5 Reasons Why Being Perfectionist Can Ruin Your Own Happiness
“Perfect” is a word that sounds entirely positive and so the trait of perfectionism is usually considered to be a quality worth having. It is not a rare sight for someone to be overly proud of calling himself a perfectionist. But what if we told you that perfectionism isn’t all about glamor and glitter. It is in fact, one of the traits that can have an obstructive impact on your mental health in the long run. As per psychology, perfectionism has the potential to create a barricade between you and your happiness.
The problem with perfectionism is that it associates your happiness and defines success in terms of achieving unrealistically high goals. Since more often than not, such targets are unlikely to be met, your journey to becoming a perfectionist is marked with stress, anxiety, depression, and a lack of happiness and joy in your life.
Aren’t we being told from the days of our early childhood that nothing is ever perfect? Be it a person or a thing, it is impossible for it to be without flaws. Therefore, it won’t be wrong to state that the whole concept of perfectionism is frequently premised on an illusion. Once you start to pursue an illusion and refute your right to be happy with the imperfections of life, you put yourself on a road to unnecessary disappointments.
Your life isn’t liable for meeting your expectations. Be it in the domain of your professional life or the personal one, there are always going to be a few surprises. The very essence of being happy is to have the power to be satisfied with how things turn out to be in your life, rather than how you expected them to be in your ideal world that you created in your mind. Once you let go of these expectations, you start to see the beauty in the imperfections that essentially derive your happiness.
In order to give you a better understanding and stop you from pursuing an illusion, we have accentuated the top 8 ways in which your happiness is being silently killed by your desire of perfectionism.
Obsessive Perfectionism Is A Highway To A Constant State Of Regret
It is no longer just a conjecture but actually has been proven with psychological research that someone who has a tendency to entitle himself only with the best is more likely to visit remorse than the rest of the people. Such a mindset is commonly referred to as the “Maximizing mindset” in the world of psychology. It simply pushes a person to have an insatiable desire to choose the impeccable option for each and every single decision of his life.
Unfortunately, this is not possible since the concept of perfectionism is what fuels the post-event overthinking and over-analysis. This has an implication that regardless of what decision do you make and how flawless do you consider it to be in the present moment, once the event has occurred, you are going to reflect upon it for the days to come unless you start to second guess it in the first place. The overthinking and over-analysis of your options make you wonder if a different decision could have had an even better outcome. It’s like when you take a picture and think of it as perfect in the beginning but then you continue to focus on it unless you start to see the flaws and end up thinking that it’s not even worth posting on the social networks.
In simpler words, with overthinking, a desire to be perfect will rob you of your right to be happy regardless of what choices you make in your life.
It’s A Catastrophe For Your Relationships
Relationships are hard. In an ideal world, you may be able to find a soul mate with whom things just happen to flow naturally. It’s surely fascinating to read it in a book or watch it in a movie how two people could be made for each other, how they could complete each other, and how they would just fit. But in the real world, relationships are a lot of work. It takes effort and patience to make it work.
It is important to realize that you are in a relationship with a human being who is prone to committing mistakes and failing to meet your unrealistic expectations. The moment you start to expect perfection from your partner is the moment that you are putting your relationship up for destruction. Once you shun the idea of perfectionism and focus on how far you have come with your partner and how well you two continue to grow together and support each other through the hardest of times, you prepare yourself better for the ups and downs of your personal relationships.
If you continue to chase perfectionism in relationships, it is impossible for you to be content with any partner and you will always be looking forward to moving on and finding your soul mate that you have created in your mind. The moment they commit a mistake, you will be triggered to think that they are not the perfect one for you and you should continue to look for other options. The truth, however, is that[restrict] people are not liable to meet your expectations at all times especially when your standards have increased to an extent of fiction.
It’s A Curse For Your Professional Life
As mentioned earlier, the dismissive impact of perfectionism is not only confined to your personal life. It is equally disastrous for your professional life as well. Imagine this: you have been handed over the responsibility of implementing and supervising a major project. You have a whole team of employees working under you. The deadline for the project to be completed is in a week. Your team makes sure to work diligently and have it completed a day before the deadline. Once the details of the project are presented to you, being a perfectionist, you have a natural proclivity to find flaws in it that makes you perform your own tweaks, and change the details unless you find satisfaction. Unfortunately, however, being a perfectionist, finding satisfaction is usually not a luxury that you can afford. Now think of the impact that your unsatisfactory response would have on your team who worked their level best throughout the weak and completed the project to their best of capacity. Your attitude is a recipe for demoralizing your entire team.
