So, I've decided to deviate from my usual medium of the written word and dedicate this post to something I've been working on for a while. As a perfectionist, I have an urgency that constantly needs to be met - the need to work at all times, be the best at everything, never fail, make all the right choices, be financially and emotionally stable, be the prettiest girl in the room, etc. etc. The list goes on and on...But I've gotten to thinking lately that maybe we don't need to be so hard on ourselves...maybe we
cut ourselves some slack...
A Simple Guide to Anti-Perfectionism:
(Is there such a thing?)
Tips and Anecdotes to Help You Realize That You Just Can’t Win ‘Em All
Intro
We perfectionists are a strange breed. We believe in order, control, and the need to have everything work out. We have to be able to predict what will come to a certain extent and deal with it in a nice, clean, and calculating manner. Messes have to be cleaned up, families have to be together, cars have to be spotless, jobs have to be interesting, high-paying, and better than the other person’s, our alma maters had to have been the best place on earth, our relationships have to be flawless, our looks must appear like something out of a magazine, and our resumes must be filled with long lists of accomplishments, experiences, past travels, languages spoken, and links to our multiple (and probably way too many) social networking websites. We spend our time ensuring our future success with situations we know we will benefit from and those that best suit our skills. We are the poster children for…well, the poster children. We put enormous strains on ourselves to be the best we possibly can be. And guess what, we’re our own worst enemy! Mistakes are the enemy and failure is not an option. Admit it – you’re guilty!
Unfortunately for you, me, and all perfectionists out there, life just plain doesn’t always work that way. If it does, you are either very lucky or you’re living in a box under a rock that hasn’t and never will see the light of day. The fact is, nothing can be perfectly controlled in life. We must make those hard mistakes to learn and move on and realize what we need to do next time.
Trust me, I know. I am sick and tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses around me in all respects: career, love and relationships, a place you call home, family, body image, friends, vacations, hobbies, skills, the list just goes on and on and on…Let’s face it. We simply can’t be that picture perfect image from the 1950’s with a larger-than-life smile 24/7. It’s just not possible.
So, what do we do now? Panic? Run for the hills? Change our names, bodies, identities and move to the moon? Hell no. What we need is a simple guide to help us readjust to the lives we’ve become accustomed to living, with a couple of changes. Together, we can beat this disease. Together, we can overcome. Together, as President Obama so famously said, “YES WE CAN!”
Rejection: The Freedom to Fail
It sucks when it happens to you. No doubt about it. I just never thought it would happen to me. I went through my early years of life avoiding situations in which I knew I wouldn’t come out on top. To fail said to me that I couldn’t do something, that I didn’t try hard enough, that I didn’t do what it took to accomplish something, or that I was bad at something. Knowing that I failed killed me. So I never took big chances or allowed myself to make key mistakes that I should have. That sucks because everyone really does need to be given the freedom to fail. Mistakes should have a different name so they don’t seem so scary, like ‘choices that didn’t work out’ or ‘oopsie moments’ or something a little less tragic. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad.
Rejection is also a way to let you know things you may need to work on or give you important insight on things you wouldn’t otherwise have known about yourself or the situation you were in.
Example: My freshman year of college, I was all excited to meet new people, especially boys. I grew up in a somewhat small town in Suburbia, Mass, USA, so I was the typical spoiled-middle-class-white-girl. After having the worst selection in town, (seriously), I thought, hey, I’m a cool, interesting, funny, intelligent, and attractive young woman. I bet I could have a boyfriend in no time!’
Yes, Vanessa, that’s right. Keep thinking that those qualities aren’t like 99% of other women out there! It’s the chemistry and your personality that are ultimately the hardest parts to work out and find a relationship with another human being. That’s what makes it boyfriend/girlfriend material. I wish I could have realized that sooner, but hey, I was only 17. What can ya do?
To make a long story short (too late!), I met a guy and we hit it off and then I started asking what was wrong about me to make him not want to be in a relationship with me. He responded with an answer mirroring many new college freshman guys – “I just don’t want a relationship right now.”
