? Why was this so hard, even if it's a bigger task, once you get into it and realize it's not so scary, you kind of start building momentum to start dealing with things that might go a lot faster, a lot simpler than it might not go that great. And that's okay, but at least you start at least you made progress. And then just choose to make progress on the project. There's other things that we can procrastinate about having a conversation with somebody, right, those are difficult, but just decide to do it. And I would get a task or something at two or three o'clock as I'm working. I would in the past. I'll do it tomorrow. And I go no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Because then I'm thinking about it all night. So start it. And there's been times that in an afternoon, I've been able to take care of an entire task or really make good progress, send out some emails and have it be in other people's camps so that they need to then respond to me. So once you start it you realize okay, this isn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be.

An antidote to perfectionism, to these expectations that we have on ourselves is laughter. We need to laugh at ourselves. We need to realize what's going on and just chuckle and go, you know what, this is so stupid that I'm so caught up in all of this. I could probably have this done. I could make good progress. I can just get this out. And we just need to laugh because I think sometimes we can take ourselves too seriously though. It's being able to laugh at ourselves and realize, you know, who was I to think I would be perfect. Who am I to put these expectations out on people right and it's okay to laugh. Better to put out something, get it done. as well as it can be done, and move on. And again, sometimes with whatever we're working on, there will be additional revisions or things like that. That's not what I'm talking about. Sometimes we just need to jump in and we just need to laugh. And go. Yeah, that's all right.

I'll get this done, that it's the fate of the world based on this task.

I think we need to be honest, and I think we need to admit that we do have perfectionistic tendencies, at least in some degree, some more than others, we have to just change our expectation to be excellent, not perfect, and just start working and not let it overwhelm us. And we can get these things done, those conversations done, those tasks done.