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Read the following items. Do you agree or disagree?
If you don’t expect much out of yourself, you will never succeed.
When I am working on something, I cannot relax until it is perfect.
If I ask someone to do something, I expect it to be done flawlessly.
If I do not set the high standards for myself, I am likely to end up a second-rate person.
I set higher goals than most people.
My best just never seems to be good enough.
My performance rarely lives up to my standards.
The better I do, the better I am expected to do.
If I do not do well all the time, people will not respect me.
Even when I do something very carefully, I often feel that it is not quite right.
If you agreed with some or most of these items, you may have perfectionism tendencies.
What is perfectionism?
Generally, there are four key aspects of perfectionism:
excessively high standards for performance or striving for flawlessness
all-or-nothing thinking (i.e., either you do this perfectly, or else it sucks and is worthless)
rigidity and compulsivity in pursuing these impossible standards or state (i.e., when the situation or task does not warrant it)
evaluating the failure to reach these impossible standards negatively, thus seeing the failure as a threat to one’s self-worth (i.e, you are “less worthy” as a human being because you have failed to reach these standards)
Let me tell you a short anecdote about perfectionism from my own life. One of my friends just had his baby, and I wanted to send the baby a book. She was probably 8 months at the time.
Now, I do not have a child of my own, and don't know what books are good or appropriate for an 8-month old, so I first crowd source on Facebook to ask for the best baby book.
When I got a list from the parents, I went to look at the reviews on Amazon and aimed for books with at least 4-stars only, and narrowed down the list.
That wasn't enough, I then found that you can view videos of people reading the book out loud, page-by-page for each book. So I watched the video of all the books being read.
Then I wanted to make sure the books were somehow "educational" or taught some "valuable lesson" vs one of those books that seem soft and fluffy to touch and really seemed boring.
I also wanted to get a book that was interesting for the parents to read.
All this took about 3 hours on a Friday night for me to do, and even at the end I was torn between what books to get and felt so much angst in my mind and stressed out whether I made the right choice. And this was just a book for a baby who can't even read yet!
In case you're curious, I ended up with these two books:
Perfectionism is broken down into two sub-types:
1. Excellence-seeking perfectionism (items 1-5 above)
This is where one imposes excessively high standards of performance or strives for flawlessness on oneself or others. The source of this “motivation” comes from within.
There is a rigidity and compulsivity in pursuing these impossible standards or state (i.e., when the situation or task does not warrant it)
Evaluating the failure to reach these impossible standards negatively, thus seeing the failure as a threat to one’s self-worth or others’ self-worth (i.e, you and others are “less worthy” as a human being because you and others have failed to reach these standards)
Moreover, even if this type of perfectionist actually achieve their goals, they don’t end up feeling satisfied. They would instead set even higher standards for the future.
2. Failure-avoiding perfectionism (items 6-10 above)
This type of perfectionists are more focused on the possibility of failing to meet the high standards, and can have obsessive aversion to failure.
They believe that if they don’t achieve flawlessness, there will be some kind of negative or deleterious consequence or they will fail again.
Additionally, the source of the high standards for these people may come from the outside; they assume that others expect very high standards of performance from them at all times.
They also believe that if they don’t meet these standards supposedly set by others, others will view them as having lower worth as a person - others only like or respect them because of their ability to perform perfectly. So their sense of self-worth is conditionally tied to how they think others want them to perform, vs being worthy for just being human.
So is perfectionism good or bad?
It depends on what sub-type you are, and what outcome(s) you're looking at!
Results below are based on a meta-analysis of 48 studies with a sample of 11,898 people by Harari, Swider, Steed, and Breidenthal (2018)
*Thanks to my friend Dr. Sana Rizvi for sharing this paper with me!
**I tried to make the following a table, but who knew Mailchhimp is not table friendly! 🙄
Excellence-Seeking Perfectionism - The GOOD and “GOOD"
Moderately positively correlated with the following two outcomes, which means that the higher you score as an excellent-seeking type, the more of the following you may have:
Conscientiousness (Personality dimension characterized by one’s dependability, achievement-orientation, and perseverance; rho = .37)
Motivation (Internal/external factors that initiate action or work-related effort; rho = .38).
Not significantly correlated to the following three outcomes, which means that the higher you score as an excellence-seeking type, you may score high or low on the following. Thus, it can be argued that it is “GOOD” that you may or may not experience the following:
Burnout (Prolonged reaction to chronic stressors (interpersonal and emotional) encountered at work)
Stress (Experience when there insufficient psychological resources to cope with demands, for which something is at stake)
Depression (Loss of self-esteem and incentive, associated with low perceive probability of attaining significant life goals)
Excellence-Seeking Perfectionism - The BAD and “BAD"
Not significantly correlated to Job/Task Performance (Work behaviours that affect organizational productivity; rho = .07), the higher you score as an excellence-seeking type, you may or may not score highly on task performance. So it’s “BAD” that you may be concerned about high standards, but then you may or may not perform at a high level anyway.
