Are you a perfectionist? Do you want to stop being one? Discover the keys to achieve it

When you do something, do you worry a lot about making mistakes?

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Can't you tolerate criticism because you don't allow yourself to have flaws?

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Do you want to do everything perfectly and spend a lot of time carefully checking the details?

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Does it take you a long time to send an email because you review it over and over again?

In recent years, I have seen the number of perfectionist people who come to my practice grow. This post is dedicated to each and every one of them, so if you read it, you will hear phrases that we always said in therapy ;)

And I'm not surprised at all that there are more and more of us, in a society that prizes perfection: perfect bodies, perfect parents, perfect and quiet children,… We all live under this pressure.

If we add to this a pinch of insecurity, a handful of fear of making mistakes and 100 grams of low self-esteem, we have the perfect recipe for the cake.

The perfectionist considers it a failure to make a mistake or not to do things as they had planned. But what they don't know is that their bar is always set too high. Their level of demand is enormous and the yardstick they use to measure others is not the same one they use to measure themselves. They are unfair to themselves, their expectations are so high that they rarely feel they have measured up. This inability to reinforce themselves for a job well done, this inability to feel satisfied is what little by little erodes their self-esteem.

It's a dog chasing its own tail, the more perfectionist I am, the more demanding and the lower the probability of meeting my expectations and therefore I subtract points from my self-esteem instead of adding them. The lower the self-esteem, the more insecurity and more demand, and so we have fallen into the circle.

Benefits of no longer being a perfectionist:

- Your physical health, and especially your mental health, will improve

- You will feel more satisfied with yourself

- You will feel more confidence and security

- You will optimize your time

- You will finally enjoy doing nothing productive without feeling it's a waste of time

- You will stop being so demanding with others, thus improving your personal relationships

- You will improve your self-esteem

Keys to achieve it

Understand once and for all that perfection does not exist

You are fighting to achieve something you won't reach because it doesn't exist. No matter how many times you go over the email, no matter how much you focus on the details…at some point you will fail and you will feel terrible about it because you dedicated so much time that it's not fair for you to fail like everyone else does (who send an email in less than half a minute).

When you finally understand that no one is perfect, you will understand that you don't need to be perfect to be good at something.

You can't please everyone

Don't go on like this, don't keep trying to be liked by everyone, or to throw the perfect birthday party for all the guests, or the perfect gift because it doesn't exist. There will always be someone who doesn't like you and nothing will happen because you probably don't like them either. You can't throw a perfect party, there will always be someone who complains about something and the perfect gift doesn't exist.

Internalize this: I don't need everyone to like me, I only need to like myself. Much easier this way, right?

Lower your expectations

You will always think you can do more than you really can. You will overload yourself with work that you will end up finishing at the expense of your health. You will also set your bar too high or almost unreachable which you will rarely reach, you will get frustrated and feel like a failure when in the end the result was excellent and everyone congratulates you, but you will keep feeling that you didn't make it. The mistake is that the expectation was too high, because the reality is that your work has been excellent.

What a shame that you can't enjoy your successes!

Limit the time you dedicate to your tasks

Don't review an email more than once or twice, you shouldn't waste time on that. Don't go over the text a thousand times, don't focus so much on details that no one is going to see. You have to be productive, it's also important that you have time left to live.

Clearly define what they ask of you (your boss or your client or whoever); don't always try to give more than they ask for, because you may find that someone tells you: "this isn't what I asked you for".

Lower your level of demand

No one told you that you had to be the perfect mother, the perfect child, the best friend… No one expects as much of you as you do yourself. You demand so much of yourself that you don't have time for anything else. Apply this rule whenever you can: if for me, on a scale of 0 to 10, this is a 5, for the rest of the world it will be a 10, therefore I am going to start being content with a 5.

You won't always be able to give 100% of yourself.

Don't think, do

Such is the need to control everything, that you plan things down to the last detail. Nothing can go wrong and that requires a lot of time and dedication: planning a trip or choosing a brand of coffee can be quite an odyssey. Making a decision can be like performing a somersault, you fill your head with "What ifs"

- What if I choose A and it turns out B is better

- What if I choose B and it turns out C is better

And so, you keep dedicating hours, days and weeks to making a decision that you will never know whether or not it was the best one.

7. Forget about all or nothing

Either I do it perfectly or I don't do it. Either I dedicate 100% or I don't dedicate myself. This inflexible and dichotomous thinking is going to make you miss out on many things. Grays exist and they are just as valid as black and white. You can run to enjoy it and not only to train for a marathon. You will discover that you can do many things with the sole purpose of doing them and nothing more.

Conclusions

In short, there is nothing that gives you more of a sense of failure than a hyperdeveloped sense of perfection.

The good news is that being a perfectionist is not bad, you just need to balance it to make the most of it. If you manage to lower your level of demand, understand that you are not obligated to be liked by everyone or to do everything perfectly, you can become a star. If you stop setting the bar so high and start reaching your goals, you will see how your self-esteem smiles at you and your capacity for enjoyment grows. You can do it; if there is something a perfectionist can do, it's not stopping until reaching a challenge. I achieved it ;)