Managing perfection sounds like a task that requires way too much perfection.
If you listened to my podcast Why so perfect, here is how to not to be so perfect. For those of you who are perfectionists, you may find this overwhelming.
I have been sharing in my podcasts lately as I believe in order to connect with people it is important to identify and demonstrate my own flaws. We are only human so U share with you my humanness. I find that when we as practitioners and therapists raise awareness of how to create change, many of us take on this perfect exterior and that really does cause me a lot of discomfort as I do find that overwhelming as if I must be perfect to practice my craft and create vlogs and podcasts.
That has been my stumbling block, overthinking the simplicity of what I am setting out to do, which is in itself a great big deal changing the world one thought at a time.
But how on earth can that even be possible.
Well, I start with those who fight and battle wrestle and choke at their own perfectionist behaviours
Firstly, you must admit to yourself that you are a perfectionist and recognise that such a acknowledgment does not mean that you think you are perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
People who believe themselves to be perfect are not perfectionists, they are simply put, arrogant or with some deep-rooted insecurity that they have to minimise themselves to be a thing that they clearly are not in order to maximise themselves, but that detail is for another podcast.
In order to stop perfecting the art of kindness is necessary to be applied, kindness to yourself allows you to be kind to others, but firstly really deep inner kindness is what I am actually talking about, being compassionate. I have a podcast on that too if you don’t quite know what that means to be compassionate.
Perfectionists are not compassionate towards themselves in fact the unrelentingly high standards make it impossible to be kind to themselves, or we should I openly correct myself.
The crown of perfecting in order to be approved of or accepted was long crafted in a history of what was either continued failure or fear of failure or the high standards of the others placed on us. For me, it was not so much the standards placed on me but the failures that brought me to where I am today.
When failure is the fear the need to be perfect seems to eliminate failure so perfectionists strive for that need to be perfect not because they believe that they are better than most people, but they have the fear of failure and what that failure means about them.
See we attach meaning to ourselves our acts our thoughts, when these acts and thoughts, and behaviours are simply by-products of what we really think and feel about ourselves.
Therefore, kind ness is a necessary must, when we are kinder to ourselves we release the fear of failure and the need to be perfect by first reducing the harsh negative self-talk that we have constantly going over in our heads. Those thoughts often take the shape of either someone in our lives who was particularly punitive towards us or something we picked up during our development and we repeat it over and over and over again.
I remember being told by a teacher at school that I was not going to get very far in life as I wasn’t that bright. Thanks Warwick Secondary school in Peckham, teachers have a way of embedding themselves in our psyche. We strive so hard to get past these thoughts, but we can’t help but believe them. So to first start with dealing with that voice that self-talk, I have a podcast on self-talk too. Get more compassionate with how you speak and treat yourself, and no I am not the self-love brigade telling you to take a nap or have a massage. I am talking about the words and ideas that you tell yourself the way in which you speak to yourself.
Take your time with yourself and allow yourself to make the mistakes that are often made by human beings without the harsh judgment or fear of what it may mean if you do fail. You are only human, failing is a pat of life. You didn’t just get up and learn to walk, crawl, chew or talk perfectly in one try. You had many attempts until you were able to carry it out in a smooth motion f.
I used to have a really bad stutter when I was young it lasted until I was about 20 that was all I ended to recognise that I was simply not perfect, not good enough and not going to make it in any shape or form. But such a story simply was not true, my need to be perfect had me stuttering even more and I found words such as and but if simply debilitating, how on earth was I ever going to do anything if I had to avoid and the if and but. I remember a song my siblings used to sing to me to make fun of my stutter, if was by New Edition called Cool it now, they remade it to slow it down as it was funny for them but stuck it my mind as a point to be taken that I simply was not right.
But the truth is I did need to cool it down and not be so hard on myself and simply allow myself to be a human being. The compassion works with things such as this as saying harsh things to myself did not help at all. In fact, any perfectionist knows that any kind of harshness inwards may help to push you and keep you determined but soon becomes the spike in that rod that we use to beat our own backs. Compassion says to put the rod down, you don’t need to suffer internally. Remember Pain is evitable, and suffering is optional. When you suffer you are the cause and the root of that discord. The pain will pass if you let it without causing your own suffering. Perfectionists tend to suffer internally all the while portraying to the whole entire world that they are simply just fine, just right, just perfect.
I absolutely hate suffering, I have done so much of it in my life I simply cannot foresee me exposing myself to suffering as it just does not make any sense. However, the prickly head of perfecting came back into me and in relation to my output my work online all of a sudden I was stunted by perfection. The fear of approval and acceptance came fast thick and furious. Every single one of us have an experience of what is happening to us for us and in us, that is detailed as our story our truth. Facing your truth and giving yourself unconditionally acceptance, compassion about your experience is a must. This is what brings you out of your flight and fight freeze. I know I talk about that a lot but when you are a perfectionist, you are living in the threat detect and protect mode, fear of the exposure fear of being the fraud fear of being all the negative things you try so hard to get way from in your own head.
How to overcome this is to first organise the goal and then task the steps within the goal, stay only within the task, and relate it to the time that is necessary. When we seek perfection we stop relating it to the task and then get sidetracked then we become overwhelmed and stuck in our procrastination of how perfect it needs to be in order to complete and meet the goal not to be perfect.
Repeat in your mind, there is no need to seek perfection but instead strive for the excellence that allows us to make the mistakes and be forgiving when we make mistakes and possibly, even fail. As that failure enables us to learn to pick ourselves up and continue recognising that we are only human.
Recently I have taken on another venture in my career path as I will be lecturing on a counseling course for an institution soon. The perfectionist in me wants to strive and do everything and add more, but that is not humanly possible for me to give it all my time and effort. The goal is set, my reduction in face to face therapy has to be undertaken I order to give me the allocated time and space I need to organise the lectures, so I have begun to reduce a single day in the week in order to cease working a full week to enable my up and coming venture. This was a difficult experience for me as I had all the thoughts of letting people down, not being able to see as many clients, and not being as what I perceive as productive as I can be. But that is just an entangled thought of trying to be perfect and do way too much.
The art of doing too much is a burden of the battle of wills, which will, will prevail. As a perfectionist, the will is to do it all and that leads to exhaustion.
Take it simple, take a task and simply do the task, there is no need to keep fighting the format of how perfect it must be. Just do it as Nike say. Generate the goal task the goal and execute the structure. When perfectionism raises it ugly head knock it down with the goal and virtue of the task in hand and not that it has to be perfect. Perfection is not the goal of us as human beings, production, creativity, and interaction have been the driving force for our species from the beginning of the first creation of the wheel which brought us productivity, creation, and interaction. Bring those virtues to the forefront of your goal orientation and don’t stray from the path, perfection is a distraction.
