Perfectionism
By definition, perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by setting high standards and the inability to settle for anything less than flawless. Accompany this need for perfect with constant self evaluation and critical analysis of multiple aspects of performance, and you end up with a crippling mentality, inevitably ending with unsustainable thoughts and stagnant behavior. Perfectionism leads to an endless and impossible cycle of redoing whatever it may be that you’re striving to be perfect, and ultimately failing because perfection is impossible to find.
Over the duration of our life, we formulate our ambitions by admiring others, and aim to duplicate what we assume is perfection. Our ambitions are ignited by greatness, yet what we try to create ends up being what we would consider mediocrity. We ignore the journey it took to create the end product, and presume the outcome came with ease and little effort, and our inability to emulate such perfection is a downfall we cannot get back up from. We shouldn't value of self worth against our accomplishments, and reflect that against others distorted successes to enlarge what we'd consider failure. Even those who do achieve go through failure to be in a position to highlight their perfect successes. Our perspective is unbalanced by the horrors of our early efforts, just because we haven't seen this from those we admire. Imperfection is a price we cannot avoid paying for an opportunity to do something others will consider spontaneous perfection.
The need to be constantly at our best is exhausting, and quite frankly, unsustainable. The idea of black and white thinking, and either being totally perfect or an utter failure doesn't mirror life to any extent, and shouldn't be a basis for how we value our performance. Although perfectionist behavior can have its advantages; being able to highlight mistakes and learn from where we went wrong, the constant emphasis on our flaws can consequently snowball into much bigger and tougher obstacles to overcome. Constantly fabricating expectations of toxic perfectionism will undoubtedly lead us down roads we’d rather not walk, with research finding strong links between toxic perfectionism and psychological difficulties; such as depression, anxiety and anorexia. As I’ve said, perfectionism can have its advantages, but you should always be able to identify when your motivation to perform at your best turns into distributive ideologies that you can only ever be at your best. The problem doesn't lie with the objective of aiming for perfection, but more that we don't have an accurately redemptive idea of what perfectionism really demands.
Over the duration of our life, we formulate our ambitions by admiring others, and aim to duplicate what we assume is perfection. Our ambitions are ignited by greatness, yet what we try to create ends up being what we would consider mediocrity. We ignore the journey it took to create the end product, and presume the outcome came with ease and little effort, and our inability to emulate such perfection is a downfall we cannot get back up from. We shouldn't value of self worth against our accomplishments, and reflect that against others distorted successes to enlarge what we'd consider failure. Even those who do achieve go through failure to be in a position to highlight their perfect successes. Our perspective is unbalanced by the horrors of our early efforts, just because we haven't seen this from those we admire. Imperfection is a price we cannot avoid paying for an opportunity to do something others will consider spontaneous perfection.
The need to be constantly at our best is exhausting, and quite frankly, unsustainable. The idea of black and white thinking, and either being totally perfect or an utter failure doesn't mirror life to any extent, and shouldn't be a basis for how we value our performance. Although perfectionist behavior can have its advantages; being able to highlight mistakes and learn from where we went wrong, the constant emphasis on our flaws can consequently snowball into much bigger and tougher obstacles to overcome. Constantly fabricating expectations of toxic perfectionism will undoubtedly lead us down roads we’d rather not walk, with research finding strong links between toxic perfectionism and psychological difficulties; such as depression, anxiety and anorexia. As I’ve said, perfectionism can have its advantages, but you should always be able to identify when your motivation to perform at your best turns into distributive ideologies that you can only ever be at your best. The problem doesn't lie with the objective of aiming for perfection, but more that we don't have an accurately redemptive idea of what perfectionism really demands.
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