A year ago, I read a story about an American student who was struggling with depression. The poor guy was under pressure to get the best grade in a course – and that stress was actually self-inflicted. He worked hard to achieve his goal, and when it finally happened, instead of being happy, he declared that the grade was just an indicator of how much of a failure he was as a person. His attitude was: “If I were perfect, I wouldn’t have to work so hard to get the best grade!”
How many of you can relate to this student's story? How many times have you thought about how a job simply has to be perfect, because if it's not done perfectly, it's not good? And how did that make you feel? Constantly searching for perfection, we can't be completely satisfied with ourselves and our work. Because even when we achieve that satisfaction, it's short-lived because something else that we need to do or a benchmark that we need to catch up with very quickly appears. This is how we fall into the trap we set for ourselves - we think that a "perfect" result will bring us the much-desired happiness, and even when we achieve it, we are dissatisfied.
As the old saying goes: perfection does not exist. Worn out, but absolutely true.
What if we changed our thinking a little? What if greece whatsapp data instead of “it has to be perfect,” we said “it has to be good enough”? I was introduced to the concept of “good enough” a few years ago, and it completely changed my perspective on the quality of my work. The idea behind it is to admit to myself that it’s perfectly okay to just be consistent with your goals and not follow them 100% at every moment of your life. Honestly, that’s impossible, and over time it only makes us unhappier, more anxious, and more depressed.
The essence of perfectionism can be reduced to the following sentence: perfectionists know that perfection is impossible to achieve, but despite this, perfection still drives them to try. Perfectionism does not mean being perfect, but feeling perfect. And this feeling gives them temporary relief from some other, more painful feeling. All the behaviors that we can see in perfectionists are actually some kind of attempt to “fix” what is imperfect in them.
The statistics are not exactly in favor of perfectionism either:
Perfectionism has increased by 33% in the last quarter century.
More than 70% of young people who committed suicide did so because they had a habit of creating extremely high expectations for themselves.
For perfectionists, in their desire to find the perfect partner, it happens that 33% of them end up not being satisfied with that relationship.
Almost 30% of students may have difficulty with depression, and perfectionism has been shown to be highly correlated with these symptoms.
The root of perfectionism often lies in having above-average high expectations (of ourselves and others). It often happens that we also have high standards of quality in our work. What does this mean? When we strive for perfection, we usually have completely different views on work and work from others, and these views are often unattainable. Others are then not good enough, superficial, and do their work half-heartedly or insufficiently – which is a trigger for unpleasant emotions and a cause of conflicts.