From our earliest days on this planet, we are expected to be perfect. As little girls, we would sip imaginary tea out of our plastic teacups and fantasize about our perfect wedding to our perfect prince charming. When we began attending school, we would do our absolute best to get perfect grades and to be the highest, the best, the exemplary one in everything we did. It was always about being 100% right and the best at everything we did whether it was our dance recitals, sports, school, or friendships; there was also pressure to be “Little Miss Perfect.”
I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist because let’s be honest, being a perfectionist at the end of the day really is not enjoyable and being friends with a perfectionist or working with one’s not much fun either. There is something about being constantly stressed and under pressure that tends to wear out a girl after continual years. Someone please explain to me how a girl is supposed to get perfect grades, have plenty of friends, have a body that manages to be a flawless mix of skinny and curvaceous, and to continue to look put together and beautiful 24/7. Talk about pressure. The professionals back me up on this one: the University of Texas actually categorizes “Perfectionism” as a mental health problem and refers to the “vicious” cycle of perfectionism in their research. I, like so many girls nationally and worldwide, used to continually be frustrated when life events deviated from what I “expected” and things became “imperfect.” It has taken me over two years of college to realize that there is a something perfect about imperfection and that being you, imperfect and happy, is much better than attempting to being perfect but miserable.
We set the bar so high for ourselves that we crumble when it fall shorts. Before we know it, we are stuck in a terrible cycle of low self-esteem and broken expectations leaving us pretty much feeling empty. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, and I’m never planning on going back to how I felt when I continued everyday to struggle with imperfection. As hard as it is to accept, failure is a normal part of life and growing up and how else can we improve on ourselves if we do not fall a few times?
So how do you stop being a “Little Miss Perfect” prototype, you ask? It’s difficult; I won’t lie. We have had this idea of “perfection” locked in our heads for so long that breaking the cycle is far from easy, but the best way to start is learning how to embrace imperfection and slightly lowering your expectations. Be proud of your work, send it out for criticism and response from the world, and learn what you can do to make it better the next time. Once you finish something, walk away from it and move on to something else. The more time you spend staring at it, the more you will stress that it is in some way “imperfect” and not up to standards. Flaws are amazing. Flaws are what makes us unique, individual people and ultimately separates us from one another. Embrace what makes you the amazing individual that you are and stop stressing so much that everything turns out exactly how you imagined it because chances are, it won’t. To my “Little Miss Perfects”, why should you be perfect when no one else is?
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