Are you a perfectionist? Do you struggle with perfectionism?
A quick test to tell if you’re a perfectionist
If you aren’t sure whether you are a perfectionist, let’s do an exercise. Close your eyes and imagine a row of crayons lining up perfectly side by side on the table in front of you, except one of them is out of place, it’s slightly ajar. It doesn’t perfectly line up with other crayons. How do you feel? Do you not care, feel like you want to push it back into place, or feel a wave of anxiety over you? If you feel a wave of anxiety over you, you may be a perfectionist.
This is by all means, not a standardized test on perfectionism so take it with a grain of salt.
Table of Contents
What is a perfectionist?
Rough definition
A perfectionist is a person with the tendency to do everything perfectly. They feel anxious when things aren’t done “perfectly”. Notice I put a quote around “perfectly” because “perfect” means different things to different people.
Different perceptions of “perfect”
To someone else, this article is already perfect and to other bloggers, they may think this post would never be perfect enough to be posted on a blog.
The tendency to…
We all define “perfect” differently but a perfectionist has the tendency to want things to be done exactly to their standard without any error.
There are many different levels of perfectionism but it all comes down to the idea of needing things to be done extremely well.
Why it’s not good to be a perfectionist?
Trouble with finishing something
It’s not good to be a perfectionist because perfectionists may have trouble accomplishing tasks as they may think it’s not good enough. It’s not uncommon to see a perfectionist who works slow.
Trouble with starting something
A perfectionist may also face trouble when starting projects. They may spend a lot of time worrying about how to approach a certain project when all they really needed to do was to start. They’ll figure it out along the way.
When you’re a content creator, this is obviously not a good thing. You don’t want to be a perfectionist because you may get nothing done or find it hard to start creating content.
What is a lazy perfectionist?
A lazy perfectionist is a term used to describe those who are lazy because they are perfectionistic. They want everything to be done perfectly so it causes them great anxiety and stress to start something. They may put it off until later making other people think that they are lazy.
How to overcome perfectionism?
To overcome perfectionism, there are a few things we can do.
1. Know that you’re worthy even if your content isn’t perfect
Childhood experience
Some perfectionists may be a perfectionist because of what they’ve been through as a child. Maybe there was an overly strict parent or an overly strict school system that don’t allow room for any mistakes.
A flawed school system
It’s a wonder how not everyone is a perfectionist given the current school system. You’re told to memorize things that are useless. In the real world, it’ll be more practical and accurate to refer to resources.
Instead, we’re to memorize all the elements on the periodic table, the formula for calculating how fast a feather falls to the ground, the elusive quotes some long-dead person said which by the way gives no context and doesn’t further your understanding of the subject matter.
The result of a flawed school system
It’s things like this that can cause you to become a perfectionist. We must do everything perfectly at all times, can’t forget any details, no misspellings, no room for any errors. We may often as kids build our self-esteem on our academic achievements and feel a sense of worthlessness when we didn’t perform as well as we want to on an exam.
You don’t have to do everything perfectly to be worthy of love or to prove that you can be an authority figure in your niche.
You should strive to put out high-quality works but you don’t have to release perfect content with the perfect combinations of words, perfect shots, perfect transitions, etc in order to bring value to your audience. Leave yourself room for error and be okay with errors.
There is room for errors in success
There are plenty of high-quality blogs posts out there are bring its blog owner lots of page views every month even when it’s got 1–2 slight misspellings 5 paragraphs in.
2. Just start
It can be hard to start something as a perfectionist because you want it to be done well. Somebody else who doesn’t care about the result and their performance as much may not have this issue when it comes to starting a project.
The best thing you can do is just start. As a blogger, that means start writing without thinking too much about how it’ll turn out. You can always go back and fix things. It doesn’t have to be perfect in draft form.
3. Be realistic about your goals
When we set goals that are too ambitious and not based on reality or within our capacity, we may experience a lot of stress that can be hard to handle and can put us at risk of mental stress.
Perfectionists sometimes have this tendency to set goals that are way too big and grand for them to achieve within a realistic time frame. This causes them to work extra hard and be even more perfectionistic about their projects.
Be realistic about your goals so you won’t have to feel like you have to do things perfectly all the time. It leaves room for you to adjust your plan.
4. Understand the side effects of perfectionism
The following are just some of the side effects that a perfectionist has to face:
- Stress
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Burnout
- Suicidal tendency
- OCD
- Low self-esteem
- Insomnia
- Eating disorders
- Mental meltdowns
- Trouble with maintaining relationships
- Low moods
Understanding the real physical and psychological implications of perfectionism can cause one to be more conscious of their behavior.
5. Do it for yourself, not for anybody else
Some of us are perfectionists because we want to impress somebody. It could be our parents, our crush, our enemy, the people who doubted us before, etc.
In order to impress somebody or to make someone proud, we falsely believe that must do things perfectly all the time to be worthy of admiration, praise, and for someone to admit their fault.
If you don’t do it for yourself you’ll find yourself burning out and all that hard work would be in vain because you didn’t really do it out of passion, you did it to get a certain reaction from others.
Opinions are abundant, perception of a person’s performance and capability is also subjective, we must separate ourselves from the judgments of the world to live our lives to our own terms or we may risk dying before truly living for ourselves. There are few things worst than wasting your life to build a vision of yourself with the sole purpose of getting praise or acknowledgment from others.
If you’re a perfectionist, think about whether there’s anyone you are trying to impress. If so, work to change that. Do what you want to do and do it as well as you want to without fearing how it may be perceived by anybody else.
6. Don’t rely on anyone for your source of confidence and self-esteem
This is the idea that when you let someone’s opinion of you become what drives your confidence and what deprives you of confidence, you give people the power to destroy you mentally and psychologically.
You may feel the urge to do things perfectly to make someone jealous or make someone admire you or be proud of you. Relying on someone else’s treatment of you to determine self-esteem is a recipe for disaster, one that will most likely cause you to be burned out and experience a loss of identity.
7. Give yourself time to rest
Many mistaken productivities to be working 24 hours a day and barely taking any break. You must give yourself time to rest. Resting is a part of being productive. If you don’t take care of yourself and your body, you may find yourself ill. That’ll mean time off to recover and lost time that you could’ve used for something.
8. Have the ability to laugh at yourself
Having the ability to laugh at yourself is important. Imagine someone finding a misspelling on a blog post you made, you could laugh it off and think I can’t believe I typed in “cat” instead of “car”, or you could let it get to you. Allow yourself room for mistake means when you do make a mistake, you’re able to look at it not as a sign of failure but as an opportunity to get some laughs in. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
9. Know that being a perfectionist is a waste of time
Being a perfectionist is totally a waste of time. There are a lot of “Content creators” out there that will never post anything to their accounts or blog because they don’t think it’s good enough.
Yes, you should strive to get good content out but at some point, making it better won’t attract more viewers.
You’ll find a lot of successful content creators out there have typos in their blog posts, have editing errors in their videos, and have misspoken things in their podcasts before.
Being a perfectionist is a waste of time. You can save so much time by not requiring everything to be done perfectly.
That video is fine, go release it. That blog post is fine, go post it on your blog.
Final thought
Some people have the tendency to be a perfectionist despite whatever upbringing they had. The good thing is that perfectionism can be treated with a simple change in mindset and perspective.
I hope you can get past the barrier you have as a perfectionist and start doing what you couldn’t before. Don’t live in the reality of self-made restriction that simply doesn’t exist to the rest of the world.
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