I am a retired perfectionist.
After 19 years of self-criticism for every perceived “failure” in my life, I have recently resolved to change my mindset once and for all.
I have a history of being praised for doing the right thing, which, from an outsider’s perspective, is seen as a good thing. However, what many people do not know is that my “goodness” came with a price. It was much more than effort — it was agony. I could never bear the discomfort of making mistakes or doing the “wrong thing.” I would constantly criticize myself for anything and everything I did. I would sit in shame, and stress about things that could not be changed, continuously wondering how I could change them.
I would stare in the mirror and see flaws in everything: my physical appearance, my career prospects, who I was as a friend and ultimately, who I was as a person. I wanted to be the best at everything; not because I wanted to brag or compete, but because I thought that reaching the top would quiet the voice in my head that was constantly beating me up for being myself. I isolated myself in hopes of reaching my own impossible standards.
Then, I had an epiphany. I had gotten to an extremely low point in my life, where everything seemed dull and pointless, and I was suffering to no end. That was when it hit me.
I was not living. You can lock yourself in the library for the rest of your life and get a 4.0 GPA, but what does that even mean if you never get out and see the world? In fact, what is school if it’s more about your grades than the knowledge you are gaining about the world you live in? You can decide to stay in your comfort zone because trying something new will make you feel stupid, but if you have no stories to tell and laugh back on, did you live at all? You can keep quiet because you fear the people you love abandoning you, but if you never said what you needed to say, did you even have a friend in the first place? When you fear failure and rejection, taking risks is the scariest, but most worthwhile decision you will ever make. It may not make life perfect, but it makes life worth living.
Your character isn’t based on how you act when you are succeeding, but on how you handle life when it isn’t working in your favor.
What is life if you are always tip-toeing through it, trying to live up to a standard that, as human beings, is impossible to even meet? Even if it was possible to achieve perfection, why would you want to?
You cannot prioritize perfectionism and life at the same time. The toll that perfectionism takes on a person can dull their humanity, but the qualities that make us who we are as human beings can never be taken away by rejection or failure. We are not a measure of how smart we are, what we look like or who we associate with. We are not a result of a test score, a difficult upbringing, a bad relationship or someone else’s opinion of us. We are a result of how deeply we love, how gracefully we respond in the face of hardship and how willing we are to embrace what makes us who we are.