The Problem With Perfectionism

I have thought so much about this topic that I'm sure I've blogged about it before. And if you Google "The Problem With Perfection," you get 62 million results. So obviously, this is not a new concept. Perfectionism seems like such a lovely thing, something to strive for, yet 62 million links on Google paint a different picture. Huh.

At any given point, on any given day, I can rattle off at least 107 things that I've done in the past 24 hours that I'm not happy with. Conversations I've messed up, people I've offended, ways I've acted that eat away at me, messages I've sent that I now regret... I have a meticulous, detail-oriented process in place every second of my life that collects and catalogs every single one of my mistakes, all to be used against me at a later date when I'm feeling a little too confident about my self-worth or lovability.

But all of this is just not true: we are all worthy and lovable, despite making millions of mistakes in this lifetime. And this cataloging process is such a waste of time and energy. And it's incredibly self-centered. I think about all the other things I could be thinking about, OTHER PEOPLE for example, and wonder why I spend so much irreplaceable time focusing on my shortcomings.

Part of that, of course, is to try to improve myself, to prevent myself from making mistakes and falling short of my expectations of myself. But part of it is ignorance, thinking that I have to do something, be someone, to be worthy, and that if I make 1 mistake, I've ruined it all. Typing this out, I can see how ridiculous this sounds. But honestly, this is how my brain worked for decades.

Many of you know that I went on a transformative retreat for 27 days. It was an amazing experience, and definitely one of the most life-changing things I have ever done. During this time, I learned to love myself. I learned to embrace myself, shortcomings and all. And I learned techniques that will help me make less of the mistakes I used to make that I agonized over.

However, since coming back from the retreat, I have made some mistakes. Big, huge mistakes, things I did even during the first week I got back. The fact that I messed up so enormously almost knocked me off my feet; I was a changed person, I was new and improved! What was going on?

And then I realized, once again, that I wasn't perfect. I was still going to make mistakes, I was still human, and it was still all okay. At the retreat, the people there warned us that this was a process, a journey. It didn't mean that because we were there for 27 days, we would miraculously live out the rest of our days without problems or strife. We just had a better handle on things that came our way, and ways in which to reduce the problems that we ourselves created. They also warned us that people may have expectations of how we were going to be once we got home. They may have their own expectations of our newfound "perfection." The people I worked with at the retreat reiterated the fact that, yes, a lot of good work had been done, but that this was a starting point for continued work into the future. And they also said that it may require some conversations with people in our lives, whether they be spouses, children, parents, friends, or coworkers, to let them know what we had experienced, and their role in this. Sometimes, when we've had people in our lives who are so used to us talking and acting and being 1 way, it is hard to imagine a great change to take place. We tend to see our friends and family through filters of our past experiences with them. This is how we form relationships and become close with people: if every day was like the first day you met someone, you would never feel that sense of familiarity and closeness with them. However, it also makes it hard to accept changes in people, and sometimes it can prevent the changed person from embracing the changes if they constantly have to swim upstream against past-existing elements of their character.

We are human, and we all make mistakes. We hope that the mistakes we make don't do too much damage, and don't hurt the people around us, or ourselves. But sometimes, unfortunately, we do hurt the people around us. I know I've hurt people, and I know that in my life I will continue to make mistakes. Hopefully I won't make the same ones. And through it all, I will always seek and strive to be better.