On the other hand, you are more likely to miss the crucial deadlines in your desire of being a perfectionist. Since you have no control over wanting to make the last minute tweaks and continuing to work on the project in hopes of making it better and better over time, you will eventually miss the deadline in an attempt to find satisfaction in your work; when in reality, it was already completed in compliance with the required standards within the deadline.
In other words, you might think that you are doing your superiors at work a favor by trying to make the project entirely perfect, but your habit of missing the crucial deadlines will eventually put your job in danger in the first place.
It Murders Your Self-Esteem
Your self-esteem is derived from your personality as well as your physical appearance. If you have unusually high standards for both of these domains, imagine how badly it would hurt your self-esteem. Remember that every person is beautiful in his or her unique way. It is our uniqueness that makes us interesting. It is okay to idealize someone you saw in a magazine, or perhaps in a movie. It could be your favorite actor or your favorite singer. But it is perfectionism that pushes you into a troubling thought that just because you don’t look like someone you idealize, you are inferior to them in ways. Such thoughts can ruin your body image over time. It won’t be wrong to state that it is a desire to be perfect that throws you into the deepest and darkest corners of the inferiority complex.
Similarly, if you continue to compare yourself with other people, you will never be content with who you are. Whatever that you think you are good at, in a world of billions of people, there is always going to be someone better. He’s smarter than me, he’s more athletic, he’s taller than me, he’s more confident, he’s more focused, etc. The thoughts like these can only kill your self-esteem. The irony is, once you start to lose your self-esteem in a futile effort of becoming perfect, you prevent yourself from unlocking your true potential in the first place.
Remember, there’s a lot that you can do wrong with yourself in your life. But killing your self-esteem is one of the worst as it ruins your entire life. It makes you think of yourself as below-average and thereby forces you to lead a similar life.
It Prevents You From Taking Your First Step
How many times have you met someone in your life who sounds completely enchanted by the idea of “someday”. If you are being honest, you must have had been in that place yourself as well. The wishful thoughts which start with a “someday” are like a trademark of the people who are always chasing perfection. They would keep thinking of getting their dream car someday, their dream house someday, their dream tour someday but what’s unfortunate is that they confine themselves to only the thoughts. The idea of perfectionism creates a wall for them to actually put an effort into fulfilling their dreams. They are too scared of taking the first step due to a delusion that they may take the wrong step, to begin with.
If you want to second guess yourself for the rest of your life, you should get captivated by the concept of perfectionism. Imagine that you were really good at one of the sports, say badminton. With practice and hard work, you could have made a professional career out of it. But the second-guessing your skills, talents, and expertise prevented you from pursuing your passion and made you opt for a mundane career in accounting. This is how the idea of perfectionism can kill dreams and prevents you from unlocking your true potential, just for the sake of keeping you in your comfort zone. Unfortunately, however, nothing great ever grows out of a comfort zone.
Putting it in other words, perfectionism is a concept that closes so many doors of opportunities on you. It drowns you under the sea of smaller details and blinds you of the bigger picture. While you keep your entire focus and invest all of your energies into the tiniest thing which barely even matter, you lose sight of all the opportunities that you are failing to cease.
Conclusion
There is a difference between having a desire to be better and wanting to be perfect. The former is a part of your growth. It evolves you into a smarter and better person for the years to come. The latter, however, is a recipe of lifelong disappointments and remorse. You can think of the former as reality while the latter is nothing but fiction. It is an illusion, an unrealistic target that can never be achieved, which translates into a persistent feeling of being a failure.
It won’t be wrong to conclude that a person can either pursue the illusion of perfection or he can invest his time and energy into being smart. The two can’t coexist. The moment you decide to be a perfectionist is the moment you turn your back to intelligence. All we could do was to provide the information that you needed regarding how perfectionism is hurting your mental health and slowly turning you into a naturally unhappy individual. How it’s preventing you from winning at your personal as well as your professional life. Would you like to shun the idea of perfectionism and pursue smartness instead? The decision is entirely yours.[/restrict]
