perfection... is it worth it?

Show of hands – who identifies themselves as a perfectionist?

I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist.

Because striving for perfection is an awesome thing, right?

It helps us want to do well, it helps catapult us into working hard, doing things that are scary.

But ultimately, when we take a step back, perfection isn’t as shiny and wonderful as it first seemed.

For me, striving for perfection brought on a lot of anxiety and stress – what if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to? What if, after pouring my heart and soul into something and nit-picking it until it’s as perfect as I can make it, what if after all that, it flops? Or I still fail? The constant “what will people think” and “how do I measure up” left me exhausted.

I realized I was striving in all the wrong ways and I wasn’t fully enjoying life. Sure I was going through the motions, but I didn’t like what I was doing in my career and striving for everything to be perfect was just sucking any of the remaining fun out of everything.

That’s when I found coaching and this idea that as humans, we can’t be perfect. So it’s not worth chasing. I realized searching for perfection is not life’s goal.

Rather it’s most important to like who I am as a person and authentically put myself out into the world as myself. Once I started paying attention to how I was treating myself, I realized that in fact, I was doing none of that. I realized I was beating myself up all the time. And all for the sake of perfection.

So let's give ourselves some grace today, perfectionists. Let's see if we can notice when we're beating ourselves up. Because that's the first step. Who's with me?