How can you tell if you are a perfectionist? A perfectionist is someone who holds the underlying belief that perfection can be attained and it should be.
Many people in our world today are perfectionists or have been
perfectionists at some point in our lives. Personally, I’m quite the
perfectionist, always setting the highest standards for myself and never
expecting anything less. In fact, if you are reading this article, you
are probably a perfectionist too, being drawn to the word
“perfectionist” in the title and all!
Are You A Perfectionist?
You can usually spot a perfectionist a mile away, simply because of
the extremist behavior that is exhibited. Here are ten tell-tale signs
on whether you’re a perfectionist or not:
- You are highly conscious and hyper-critical of mistakes. Hence, you have an extremely sharp eye towards details.
- You aim to be the best in everything you do, even if it is something that you are not interested in.
- You spend copious amount of time, right down to the last moment, to perfect something. You would rather sacrifice your well-being (such as sleep, eating time, etc) than let something be less than it can be.
- You set absolute ideals. There is only black and white, no grey.
- You are the harshest critic of yourself. You would beat yourself up over the smallest thing that went wrong, to the extent of being neurotic.
- You mull over outcomes if they did not turn out as envisioned. You wonder why it wasn’t a different outcome, and whether you could have done anything to prevent that.
- You are defensive towards criticism and have a fear of failure because they suggest imperfection.
- You only have the end goal in mind. If you don’t achieve the goal, it really does not matter what happens in the process.
- You have an all-or-nothing approach. If the situation does not allow him/her to achieve the standard he/she laid out, he/she will abandon the task because it does not make sense to spend time on something that he/she is not going to conquer.
- You are very conscious of any situation which might give others the perception you are not perfect.
If you are a perfectionist, you will find the above traits highly familiar to you.
My experience with perfectionism
I used to be quite a neurotic perfectionist when I was younger,
because of my passion towards becoming the best that I can be. All of
the 10 traits you just read above applied me to a tee. My motif in life
was (still is) ‘As long as you set your mind and heart to it, nothing is impossible in this world’.
Whenever there was any flaw or mistake that came in my sight, such as
grammatical or spelling errors, typos, etc, I would flinch. I was always
the harshest critic of myself.
When I started developing websites as a teenager, I would spend late
nights, sleeping just 1-2 hours some days, tweaking my sites to
perfection, from the content, graphics, right up to the syntax itself.
My sites had to look perfect on all different browsers and resolutions.
The works I produce had to be the best conceivable. It was a unbendable,
personal standard I set for myself.
When I was in university, I usually ended up taking over everything
in project work because I wanted everything to match up to the idealized
state I envisioned. I spent a lot of time perfecting tasks, right down
to the little nitty gritty. If it was a presentation, everything had to
be synchronized to a common look and theme, right down to matching font
types, font sizes, colors. If it was a report, all the content, flow and
formatting had to be seamless. There was hardly a time to stop doing
work because it seemed that they could always be improved upon.
Whenever things did not go the way I wanted, I would overcompensate
it by targeting a higher bar the next time round. Whenever I hear people
making statements like ‘humans are not perfect’ or ‘to err is human’, I
would cringe. To me, that was just trying to find an
excuse to make mistakes. My philosophy was that perfection was possible
and as long as we put in all our effort and energy, we would achieve it.
If we did not, it simply meant we did not try hard enough.
It was later on in life that I found that perfectionism was being a
disabler, not an enabler, in my life, as you will find in part-2 of the
series.
What leads to perfectionism?
In general, there are three underlying motivations for perfectionism.
Perfectionism may result due to either one or combination of any of the
three reasons. If you are a perfectionist, you may be able to relate to
one or more of the following.
1. Fierce desire for growth
They expect perfection of themselves. Their perfectionism is the result of an insatiable thirst and desire for growth and
to be the best that one can be. To come anything short would be not to
live up to one’s true potential, which defeats the purpose in living.
2. Social expectations
Their perfectionism comes about because it is socially expected of them.
Family, teachers, coaches, managers and leaders with authoritarian,
dictatorial styles induce perfectionism by drawing a high standard of
benchmark we need to reach and reciprocating failure with forms of
punishment. Failing is equated to being worthless. Schools and
workplaces with a fierce culture of competition and strong emphasis on
performance and achievement are common breeding grounds for
perfectionism. Society and media perpetuate untainted, flawless,
virtual, perfect end states which are subsequently brought to life in
the form of imagery, verbal and sensory cues in advertising, marketing
and idol worship. They create the aspiration towards unrealistic ideals
and instill the belief that such ideals are in fact achievable.
3. Sense of insecurity
For some people, perfectionism may arise out of insecurity of one’s own worth.
People who have faced discrimination of sorts or sidelined since young
develop a sense of inadequacy or void in themselves. This abyss in turn
manifests the desire or need to overtly prove themselves through their
actions and accomplishments. They desire to make a statement about
themselves, whether for themselves or other people around them.
Parting Question: To you, the reader – Are you a perfectionist? What drives you to be one?
Culled.......
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