I wasn’t able to have a really good deep and healthy relationship until I was willing to accept myself and let go of perfection.
Many of us at some point in our lives struggle with being perfect before finally learning that true perfection is impossible because what is “perfect” requires not only an irrational/unrealistic amount of effort, but that what is “perfect” is a constantly moving target. Even if one were to expend the irrational amount of effort and be lucky enough to attain the state of what was considered “perfect”, by the time you get there, the definition of “perfect” would be different.
Its a bit odd, but the world of automobile advertising gave us the actual workable path:
The rational effort is the pursuit, not the attainment, of perfection.
This offers a profound shift in thinking. Built into this idea is the perfection is never actually reachable, and that falling short of perfection is not only acceptable, but the normal expected result. It shines a light on the idea that working to improve is the actual goal. If we apply this to ourselves, then we can also introduce that we can continue to try to be better versions of our selves, but that there is no set timeline or schedule that we have to have that improvement. We’re not chasing a deadline where perfection is at the end. We’re incrementally, over time, setting habits and behaviors that we chose to make us better. The continued execution of those choices to improve is the measure success.
We don’t have to have anxiety anymore about not being perfect, as long as we are trying, in some small way, to improve ourselves in our own time on our own schedule. It was quite a freeing realization for me when I put this together for myself and made my minor self improvements points of celebration instead of crises of anxiety because I had failed to achieve “perfection”. I am a better person and happier today with massive self improvement over decades because of this shift in thinking.
Many of us at some point in our lives struggle with being perfect before finally learning that true perfection is impossible because what is “perfect” requires not only an irrational/unrealistic amount of effort, but that what is “perfect” is a constantly moving target. Even if one were to expend the irrational amount of effort and be lucky enough to attain the state of what was considered “perfect”, by the time you get there, the definition of “perfect” would be different.
Its a bit odd, but the world of automobile advertising gave us the actual workable path:
The rational effort is the pursuit, not the attainment, of perfection.
This offers a profound shift in thinking. Built into this idea is the perfection is never actually reachable, and that falling short of perfection is not only acceptable, but the normal expected result. It shines a light on the idea that working to improve is the actual goal. If we apply this to ourselves, then we can also introduce that we can continue to try to be better versions of our selves, but that there is no set timeline or schedule that we have to have that improvement. We’re not chasing a deadline where perfection is at the end. We’re incrementally, over time, setting habits and behaviors that we chose to make us better. The continued execution of those choices to improve is the measure success.
We don’t have to have anxiety anymore about not being perfect, as long as we are trying, in some small way, to improve ourselves in our own time on our own schedule. It was quite a freeing realization for me when I put this together for myself and made my minor self improvements points of celebration instead of crises of anxiety because I had failed to achieve “perfection”. I am a better person and happier today with massive self improvement over decades because of this shift in thinking.