I’m going to be honest, until recently I was one of those people who called myself a perfectionist and would use it as my go to “weakness” in a job interview. But a few weeks ago in my coaching course, I was watching my fellow classmates worry about doing something right and I realized “I just don’t care”. From that point on I started to ask myself: am I actually a perfectionist anymore?
Truth be told, it’s not the first time I’ve heard people talk about their perfectionist tendencies and realized I truly don’t give a shit at all. 😂 And you know what? If I’m honest, I used to take pride in being a perfectionist, because it meant a job well done. It meant I went above and beyond, and held myself to ridiculously high standards no one else could meet, which ultimately made me “better”. As I write this I realize this sounds completely crazy, and yet it was true.
But today I think I’m finally free of perfectionism, I’ve reached the land of “I don’t care”, and I want to reflect a bit on this journey, and how it feels. I’m sure many of us out there can relate to the relentless life perfectionism creates.
Early days of perfectionism
Looking back, my perfectionistic traits were already present in high school. My mom actually laughed at me when I told her I was a perfectionist one day, as if that were impossible! But already as a teenager I remember getting upset and throwing homework in the bin when I got 17/20 on certain topics, so clearly I had high standards for myself. I also pushed myself really hard to study and prepare for my baccalaureate, later studying like crazy for my Masters’ degree. I was stressed as hell for my Masters, studying at all hours, feeling a lot of pressure to do all the coursework and read all the books (I blame one of my professors for that 😅). Sure, I had my moments where I was distracted, mostly my way of rebelling against the pressure others were putting on me, but I think I always cared a lot about doing well. Reflecting on how I behaved during my Masters, it’s no surprise to me that when I finally ended up in a high pressure job at the agency, I started to put even more pressure on myself to do things well and “right”.
Perfectionism and burnout
Needless to say, this relentless perfectionism pushed me right to burnout. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will know I’ve talked a lot about my burnouts and the behaviours that lead me there. Perfectionism was by far one of the biggest culprits when it came to my unhealthy relationship with work, and ultimately my downfall. It’s a bit hard to describe, after all, how do you execute tasks perfectly? Or what is a perfect task?
For me it meant doing everything to the highest standard, in most minute detail, extremely thoroughly and with the utmost care. For example, it might be doing research on a topic for hours to be sure I knew all the ins and outs and could get it right before writing about it. Or it might mean spending hours doing or re-doing a table or a graph to make sure I’d got it just right and gone over the numbers, presented it the best way possible and tried all options until I’d found the best one. Or it might be crafting the perfect email or piece of copy, remembering every detail I’d been told, taking into account all angles, the client’s wishes and what my team members had said… I could go on, but as you might be able to tell, it essentially meant spending huge amounts of time and investing tons of effort into things.
As I said above, I prided myself in this insane level of detail and dedication to my work. I delivered to high standards, I did the “best” work and worked “harder than” others, which meant I delivered quality. And I believed that quality made me stand out and somehow “better than”, as well as placing me in good regard in a meritocracy.
This wasn’t just related to work, in dance too I always wanted to be the best. The best at said style, to have the perfect technique, to be better than everyone else, to reach the level of whoever I held in high regard, to train as much as such and such a person, and so on… This was clearly not just about perfectionism, it was also about not feeling “good enough” and comparing myself to others, both of which are damaging behaviours.
But I learned the hard way this perfectionism wasn’t making me stand out or proving my dedication to others. When I crashed and burned, I had to face the hard and sad realization that no one cared I was pushing myself to such high standards. Worse still, they were accepting sub-par work (by my expectations) from others, and it was totally fine. The disappointment!
As you can imagine I was not only extremely disappointed for myself, I was also really frustrated to see all those “others” churn out shitty work and still get by or even do well. That was the other side of the perfectionism: the high standards I placed on myself I also had for others, and when they didn’t meet them and “got away with it”, it created a lot of resentment which only added to my mental load and emotional exhaustion.
