Posted on July 25, 2011 by Deah Curry PhD, CPC

Perfectionism – or the drive to control everything around you, and the striving to never ever make a mistake – is regarded by some as a type of mental disorder. Certainly those who obsess over making the tiniest details exactly right will attest to how perfectionism is crazy making.

Trying to achieve perfection is often rooted in an unconscious fear or anxiety of real or imagined consequences. If you were raised with parental expectations for meeting exacting standards that were unrealistically high and out of step with your own nature and talents, you were set up to fail. That dynamic of trying to attain the unattainable, or be the un-be-able will keep you stuck. It can also prevent creative problem solving and the enlistment of help from others, as long as you believe that perfection is not only possible but in fact required.

Perfectionism can be a prison.  As an adult, you might now not embark on a goal or a dream if the echoes of the past whisper that you won’t be perfect at it. Believing that you can’t be perfect or expecting that you’ll fall short of perfection in achieving what you really want, contributes to being unclear about your goals, uncertain about your support, and untrusting of your own talents.  You don’t dare allow yourself the big dreams and risks because your expectation of not living up to the perfect ideal undermines confidence.

In short, perfectionism is a perfect saboteur.

If you are stuck in the normal but imperfect life because you’re trying to move forward in the most perfect way ,while secretly believing that you’ll fail, coaching can help. Here’s a little coaching right now, to get you started…

1.  Ask yourself what would be perfect for you in this moment. A perfect moment might be simply sitting in silence with a good cup of tea, staring out the window at the beauty of the mountains on the distant horizon or counting the many imperfections visible in how the trees have grown.

In other words, consider that perfection could be more about a sense of contentment with what is rather than a continual striving to erase all subjective, arbitrary flaws.

2.  Play the Mistake Game. Give yourself permission to adopt a “learning experiment” mindset. Know that it’s not possible to make mistakes when you are engaged in finding out what doesn’t work. Making it game to discover how many ways don’t work can take the fear out of making mistakes.

In fact, go ahead and cheer for each mistake made because it adds to your knowledge base of what doesn’t work. That will free you up to see more options for achieving what is important to you without so much fear of failure.

3.  Redefine what perfection can look like for you. Perhaps it’s being authentic, true to your own feelings, sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and desires as they exist from one moment to the next. So what if you can’t calculate the cubic meters of water your bathtub holds?  Neither can I, and who cares?

Embrace that imperfect brain of yours, that instead remembers names and faces, perceives emotional energy and produces an exquisite painting, or dinner.

In other words, you get to decide what perfection is for you, according to your own standards of achievability and your own unique gifts.

Like cayenne pepper, a little bit of perfection goes a long way. Use sparingly, as part of a larger strategy for creating the life of true contentment.