I took that to mean: “I think you’re not what I’m looking for. You should probably change something about yourself because I’m just not that into you. AKA, Vanessa, you are not girlfriend-worthy. You suck.”
Wow, what an immature thought. But hey, we’re all guilty of it at some point. We all think something is wrong with us until we do meet someone who makes us feel like we actually fit into the universal relationship scene. So cliché, so old school, but oh so true.
Putting yourself out there is hard. Letting everyone get to know the ‘real you’ is just plain difficult. If you’re that confident in yourself, your feelings, your image, your direction in life, your past, your goals, your future, then you have nothing to worry about. However, like 99% of us out there, we’re just showing the world partial sections of ourselves. Having someone else love and accept every part of you, from head (case) to toe, is a really enormous and chancy undertaking. Sharing ideas and stories of the very private sections of our lives, the thoughts inside our heads that we wouldn’t dare share with anyone else besides our stuffed animals, makes us scared.
Bring on the Competition, Bitch!
With perfectionism comes competition. Or is it the other way around? Either way, we’re competitive people against others and ultimately ourselves. We’re always looking to out-do someone or something, and we’re not satisfied unless we come out on top.
For instance, for me, I have the ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality when it comes to competition, meaning I have to try my absolute hardest to be the BEST at something or else I take it to mean, ‘I suck, I’m bad at this, I can’t do it, I didn’t try hard enough, I’m stupid.’
People my age are starting to invest in real estate. This pisses me off for a couple of reasons. One, I think we’re wayyyyy too young to be buying property, but hey, if you have the money to do it, go for it! I’m just sad and mad and jealous and pissed at myself for not being right there with you. In a way though, I feel like I failed because whatever occurred in my life up until now didn’t provide me with the means to buy a condo or house. And that means, somehow, somewhere, I made a wrong choice and didn’t manage to save enough money. Bad choice, Vanessa. You’re an idiot.
See what happens? We blame ourselves for not having control over the situation. This is a horrible way to think and we can stop it!
Let’s go back to the drawing board. The house situation. So your friend tells you she’s put an offer on a two bedroom, two bathroom condo. You tell her you’re so happy for her and hope she gets it but you secretly can’t help but think, ‘Jesus, what the hell did I do to deserve not being in her situation? I worked hard in life too, so I deserve a house just as much as she does. Why can’t I be that lucky? How could I have controlled that situation?’
And the thing is, you can’t. Because there’s going to be other things that you’ll do or already have done that she didn’t do. Plus, you may have the money to do it, but maybe you’re not in a position to settle down in one area quite yet. With my friend and me, I got the opportunity to study abroad in Spain for 3 months and now I have a job I just so happen to enjoy. The pay isn’t great and I wish I could be saving more money, but guess what? You simply can’t win ‘em all, chief.
My Career is Better Than Yours
Here it is! The big J-O-B. Yup, everyone talks about it. You do, your friend does, your significant other does, your parents do, your parents’ friends do, blah blah blah. It never stops. Before you know it, you’re in a conversation with someone you know competing to justify whose position is better than the other. You both try and rationalize that the pay and the tasks are both plentiful and stimulating, but let’s face it, the job talk gets you going. You soon become frustrated, stuck, bitchy, remorseful, sad, and just plain angry. Even if you do have the job you’ve always dreamed of, someone else comes along and jabs you in the stomach with a huge blow: “I just got promoted and am now netting over six figures! Plus I love what I do, am outside most of the day, work with friends, and touch lives! It’s just super!” How the heck are we supposed to be happy after hearing that?!
The true question here is: Are you happy with what YOU have going? In other words, even if someone were to come along saying their job is fantastic on all accounts, can you genuinely say the same?
If you can, I think you’re in the right place. If not, you should probably look for something else that makes you happy most of the time. Perfectionist or not, I think everyone deserves to be happy, especially given the fact that we work approximately 40 hours a week and only have 2 full days to enjoy doing other things. So whatever we do, it better be good!
But, for all you perfectionists out there who haven’t found your ‘perfect’ job, don’t jump off a bridge just yet! There’s hope! Start small. I know if I think I need to find the ‘perfect’ job right now, then I will most definitely panic and curl up in a small ball at my parents’ house and cry forever eating potato chips and watching bad daytime TV. But that doesn’t have to be you!
