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Today's
quotation:
The
pursuit of perfection has become a major addiction of our
time. Fortunately,
perfection is learned. No one is
born a perfectionist, which is why it is possible
to
recover. I am a recovering perfectionist. Before I
began recovering, I
experienced that I and everyone else was
always falling short, that who
we were and what we did was never
quite good enough. I sat in judgment on
life itself.
Perfectionism is the belief that life is broken. . . .
Rachel
Naomi Remen
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Today's
Meditation:
I think that I easily could have become a
perfectionist, and in some ways I still am. I'm
constantly revisiting my teaching, for example, to try to
improve it and make it as good as I possibly can.
Fortunately, I'm not a complete perfectionist because I
can easily reach a point at which I say, "That's good
enough" and relax and move on to the next
thing. I don't settle for mediocrity, but I don't
try to be perfect, either.
And I'm extremely grateful that I don't. I've beaten
myself up far too much over mistakes that I've made, over
not being "perfect," over super-high
expectations that I realistically never could have
met. I appreciate the fact that Rachel points out
what's really at the heart of perfectionism-- everyone is
always falling short. To the perfectionist,
everything can be better, which means that it's sub-par as
it is. Many people become perfectionists because
they're afraid of the criticism they'll face if they
aren't perfect, while others just like to judge and
criticize because it makes them feel better about
themselves if they can judge others.
Many of my students have learned that they need to be
perfect in order to be accepted. That "B"
just won't cut it; nor will an "A-." When
and if they don't reach their absolute maximum
performance, they have to deal with stress and anxiety
that debilitates them, that makes them extremely unhappy
and even depressed, as Brené notes below. The
unfortunate irony is that most of them would tell someone
else that they don't have to be perfect, yet they expect
themselves to be perfect all the time. And they make
themselves pay when they're not.
It's okay to be imperfect. If I try my hardest at
something and don't accomplish it, that's okay. I've
dropped out of races and long runs because it was the
right thing to do, and I don't make myself pay for
it. I say stupid things and I make mistakes on the
job. I deal with my error and move on. But I
won't make myself miserable for something that a truly
rational person wouldn't make him- or herself miserable
over. If I want to live my life fully, I have to
keep in mind that sometimes I'll fail and sometimes I'll
come up short of perfection.
But that's okay.
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