I tried to be perfect for the longest time. I’ve come to find that the pursuit of perfection is one of the most neurotic things that a person can do.
Nobody is perfect, right? Well, that means nobody’s brain is perfect. When we conceive of “perfection” through our imperfect thoughts, we can’t help the fact that our ideas are an imperceptible bit off from what one might call, “true, objective perfection”. Bear with me, here.
If by being imperfect, no one can accurately perceive perfection and we are a few micrometers off, what’s the harm? Would that not still motivate a person to be better? Well, it does. It certainly gives an individual something to strive for.
The problem with perfection is that it’s a term for a state of being, or an outcome. Other than the fact that humans grow through failure, to reach for perfection takes no account for the steps you may take to get there.
One of the great things about life is the vast amount of choice we have over our own actions. We can go about pursuing our goals (or lack thereof) in a multitude of ways. But if you focus on your goal above all else, then you may end up doing some questionable things to get there.
Let’s take a clichéd example. Teen girls are very vulnerable to this idea of perfection. So, a teen girl is alone in her room at 10pm and decides she wants to be perfect. She thinks that if she is perfect, then more boys will notice her, more girls will want to be her friend, and she will (finally) feel confident. If she looks in the mirror and decides to lose weight, that is a way she decides to pursue perfection.
Let’s say she succeeds in losing weight. She begins eating less and cutting out junk food. She starts fitting into smaller clothes and people notice. They compliment her on the weight she lost, so she continues on this path. Because of the validation she gets, she figures she must be on the path to perfection.
If these people found out that she was, say, starving herself to lose weight, most of them would not compliment her, because that approach is dangerous and generally unhealthy. However, if all she hears is, “you’re looking good, have you lost weight?” It may be very easy for her to misconstrue the message as, “to look good, you must lose weight.”
When she looks in the mirror, she sees she is still not perfect. People don’t really see themselves as perfect, which makes sense if you think about it. We are living on earth to grow and learn. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t be here.
Now, say this girl is at her “ideal weight”. (This idea of ideal weight- some arbitrary number spit out of an arbitrary formula is hardly useful in real life, but say someone could be at a truly ideal weight.) This scenario can go one of a few ways. If she’s at an ideal weight but still sees she is imperfect, she may continue losing weight. After all, how can she be sure this weight is ideal? She’s gotten praise for losing weight in the past and has developed the skill of weight loss itself, so she may as well continue down that path in hopes of perfection and further validation.
We know that this is a trap because there is no perfection in being a skeleton. The issue here is that in the scenario mentioned, the girl doesn’t realize what she’s choosing. Many people think this is how eating disorders start— the moment when a reasonably weighted individual decides to lose weight anyway. This is untrue. The eating disorder begins with the habits formed before that point, which puts someone in this sort of situation. With our example, an eating disorder may have formed when our hypothetical teenage girl linked the ideas of weight loss, validation and perfection. Her willingness to pursue perfection at any cost could ruin her physical (not to mention emotional) health!
Let’s take another option. The girl looks in the mirror at her ideal weight and sees that she is not perfect. She sees she has lost the weight and her imperfection is not due to that. You might even say she’s at the “perfect weight”. So she moves on to find another thing to fix about herself. Certainly less sensational than the route to an eating disorder, but if she used unhealthy and unsustainable ways to reach this goal weight, is that really a step closer to perfection? She is now thinner and more practiced in using neurotic ways of getting what she wants. It is my opinion that if an eating disorder doesn’t grab her on her way down this path, another vice will.
How about a different response altogether? What if this young lady looked in the mirror and decided not to try to be perfect anymore? What if she realized that what she was really looking for was self-esteem and more intimate connections with others? She may not be able to achieve these things right away, but awareness of this fact is a better start than the band-aid of modifying her physical appearance.
I’ve heard it said that good is the enemy of great. While I think that’s true, I think it’s equally important to remember that perfectionism is also an enemy of greatness. If we spend all our time trying to perceive perfection and analyze where we fall short, we can easily lose sight of our strengths, and thus lose confidence in ourselves and our ability to improve!
I find it amusing, but once I stopped pursuing perfection I began growing and improving at a much faster rate than ever before. I found myself more easily becoming the person I always wished to be, and best of all I was enjoying my growth process for the first time in my life. Lack of perfection is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, it’s an invitation to become more wise, intelligent and loving than we ever have been before, to benefit both ourselves and the world around us.
Do you struggle with perfectionism? What are you pursuing perfection for? Leave a comment to add to the conversation. If you have any perfectionist friends or family, be sure to share this post on social media so that the message may be spread! Let’s shoot for greatness, not perfection!