In this case, technology and networking can be your friends. Google is a pretty powerful tool these days, and there are plenty of job sites that can help your search. Even if you hate your job, start off by looking at temporary positions, work from home positions, volunteer opportunities, or other small tasks. This can be a great way to begin your ‘perfect’ job search in a less overwhelming way.
But the thing is, there’s also no such thing as a ‘perfect’ job…it just doesn’t plain exist. Unless you happen to be someone who smiles and never frowns and enjoys absolutely 100% of what you do, in which case I’d label you crazy and perhaps alien. Fact is, everyone is going to have those moments where they say, ‘God I just really wanna lay on the beach, tan, read a book, and sip margaritas all day long.’ Well, duh! Who wouldn’t?! But at the end of the day, we all need income, benefits, and a thing to keep us busy so we move on with life, gain experience, and pursue the natural human course of the career path.
Someone’s always going to have a bigger, better career than you, so you might as well stop making yourself crazy. No one person is ever ‘The CEO of the World’, so you better just get over it now before you drive yourself nuts.
All is Fair in Love and More
There are times in a perfectionist’s life where you will question your love life. It happens to all of us really. Because there are so many different situations we face and so many different options to love and be in a relationship, the boundaries aren’t so clear as they once used to be. Now, we’re faced not only with making a decision about a relationship and significant others, but we have to first decide whether or not we’re gay or straight. Some people go through their entire lives trying to find out. I personally know I’m straight, but in society today, it can be especially difficult to figure out what’s going on in terms of your sexuality.
All that aside, we’re constantly bombarded with the topic of love. ‘Love is all around’; ‘love is a battlefield’; ‘all you need is love’; the list goes on and on. Many songs are written about the topic, some still can’t figure the whole thing out, and others are so engrossed in it that they forget anything else exists. Love is a fickle, funny thing. No one person is an expert, and I think that’s the problem. No one can define it as one set theory; we all can have different opinions on it. Love is what you make it and love is how you feel. Depending on each person, that means different things. It’s okay that we react differently to love, we’re all individuals, so it really doesn’t matter as long as at the end of the day, we’re happy.
Example: Your best friend announces that she’s getting married. She’s completely in love, changed where she lived for this fiancé of hers, her other friends hate him, and her family adores him. You personally think he sucks, and for good reason. The guy treats her like shit. What are you to do as her best friend?
This is tricky because you can’t decide for her as much as you want to. I think voicing your opinion is fine, but it all depends on timing. The bigger point here is that she may or may not be happy, and that’s HER call to make. Whether she sees it or not, is up to her. Unfortunately, love makes people blind and not see things that may be in front of them, but that’s life and we can’t always be perfect and prevent all broken hearts. Maybe your friend will be happy, but unaware of her husband’s affairs, but maybe she’ll realize he sucks before she gets married. Either way, if you say something, fine. But at the end of the day, SHE needs to do what she needs to do in order to secure her own happiness.
And that’s where this is valuable for you. To secure our own happiness, we need to be conscious of what we feel and what we know will make us happy. In a world where technology confuses us, bombards us with more information than we care to know, and more people are giving input and their opinions, it’s important for us to stay grounded to what we believe and what we know to be true to ourselves.
Most powerful tip: You can’t make everyone happy in life, no matter what. Heck, Mother Teresa tried, but despite the fact the woman’s a saint, she couldn’t guarantee everyone’s support 24/7. That being said, do what makes you happy even if someone else isn’t. Love is a feeling and fluctuates and varies between each person, so what makes you happy and in love doesn’t necessarily have to match up with someone else’s definition. So go for it! Be in a relationship that YOU want, no what others think is best or want. Ultimately, you’re the one living in it anyway, so you might as well like it!
Gimme the Skinny: The Dish on Eating and Perfection
This may be one of the biggest problems we perfectionists face: What to do with our bodies and how to achieve it.
