Antidote to Perfectionism

We tend to adopt perfectionism for a couple of reasons:

• To avoid the risk of humiliation caused by making a public mistake or failure

• As a procrastination tactic for perpetually putting off taking action

Our desire to achieve perfection relates to our perceptions of our competence to carry something out. If we do not feel fully competent then we will not feel confident and if we do not feel confident then we will seek to avoid doing in public things that require very high standards of performance or result.

We can counter this by seeking to develop our capabilities, our levels of performance, our products, services and our results to standards above those expected in public; however, we must only deliver to the public what we can do well within our highest levels of competency. You can think of it as similar to a company that produces technologically advanced products. Such a company will normally continuously carry out research and development and new products but they will not release those cutting edge products to the market because they have not yet developed them into a condition of reliable products. Instead they perform and deliver results well within their level of competencies. If you suffer from immobilisation due to perfectionism then you must adopt a similar approach: do your R&D in private and only give to the public what you can do with full competence.

I learned about this the hard way. I taught myself to play guitar and I developed very good skills but for years I never played in public. Finally, I came across a place with an amateur night and I decided that I had good enough skills to play there. Foolishly though, I decided that I wanted to impress everyone and knock them out. I chose to play the most difficult pieces that I could perform because I thought they would impress everyone. However, I had a fifty-fifty or less rate of playing them perfectly. I went to the next amateur night feeling nervous because I knew I stood a hit and miss chance of doing things right. I started drinking beer for some Dutch courage and I ended up having too much beer. When I finally got on stage I could barely see the strings from the beer and shaking so much and yet I went ahead with my ‘best’ pieces. I quickly messed up and came to a complete stop and had to leave the stage. Embarrassed? Oh, yes. I felt a total idiot. Later I sobered up and decided to ‘get back on the horse’ and knocked out a couple of simple tunes at the end – to rapturous applause (probably for my sheer guts and determination rather than for my guitar playing).

Mercifully, I learnt from the situation. I realised that a big difference exists between performing my best in public and performing my best in private. Performing my best in public, means giving the public a dependable and fully competent product, service or performance. The public wants a good result and not always the best result. I learned that by playing in public, well within my competencies as a guitarist, that I could entertain the crowd and deliver satisfaction. Not only that, I could relax and enjoy myself and perform confidently because I could easily play those pieces perfectly. Performing my best in private, means playing the most difficult stuff and pushing out the boundaries of my abilities. In doing so I keep growing and getting pleasure from that but I also get to improve my public performance because the things that I formerly could not play dependably (because they lay at the limit of my abilities) then become firmly within my ability to play consistently correct.

So, instead of aiming for perfection, perform, produce, or serve results to your highest level of dependable competence and that will allow you to feel that you can create to the level of perfection that you have achieved so far. The quest for perfection never really stops, we continue to learn, to grow, to improve. We do better to accept that we can do some things perfectly well but not everything.

Commit to improvement but deliver what you have the ability to deliver. Accept the reality of your current limitations and make use of what powers you already have otherwise you end up on an endless trail of development but of never carrying out the process or fulfilling desired outcomes in public. You end up doing a disservice to yourself. More than that, you create conditions that will cause despair to creep up upon you. I know of nothing that causes despair quicker than repeatedly attempting to do the impossible. Think instead of what you currently have the competency to reliably deliver as a perfect result and deliver that! Make use of your skills and feel good about that. I respect your desire to keep improving and to keep developing competencies but stop expecting yourself to perform at your absolute peak of ability. You cannot depend upon such ability and so if you count on that when you give a public demonstration then you probably will fail and humiliate yourself. That’s something that could set you back for years.