Positively correlated to the following two outcomes, which means that the higher you score as an excellence-seeking type, it is more likely that you may experience the following:
Workaholism (Compulsion to work incessantly and think about work even when not at work; rho = .16).
Anxiety (Negative, highly aroused affect (emotion) related to anticipation of a threat (physical or psychological; rho = .11).
Failure-Avoiding Perfectionism - The GOOD and “GOOD” - There is NONE 😱
Failure-Avoiding Perfectionism - The BAD and “BAD"
Negatively correlated with the following two outcomes, which means that the higher you score as a failure-avoiding type, the lower you may be on the following:
Conscientiousness (rho = -.14)
Emotional Stability (Personality dimension characterized by a lack of anxiety, hostility, depression, and personal insecurity. This is the inverse of Neuroticism; rho = -.42)
Not significantly correlated to the following two outcomes, which means that the higher you score as a failure-avoiding type, you may score high or low on the following. Thus, it can be argued that it is “BAD” that you may be worried about not failing, but then you may or may not have the following to reach your standards anyway:
Motivation (rho = .04)
Job/Task Performance (rho = -.04)
Strong and moderately positively correlated with the following four outcomes, which means that the higher you score as a failure-avoiding type, it is more likely that you may experience the following:
Workaholism (rho = .56)
Depression (rho = .42)
Anxiety (rho = .42)
Stress (rho = .47)
Burnout (rho = .34)
So it appears that there are some GOOD things that come out of being an excellence-seeking perfectionist. But remember there are actually only two solidly GOOD things that are related to this type of perfectionism, so in general it's still not all good anyway...
However, it appears that it’s all around BAD NEWS BEARS for being a failure-avoiding perfectionist.
But I'm not here to scare you! The point of this is to become aware of your (or others') tendencies, recognize that this is ok that you may have perfectionistic tendencies as you are human, and there are ways to lessen its grip on you to live more freely and peacefully 😌See some strategies below.
Today's Action
If you think you may have perfectionism tendencies, especially the failure-avoiding-related items, try the following. Note that if you are a manager or partner of someone who has perfectionistic tendencies, you can also use some of the following to help them.
Ask "In what areas of my life may I be perfectionistic?"
Then ask yourself "How has perfectionism helped me in that area of life?"
But also "How has perfectionism hindered me in that same area of life?" (think about the excessively high standards, striving for perfection/flawlessness, rigid adherence to these standards, fear of failure, thinking that others will lose respect of you if you don't achieve excellence)
Ask “Instead of 100%, what would it be like to achieve 90%? That extra 10%, what’s the value add that I put in? Is the return on investment of that extra time worth it?"
If you are a super-perfectionist, start with "What would it be like to achieve 99%?" and go down 1% at a time #theperfectionismisreal
Face your fears about not being perfect. Write down a list of "the worst things that will happen if I stop being a perfectionist".
Go over each item on the list and ask yourself how realistic it is. Chances are that it is not very realistic. Then write down a more realistic view of what you fear.
Catch yourself in the act of saying perfectionistic things to yourself and change your self-talk to be more gentle and self-accepting.
For example, change “I am a failure because I failed at this goal” to “I am angry at this failure, but I am still a good person."
Stop basing your self-esteem on external accomplishments and others’ perceptions of you. Instead make a list of positive characteristics you value about yourself that are there regardless of your performance on a specific task.
Set realistic goals that you can accomplish in the amount of time you have. Pat yourself on the back for even small steps toward a goal.
If you are not sure what a “realistic” goal is, check-in with a friend or colleague or your boss who are non-perfectionists for feedback.
Put time in your schedule for "non-productive" free time, just to relax and get away from the pressure to always be producing.
Note: As a recovering perfectionist myself, I hate the term “relax” (is clearing out my inbox “relaxation”?). So instead, I use the term “recovery” that is used by athletes who recover intentionally so that they perform better once they get back to work.
Or another analogy is “defragmenting your hard drive”. Think of your brain as the hardware (i.e., you computer) and you need to, from time to time, “defragment the disk” to clear out some tangled up shit in your mind so you can think better next time.
Practice accepting imperfection in others, and let them know you care about them a lot even though they are not perfect.
Bonus: Intentionally make small mistakes like wearing unmatching socks or dialing a phone number incorrectly to relieve the pressure of having to be perfect.
Which one(s) are you trying? Share it with me or your friends or colleagues!
Note: Most of these are from Saint Mary’s University Counselling Centre website, adapted from Dr. Glenn Hirsch's “An Imperfect Look at Overcoming Perfectionism"
I leave you with this quote popularized by Voltaire:
“Perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Until next time!
~Pylin
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P.P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Let me know if you love a topic, don’t like a topic, want to hear about a certain topic. I’m all about learning from others and connecting! Email link below or pylin@drpylin.com