Perfection.
It sounds great and it looks great.
And now more than ever we’re flooded with it on our Instagram feeds, in ads, and even
while watching TED Talks.
But what we see is often just an illusion.
Instagram shows only the moments, angles, and outfits that their creators choose to
showcase.
Ads are created by teams of experts that are paid to get us to want what they’re offering.
And even the sacred TED Talk is given by the most gifted communicators who have often put
years and years of research into the work they are presenting.
And if you were to ask those Instagramers, advertisers, and TED Talkers, if they feel
like their latest post, billboard, or presentation was perfect, they most likely would say no.
Even when Isaac Newton saw the first edition of his book Opticks, a book often to be considered
one of the greatest works in modern science, he had his name removed from the title page
due to the imperfections he believed to be in it.
He didn’t want to be a part of something that wasn’t perfect.
Perfectionism is when a person refuses to accept any standard short of perfection.
So as a perfectionist, if you’re a runner and you qualify for the Olympics and make
second place – you don’t think of yourself as the second best runner in the world, you
think of yourself as a failure.
Voltaire said that “perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Meaning that if you strive for perfection you are destined to fail, because perfection
simply doesn’t exist.
Even when you write a sentence you find perfect today, you might hate it tomorrow.
Perfection leads to an endless and impossible cycle of reworking sentences, photographs,
ideas, or whatever it is you want to be perfect.
Individually this often causes anxiety and a non-acceptance of yourself and your imperfections.
And it has even been linked to suicide.
In a 2013 study of 33 young men who committed suicide, more than 70 percent of them had
parents that said they placed “exceedingly high” expectations on themselves.
It also causes insecurity.
One young woman said that growing up and seeing women on Instagram with perfect hair, bodies,
and outfits instilled this need in her to look just like them.
She says that it’s made it incredibly hard for her to accept herself as is.
But what she and many of us often don’t realize is that what we see is mostly an illusion.
Professional Instagramers spend hours upon hours setting up their photoshoots, going
to the gym and the tan salon, all so they can present their most perfect self to the
world.
But we don’t see this.
Instead we only look at their “perfection” and say to ourselves why don’t I look like
that?
But it gets worse.
Politically a culture of perfection causes stagnation.
Perfectionists have a hard time letting go of their ideas because in order to believe
in an idea in the first place, a perfectionist must think it is perfect.
So when you have a perfectionist politician or activist who believes climate change doesn’t
exist, they devote themselves to ending policies that try to protect us.
And when you have two opposing groups of perfectionists in power, progress comes to a screeching halt.
The good news is that many psychologists believe that perfectionism isn’t all bad.
Perfectionists are driven, motivated, and meticulous.
But when they fail, they see themselves as failures.
But if a perfectionist simply becomes an “excellentist”, many of her or his self-hurting behaviors
will go away.
For example when an “excellentist” fails, it becomes an opportunity for learning and
reflection and perhaps saying, “eh, I did my best and that’s good enough for me.”
Thank you for watching.
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