When ‘good enough’ is more than perfect

Posted on October 14th, 2021

Ever felt the urge to strive to be perfect? You focus on every little detail and work long hours on something to get it just right. Is there really an end point to this perfectionism? The difficulty with perfectionism is that it feeds itself into a very unhelpful cycle. Our overly high standards which we continue to struggle to meet, maintain feelings of dissatisfaction when we cannot achieve them. This further leads us into more perfectionist behaviours.

Often the reason why people engage in perfectionism is because they perceive it as a helpful tool to better themselves. They have the perception that having higher standards will help to increase productivity, improve quality of work and limit mistakes. Further to this, there is a belief that if they can reduce the potential to fail they will have more chances of achieving their goals. However, is setting these high standards and engaging in perfectionist behaviours really all that helpful?

Perfectionism can impact on your self-worth when you continue to not reach these (possibly unachievable) standards, leading to feelings of failure. In some cases it could even lead to less productivity, procrastination and in a worse case scenario a reason to give up on what it is that you are striving to achieve.

How you behave with perfectionist traits

Set extremely high standards
Judge your self-worth on your ability to achieve your unrealistic standards
Overcompensating – sacrifice your own wellbeing at any cost to achieve your standards
Excessive list making and organisation which impacts on your time to get tasks done
Excessive checking and re-doing things which can impact on completion of tasks
Procrastinate and putt off doing things for fear of not meeting standards
Avoid doing things all together for fear of not meeting your own standards
Connect mistakes with failure – avoid making mistakes at all cost to reduce feelings of failure and as a result missing opportunities to grow.

How you think with perfectionist traits

Setting unrelenting standards – overthinking your standards and making them higher if they have been achieved in the past
Difficulties identifying if a standard is unrealistic – you conclude that you need to try harder to meet the standard rather than accepting that the standard is too high
All or nothing thinking – You conclude that you are either a success or a failure. There is no in between or ability to differentiate between what you can do good enough and what you could work more on.
Catastrophisation – you blow the consequence of not getting things perfect out of proportion
Underlying rules and assumptions – You have fixed rules such as ‘the job is not done until it is completed perfectly’ or ‘I must work harder and get more done today to perfect this project’.

How to reduce perfectionism

Become aware of your tendencies to perfect things
Learn to understand what your perfectionism is feeding
Identify what your level of perfectionism is, then work on adjusting your standards to a “good enough” level
Attempt to focus on the things that you do well or the positives in a situation
Re-frame your self-talk and reduce ‘all or nothing thinking’ (if I don’t get this perfect I am a complete failure) or ‘catastrophisation’ (if I don’t get this perfect, no one will ever employ me)
Experiment when you do fail something and practice allowing yourself to sit with the feeling of failure and reframe this as a learning opportunity
Determine your values and life priorities and ensure that you’re living a balanced life – not spending all of your time perfecting your projects
Focus on meaning rather than perfectionism
Find something to move on with to ensure you don’t check your work excessively

If you require further assistance with addressing your perfectionist traits you may benefit from individual therapy. Get connected with a Psychologist today.

https://www.rockypsych.com.au/