Since society doesn’t enforce the proper rules of body image, it’s often difficult to gain ground and make improvements on eating to achieve a healthy figure while feeling and looking good (on the inside). It’s hard to feel good when we have so many different people telling and showing us otherwise. I mean come on! Who eats lettuce, fruit, and drinks coffee everyday and manages never to get hungry or eat some damn chocolate? Seriously – who?! I’d love to know.
For me, eating was always a big thing. I’m from a large, loud, Italian-proud family and it’s absolutely essential to stuff your face or else “it’s a sin” (direct from my mother). I was never taught to eat with ease, relaxation, or anything synonymous with ‘slow.’ I consumed in rapid motion: super fast, I scarfed every bite, and was supposed to feel stuffed after every meal. I guess I was supposed to feel pleasure while eating, and I did for most of my life. Then college hit.
To counteract everything else that was unfamiliar and out of control in my life first year while I adjusted to college life, I managed my weight and controlled portions. Sounds perfect, right? Wrong. Even perfectionists have prisons. In their minds, they equate perfection with power and security and control. Controlling my eating was a way to maintain rigor over a life of insecurity and instability. Life became a game of waking up thinking about eating, going through the day counting calories, and maintaining the perfect number all until the last moment of consciousness before sleep. Dreams were my only escape.
If you think that’s hard, try doing it for seven years. Yup, six more years after that initial plunge my freshman year in college, it still persists. And I use that term because even though I’m in recovery, I still have an issue with food. I don’t know if I always will, but I have to learn to let go more, go with the flow, relax – in other words, I have to let my body take control of itself and trust that when I’m hungry, I’ll eat. And when I’m not hungry, I won’t and stop thinking obsessively over when and what I’ll eat and how many calories it is and how much space it will take up in my body. Jesus, just typing all this makes me exhausted. And it’s late and I have to work in the morning! Whew!
All I’m saying is, although I’m not ‘perfect’ (and I use that term how it’s supposed to be used, not in the perfectionism way) with eating, I know that perfectionism and eating disorders go hand in hand. Think of it as peanut butter and jelly. Without one another, the other just doesn’t make sense. Not to say that every perfectionist has an eating disorder or every person suffering from an eating disorder is a perfectionist, but it certainly makes more sense when the two go together. Makes it even more tough to get over, doesn’t it? Bet you’re glad you started reading this!
The moral of the story here (if there is one) is that ultimately you never know what others are thinking, who’s judging you for what, what your looks say to someone walking in the street. You shouldn’t care so much! The same applies for eating. Try and let go of the perfectionist tendencies, and the easier it will be to let the rigid walls of an eating disorder chip away until the foundation is broken and freedom can follow. Small chips give way to a big fall. Every little bit helps as they say. With baby steps come great strides. Just try it. Health and peace of mind are the goals and you are the only one stopping it.
What’s in a (College) Name? The Public, the Private, the Truth
When I was a senior in high school, okay actually way before that, I thought that I deserved, that it was my right even, to be able to go to a private university. A prestigious place with grounds so immaculate they gleamed with integrity, a campus so awesome it inspired the non-believers, the sounds of bells tolling time for classes, a library so vast and resourceful, dorm rooms made cozy enough for princes, classrooms the size of large football fields with windows fresh and shiny, the list goes on and on. I wished for a place of higher learning where I could expand my mind, share in the exchange of ideas bigger than myself or anything I ever dreamed of: I wished for a private school.
In my small town in the suburbs of Massachusetts (feel bad for me, right?), it was assumed that if you were smart, if you worked hard enough, and if your grades made the cut, you would go to a private and renowned college upon graduation. After all that sweat and toil, you totally deserved to be honored with a brand name education, right? The acceptance letter fresh in your hand, ‘Congratulations, we are honored to accept you into the Class of 2008…’ Music to a perfectionist’s ear. Imagine your name printed on the graduation program, ‘Top Notch University’ – the best in the USA! I got the best grades, I tried the hardest, I’m better than you. Wrong.
