Last month, my family and I moved to a new home. Although we stayed within the same state, we relocated about two hours away from the place we'd called home for the last 3.5 years. During those years, I built some pretty consistent routines. Even after welcoming my child into the world two years ago, I managed to maintain a fairly stable life. Being a Type A girlie, I love a good list and thrive on tracking progress—maybe a little too much at times.
Recognizing Perfectionism
About five years ago, I started identifying with the term "perfectionist" after my therapist pointed out that many of my behaviors and beliefs didn’t allow much room for mistakes or anything other than, well, perfection.
I know this might sound strange coming from a therapist. "She's a therapist and didn’t recognize perfectionism within herself? Some therapist!" At least that’s what my inner critic said. While I’ve been actively trying to embrace the "good enough" or "done is better than perfect" mentality, there are still a few things that really irk me when I’m not "perfect" with them. The habits I track top that list.
The Habit-Tracking Obsession
I use an app called Habits to track things like my activity, water intake, daily reading goals, etc. I discovered this app a few years ago and have been using it religiously. I think most people have more than enough happening in their lives that trying to remember if they drank one water bottle or two is the last thing anyone has space for daily. Habits has taken over that responsibility for me. So every time I engage in a behavior that’s important to me, I just track it, and voilà—Habits keeps track of it for me. No brainer. It seemed like an obvious thing to implement in my life. I rarely missed a day of my habits (as I like to boast to my husband, who is less consistent than me).
When Life Interrupts
However, during the chaos of our move—running to appointments all over the state and coordinating multiple schedules and activities—it became impossible for me to complete all my habits. My 250+ day streaks of habits broke. A flexible mind might think, "No big deal. Unique circumstances. We’ll get back on it when there’s less to do." Or, as James Clear of Atomic Habits fame would say, "Never miss two days in a row."
For a perfectionist, however, it’s a different story.
Confronting Failure and Embracing Imperfection
Missing a day and losing my streaks triggered a negative spiral in my thoughts. "Failure." "Lazy." "Disappointing." "Wrong." My self-berating went on as I struggled to pick up the habits that had made me feel good and in control before. I lost all the momentum I’d built up from maintaining my habits consistently for so long. And I was shocked by it. Genuinely shocked, which shocked me even more. I understand that things happen, and there’s no way to maintain a habit 365 days a year. If there was, why bother tracking it? …says my logical brain.
So, I spent more than a week feeling sorry for myself.
Yep, you read that correctly. This therapist let herself stay in a slightly negative and hard mindset for more than a week. Therapists are human too.
Getting Back on Track
One day, I was just ready to confront the "failure" and get back on the horse. I started back on my habits as if I hadn’t missed a day. I made myself do them, just like I used to before the move. Then, when I went to track them, I was confronted with the little flames I earned from being "on fire" with my habits—now gone.
I acknowledged my feelings and sat with them as I stared at the screen, looking at the little number 1 next to my habit, where a three-digit number used to be. And you know what? No one else (prior to this blog post) even knew the number had changed. To be honest, it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had taken something meant to be positive for my overall quality of life and turned it into something to be "perfect" at.
The Insidious Nature of Perfectionism
This experience highlighted just how insidious perfectionism can be once it infiltrates your life. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with trying to ensure you drink an appropriate amount of water every day or take care of your mental and physical well-being. But when I was forced to look deeper, I realized that these positive things—and the tracking of them—had become something negative. I had unknowingly made them something that impacted how I viewed myself, rather than just how well I was caring for myself. Hitting my goals at 100% was the only acceptable stat in my mind, even if it was an unrealistic expectation.
Realizing My Humanness
Now, as I sit in my logical and reflective mind, I’m not slipping into the all-or-nothing behavior that often accompanies managing my perfectionist tendencies. Instead, I’m recognizing a blind spot I didn’t know was there. Likely one that no one else would have been able to point out to me. So, what do I do with this realization? What do I do with this information that my perfectionism has been hiding in the background when I thought it was "resolved"? I acknowledge my humanness.
As a therapist, I tell people daily that we are all a work in progress. We are never "done." Yet, a part of my brain definitely thought it cheated the system in this instance. But there’s no cheating the system, and there’s no finish line. So, what five tips would I give to someone else dealing with perfectionism or perfectionistic tendencies?
5 Tips for Managing Perfectionism
Sit with the underlying feelings that your perfectionism is trying to hide. For me, that’s a fear of people seeing all the things wrong with me, pointing them out, and then using them to reject me.
Acknowledge that perfection is incredibly unrealistic. Even the GOAT, Simone Biles, makes mistakes when competing, and that is normal, human, and more than acceptable.
Practice being "bad" at small, "insignificant" things. Whatever that "thing" might be for you, do it. Notice the feelings. Then, when the feelings pass, acknowledge that it has had no impact on the big picture of your life or your worth.
Notice and appreciate the imperfections in the things and people you love in your life. I promise you, imperfection is everywhere if you look close enough.
Find a mantra that helps you move away from the thing you’re trying to perfect. "It doesn’t need to be perfect," "This is good enough," "Done is better than perfect," or whatever you can come up with that allows you to move on with your life.
You Are Enough
You deserve to live a life directed by you, not your inner critic. That doesn’t mean we need to rid ourselves of our perfectionist parts; it simply means that we find a way to work with them. We listen to the goals and insights they offer while also using our grounded selves to decide when enough is enough and when we’re being critical to a detrimental point. You are worthy of all the good things in life because you’re an imperfect human—not because you strive for perfection.
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