Letting go of perfectionism
Slowly but surely I started a practice of letting go. Once I realized the perfectionism was doing more damage than was necessary, I tried to take a step back and stop pushing myself relentlessly, that was the first step. It started with small things, for example knowing when to stop and not keep on going at something forever. This was mostly a way for me to learn to step back from work and stop pushing myself, but it also forced me to start letting go of perfection. Deciding that enough was enough and it was ok to not keep going for another 5 days… It sounds like a really small thing but trust me, in the beginning that in itself was hard. Then I pushed myself to just send things as they were without overworking them, and being satisfied that I had done enough. Again, “daring” to send things that weren’t perfect, but where I felt I’d put in a good effort.
Most of all I had to practice acceptance. Accepting that I had done enough, perhaps even more than enough. Accepting that no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t going to start winning prizes and accolades for pushing myself above and beyond. Accepting my work was good enough, even without being perfect – a scary thought. It wasn’t an overnight change, I still felt afraid of doing less than perfect work, but it definitely helped.
Observing others
Instead of resenting others I started to observe them. I was actually amazed they could send out this non-perfect seemingly terrible work and still do well. How did they do it? How do they work on something for 30 mins and just send it out? I couldn’t believe it but I so badly wanted to be like that. I also realized they were way more efficient: whilst I was spending hours overworking an article, in 2h they were done. Eventually I realized that not only was it too time consuming, as a freelancer it wasn’t cost-efficient either.
It was also really interesting for me to work in a startup where they had such a thing as an MVP and part of the process was sending things into the world before they were fully baked. I was accustomed to a more traditional way of doing things, but thanks to the startup mentality I realized you can learn through this experience and that external input and feedback helps you make things better. This was a mind blowing concept to me but one that really resonated, sometimes overworking something is counter-productive.
Using others as an example, I practised sending things that weren’t up to my standard of perfection even more. I told myself that if they could do it, so could I. That if they succeeded, then me and my high standards could surely do it too. And crazily enough, it started to work! I tried to motivate myself by telling myself for example things like “a man wouldn’t hesitate” or thinking of a confident person I knew who wouldn’t hold themselves back. This emboldened me to keep on sending imperfect things into the world.
Ultimately, I realized that my perfectionism had been holding me back and I had been hurting myself.
Perfectionism and dance
I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly mention my journey in dance. By developing my freestyle since I arrived in Amsterdam, I learned to be a lot kinder and less judgemental towards myself. Being met by people who welcomed me as I was, who didn’t judge me and supported my development, allowed me to realize that I couldn’t possibly have it all figured out and that it was ok to work it out as I went along. Over time I became way less attached to the outcome, and accepting of the process. I’m on a journey just like everyone else around me. Developing more self-compassion in my dance had a positive impact on the rest of my life as I was able to apply the same mentality elsewhere.
Through freestyling (improvisation) exercises, I also learned that it was more about the process and exploration than following the exercise to the T. I used to really struggle a lot with certain instructions, but by observing others and talking to friends, I realized it was ok to make the exercise my own, so long as I tried.
Being a recovering perfectionist
At a certain point I started to realize “I just don’t care”. I don’t care about what people think, and I care even less about doing things “right” or perfect. That was what happened with my classmates from the coaching course. They were worried about executing a certain exercise right based on the instructions and I realized that I was unattached to it and felt totally fine.
Likewise, I was listening to a couple of friends talk about their perfectionism and how it impacted them and I couldn’t fully resonate with what they were saying. I realized that I care a lot less than I used to and attach a lot less importance to the outcome. Could I have done better? Maybe. Did I try my best? Most definitely! Nowadays I’m able to be content with giving it my best, and recognizing my efforts – a huge improvement over the past.
Of course I still care and still push myself, those traits will never fully go away and I will never be so reckless. But now I finally learned not to let perfect get in the way of good. I believe there is a lot of value in good and “good enough”, and you can learn from it. I’m able to be kinder to myself and recognize a job well done, and I know that due to my perfectionistic tendencies I will always hold myself to high standards.
It’s been really liberating. It’s lifted a huge weight off my shoulders, and ultimately has allowed me to work more freely and creatively too.
What is your experience with perfectionism? I’d love to know. If you want help breaking out of some perfectionist tendencies or other habits, then get in touch! Coaching can help.
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