Perfectionism – The Deadly Disease of the Mind
“Hi,
my name is Sean. I’m a recovering
perfectionist. And I’ve been clean for 23
months now.”
Let’s
be honest. Perfectionism is like a mental
disease. It will ruin your business, and
possibly your happiness. It has the power to
destroy your dreams, to cause you unnecessary
overwhelm and heartache, and to make you quit
seeking whatever it is you’re after.
Plus, I
can tell you from personal experience that I
didn’t start achieving any of my significant
goals until I gave up the ridiculous notion that
I should be perfect in all I do. So please, if
you want better results, stop pretending you
even have the ability to be perfect.
I know
a lot of people are still very proud of their
perfectionism, just like I was. We tend to want
to wear it on our sleeve like a badge of
courage. In reality, it’s an excuse that we
like to hold onto that makes it okay for not
achieving our dreams. It’s a coping mechanism,
actually. It allows us to rationalize our poor
results.
Here’s what that rationalization used to sound
like for me: I don’t
get my goals because I’m a perfectionist. So I
set goals that can’t be achieved, and that way
I’ll always keep striving to be better.
That makes a lot of logical sense. And that’s
actually what I used to teach my students 5
years ago – that you should never get your goals
if they’re high enough. Again – my emotional
coping mechanism. As
though it’s noble to not achieve your goals.
What I
realized 23 months ago, however, is that as a
perfectionist, NOT achieving your goals becomes
part of the goal setting process. In other
words, I can remember setting a really high
goal, missing it, and then coping with it under
the guise of perfectionism. I would set another
really high goal, miss it, and cope again,
pretending it’s noble to be a perfectionist.
And this cycle of goal-missing would continue.
The
problem was that I was never actually getting
any of my goals, so I started to identify myself
as a person who misses his goals!
In the immortal words of the robot from Lost
in Space – “DANGER! DANGER!”
And
then what happened after that was truly sad. As
I lowered my goals, to things I actually could
achieve quite easily, I still wouldn’t allow
myself to achieve them because, remember, I’m
someone who doesn’t achieve his goals. So I
would unconsciously sabotage myself to match my
belief about being a goal-misser.
What I
now realize is that tiny successes lead to small
successes, and small successes lead to medium
successes, and medium successes lead to large
success, and large successes lead to really big
successes, and really big successes make you
happy!
It’s
incredibly important that you allow yourself to
experience success at the smallest levels so
getting your goals becomes part of
the process, instead of the opposite.
Plus,
and this is even more important, you’ll be able
to appreciate yourself and celebrate all your
wins. Most of us don’t experience a significant
level of appreciation, and then we beat
ourselves up for not getting our perfection
goals. So where’s the appreciation going to
come from?
In
order for you to enjoy this journey, it’s
imperative that you appreciate yourself for your
efforts, and celebrate all your wins, regardless
of how small they are.
Give
yourself the permission to be perfectly
imperfect. If you’re authentic, you’re
perfect, regardless of the results.
And
remember, results don’t matter anyway. The only
real value in setting and achieving a goal is
for who you become in the process of going after
it. The personal growth greatly outweighs the
actual results.
But as
a perfectionist, you’ll more than likely rob
yourself of that personal growth because you’ll
be beating yourself up for not getting the
meaningless results! Yikes!
So
please remember that perfectionism is a made up
concept that has no place in achievement. As
one of my many coaches likes to say, “You don’t
have to get it right. You just have to get it
going.” In other words, get in motion by doing
the activities that will lead to the results you
want, and everything will perfectly
fall into place.
And if
you think your results are going to get worse by
dropping your need to be perfect, you couldn’t
be further from the truth. What I’ve found is
the polar opposite. As a non-perfectionist, my
results are at least ten times better than the
“perfect” goals I used to hold myself back from
achieving. Hmmm….
Enjoy
the journey. ;-)
SS
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