If you think one school is better than another, you are an idiot. After treating myself to a state university education, (Public you say? Gross!), I realized that your college experiences and the effort you put in during your 4 (or more) years there make your future. It doesn’t matter if it was private or public or by invitation only, the point is that college is essentially what you make of it. My mother of course, God bless her Italian soul, was always down for a deal. The cheaper it was, the better off you’d be and save more later. Of course at seventeen in a wealthy, upper middle class town, I begged to differ. ‘But Mom, I want to go to Awesome College, not the University of Let’s-Smoke-in-the-Fields!’ She wasn’t having it. It was public or bust.
But you know what? I’m better for it. I may not have attended the best college in the nation, but who says one school turns out more educated, refined individuals than another? No statistic or study will tell you that. Each person controls their destiny, and perfectionists thrive in any challenging environment. But a challenge is a challenge only when you create opportunities, try your hardest, and make an effort. Public or private, expensive or cheap, city or small town, colleges are just places where minds come to congregate and learn together. Perfectionists, we can achieve greatness and don’t have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for it! For me, public school taught me a lot about myself, and hey, Mom’s checkbook looked a heck of a lot better afterwards. I even got a car out of it! Hooray!
Money, Money, Money! MONEY!
Why does the human race care so much about money? I mean come on people, they’re just bills made of paper and starch with random faces and scribbles and letters and numbers on them. It’s not like it’s important in and of itself.
In a world dominated by currency, perfectionists have a hard time thinking that money isn’t in their control. When we have a lot, we can’t get enough of it. When we have little, we panic and stress and sweat, saving every friggin penny like it’s our last will on Earth. Either way, we obsess and think that if we’re not secure and don’t have enough cash in our bank accounts or stashed away somewhere, we fret.
So I have a solution. Thank God, right? Since you’re admittedly a full-fledged perfectionist, chances are that you’re probably very good at budgeting, maybe you don’t even know it yet. Budgeting is key to any money management strategy, as 99% of portfolio managers and stockbrokers can tell you. However, it’s what you assess is worth spending more money on than others. For instance, the mortgage on your house and car probably take first dibs, leaving food/job/transportation and bills second most important (at least for most people). After, you have whatever is left to use at your will – clothes, vacations, gifts, fancy dinners out, movie tickets, that new HDTV you had your eye on, etc. Life is a game of choices – and we have to remember that as perfectionists, there is no such thing as the ‘right’ choice. People make decisions every day, some good and some turning out not so good. We can only hope that most of the time, we make choices that make us better people, money or not.
End of the World Syndrome – Is It Really that Bad?
In the world of perfectionism, we tend to think in things in black and white terms. Yes or No. Right or Wrong. Hot or Ugly. Diet or Binge Eating. Blonde or Brunette. Early or Late. Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. For us, there’s no gray area, no in-between, no No Man’s Land where we can calm down and think more about the possibilities available to us in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Instead, we resort to, ‘Oh crap, if I don’t get to work this second, I will be late, everyone will notice, I will be called into my boss’s office and get fired on the spot.’ We tend to catastrophize things where we tend to have irrational thoughts that lead us to ultimately panic and believe that something is far worse than it really is. Things don’t have to be a certain way; they can be flexible, even messy. But, we perfectionists truly believe if something happens/doesn’t happen, the world will end or something will explode or we’ll die. Seriously?? How can we conceive of such a notion?
Now that I write that, it sounds silly, even impossible at times. But the thing is, I know we think it. It’s so ingrained into our usual cognitive routines that we don’t even consciously recognize it half (or more than half) of the time.
If we committed ourselves to think in ways that were more beneficial, more open, more relaxed, more wide-ranging, then perhaps we could learn to relax and enjoy life a little more. Perfectionists are guilty of being so hard on ourselves that we can’t see the beauty of all that lays before us. Life is a beautiful, precious, albeit brief, gift that we all have, no matter what we think. One thing we can count on being in black and white terms is that life will end someday, for everyone. And if we could stop and smell the roses once in a while, we might realize that there are so many day-to-day occurrences that we take for granted and should be happy with. Life shouldn’t be so uber-stressful, laden down with horrible thoughts and cataclysmic choices. The world won’t explode, life won’t end, and things will go on just as they always have. Life has its own patterns, and we should do our best to obey the laws of nature. Learn to let go – who knows, you might just like it.
Okay, now that it's all out there, let me know what you think!
