Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Do you need to be perfect or are you perfect as you are right now?

I am walking down the road and looking at the people coming towards me. I am surprised by the amount of women who are obviously ‘Botoxed’ and have fillers creating that ‘trout pout’ look. To me they look ugly and disfigured but I realise that to them they are on a path to creating what they see as the perfect version of themselves. As I think about it this striving for the perfect body assumes that the body is imperfect to begin with, that worries me.

The problem is that we don’t celebrate imperfection – perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

When we drive towards perfection it affects all that we think, feel and do. Being a perfectionist eventually becomes a fools errand because we can never achieve it, the state of perfection. It is good to be particular about things and to get things as right as we can but, as soon as we step into perfectionism we are heading for failure and with that comes depression, frustration, anxiety, anger And even physical or mental illness.

If the perfectionist drive is towards yourself it may involve constant self criticism for not being good enough in the way you look, the way that you perform in your job, relationship, friendships and so on.

We have even started testing our children at very early ages with Sats tests that, for many will confirm just how imperfect they are.

The perfectionist mind set includes:

Black-and-white thinking
So that anything less than 100% perfection is a failure. 99% is never good enough
For many, especially males, the need to seek help from others will just show my imperfection and weakness.

The anxiety of Catastrophising
Like all forms of anxiety perfectionism can lead us to project forward to futures that my never happen and to live them in the present as though they have.
The fear of making a mistake in front of my peers the fear of upsetting others can lead to inaction to maintain our safety.

Negative scripting
Deciding before an event that you will fail. Knowing that your presentation, assignment will be terrible, believing that you actions will be criticised. This often leads to high levels of performance anxiety, generalised fear and even social phobia and isolation, avoiding making friends and going out or meeting with others.

Ought, should and must
These words, perhaps with the addition of “can’t” are often related to a preconception of perfection that either I am not up to, or even that I don’t want to do, but I feel that to do the right thing or to be the ‘perfect’ person, I have to do it.

Body perfectionism
As I mentioned at to outset the need to have nose jobs, face lifts, boob jobs, trout pout, tattooed eyebrows, or even tattoos come to that, all these things start from the point of view that my body is imperfect and that I need to do things to make it perfect. Often the need to change the body becomes addictive as it is never quite the perfection that we are seeking and more and more adjustments are required.

The response to perfectionism
When we begin to define ourselves as an imperfect person the drive towards perfectionism takes us one of two ways. Either we work ourselves into the ground through fear and anxiety in a constant bid to get it right in the eyes of others and to be seen as a good, intelligent, perfect person or we fall into the opposite camp of procrastination. Many perfectionists develop chronic procrastination as a way of giving up and stepping out of the stress and anxiety.

OvercomIng perfectionism

Rational realistic thinking
Adults with perfectionism are often very self-critical of themselves and need to replace their self-critical perfectionistic thoughts, feeling and statements with those that are more rational, realistic and helpful. This is often called ‘reframing’.

Positive affirmations – Positive self-talk
A good practise of reframing your thoughts and feelings is to repeat helpful positive self-statements regularly to yourself. Even if you do not believe what you are saying right away, if you do enough repetitions you will eventually turn your positive rational, realistic thoughts into new habits, that will help overcome all of your negative self-talk.

Some examples of positive affirmations:
“No one needs to be perfect”
“My best is good enough”
“Getting things wrong does not mean that I’m stupid or a failure”
“I am like everyone else”
“Everyone is allowed to make mistakes”
“I do not need to be pleasant all the time”
“Everyone has a bad day sometimes”
“It’s okay that some people don’t like me”
“No one is liked by everyone”
“I love and approve of myself”

(© AnxietyBC and Louise Hay)

The most important attitudes to have to both yourself and to others is compromise and tolerance

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder
We are all perfect as we are. Whatever age, size, shape, colour, ethnicity, religion, culture and so on, we are all perfect.

Take care and be happy with you as you are right now

Sean x

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