When I used to sit on interview panels, a typical answer that people would give for their weaknesses was that they were a perfectionist. Although I often did not fully believe most of the people who said this, there were a select few who I came to believe as genuine and would be quite cautious about working along side of them on a team.
I think that perfectionism is more common and more dangerous that we give it credit for. I suppose you can attribute this to our self-absorbed obsession with greatness in the age of Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram; but I think it goes even deeper than that.
I think that somewhere along the line we’ve been fallen into the idea that we need to measure up to something in order to be accepted and loved. And until we can do something to be accepted and loved, we will never be content with who we are and secure in our own identity.
Perfectionism… in a strange sense… is the inability to be comfortable in our own skin.
Identity is rooted in our family of origin. It’s birthed out of where we came from, who we are now and who we hope to become. And if I were to add one more element, identity is given to us by the people who cared for us and then expected by the people around us. In a therapy setting, this is often where I go into a Genogram with the folks who come into my office. We begin asking questions like, “Who told you”, “who said that” and “who we’re you hoping to please?”.
Ultimately, perfectionism is the treadmill that we’ve been stuck on that just won’t stop until we take a look back, realizing how we’ve been duped into thinking that by running on it, we’d actually get somewhere.
So how do you get off the treadmill that goes absolutely nowhere?
You stop running. You begin confronting your inner critic and you take a good hard look in the mirror and you tell that person that he or she is worth loving—just the way they are.
Until Next Time,