Give Up Being Perfect

By Alice O'Brien

Churchview Therapies, Millstreet

Have you ever observed someone else’s energy and wondered where they get it from? Have you ever compared someone to the proverbial Duracell Bunny and watched them keep working on something long after you have called it a day. Bet you chastised yourself, thinking you should have done more - but have you considered that the other person could have done less? Maybe what drives them is not actually a good work ethic but a need for perfectionism that is not healthy for them.

Perfectionism is not always about being perfect. It is often driven by a feeling of not being good enough, of falling short. Psychologist Thomas Curran covers this when he talks about ‘deficit thinking’ - the thinking that we are never good enough; that if we just keep going, we will reach a better version of ourselves. When we find that version of ourselves we will finally see ourselves as being acceptable, lovable even. Not only do we judge ourselves harshly with this type of thinking, we also fear judgement from others so we set unrealistically high expectations for ourselves - hence the over-working, the severe attention to details and the continuously checking and re-checking - even after everyone else has stopped.

So, how do we stop this pull towards being ‘perfect’? Well, we can learn to hear our inner-critic and separate ourselves from it. After-all, the inner critic is our thoughts and we know that all our thoughts are not fact. Sometimes our thoughts tell us lies, tell us we are not good enough when we know that we are. Another thing we can do is to start practicing self-compassion. We do this be treating ourselves with kindness, by noticing our strengths and praising them and forgiving any mistake we may have made.

So, when we stop, take a breath and see our strength, then we can see that we are good enough. We can see that our best is enough. Then we can step off the hamster wheel of perfectionism and enjoy life a bit more.