(dfd)
This April, our writing club’s prompt is to write about an acquired lesson I need to unlearn. I’m writing about our inherent need to be perfect.
Few nights ago I was infuriated with myself for not perfecting a quiz. It was the last module and the last quiz of a course. I was so troubled I wanted to call and discuss it with a friend. But I’m sure, no matter how I felt like it meant so much to me, my friends will tell me it’s no big deal. I couldn’t sleep that night, so I decided to write on my journal and took a step back where all these emotions are coming from. It lead me to write about perfection.
Growing up I’ve been told the being perfect is beautiful, is healthy, is achievable. We all pressure ourselves and other people to achieve perfection because we crave for perfection. The need to be perfect might be unknowingly ingrained to us from our academic institutions where perfects scores are heralded as superior. It became a standard taught to us as early as pre-school hence the honor rolls and other academic merits hence our desire to be perfect. People who also appear to be perfect are put in a certain pedestal and idolized, which further puts pressure on that person to maintain that status. It’s a cycle of pressure we put amongst ourselves and other people that makes the world unhealthy to live in.
Perfectionism, as Stoeber (2011), is a broad personality style characterized by a person’s concern with striving for flawlessness and perfection and is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.
Perfection is almost always unachievable and being a perfectionist could be detrimental and often counter productive. I remember working with a boss who would not approve an urgent and important letter just because of an “extra space” in one of the sentences. The desire to be perfect is unhealthy. We all need to be mindful when we’re setting it as an unrealistic standard to ourselves or worst to our organization.
I believe that an organization who values perfection so much can not grow and innovate. The fear of making mistakes hampers innovations and creativity, and not to mention making the work environment unpleasant.
The desire to be perfect is unhealthy, but sometimes necessary. Yes, to be honest, I’m also conflicted with the idea of trivializing perfection as sometimes it’s necessary. I went deeper into my thought processes and unpacked where to draw that line where putting pressure for perfection is necessary and when it is not. And it all goes back to understanding your why.
Before putting pressure on yourselves and to other people to make things perfect, you have to be able to articulate your why. Will the world stop revolving tomorrow if you failed to perfect your exams? Or you missed a note? Or a typographical error? Will your imperfection change someone’s life? Will your mistake cause someone’s life? If the answer is yes then maybe we need to do things with care. Like for medical doctors, data analysts, engineers, or researchers where one wrong computation or diagnosis could sever a people’s life– then the need to do things with care.
The next questions you need to answer is what will it cost you and will it be worth it? I remember in elementary and high school where many of my classmates would cheat their exams and homework to get perfect scores. You may have had perfect scores, but was it worth giving up your integrity? Or striving to be perfect because of other people’s expectations in exchange for sleep, peace of mind, or mental well-being.
And if the reason for your desire to be perfect is not worth the cost you’re putting into it, maybe what we want is not perfection but simply excellence. Excellence is doing your best, given the circumstances, persisting, and committing to do something extremely well. Perfection is the fear of failure, while excellence is the urge to succeed.
Maybe we need to stop glorifying perfection and start valuing people who are always growing and giving their best. We are all living in a different circumstances that if we only set perfection as the only unrealistic standard, we discredit where every individual is coming from, that maybe it’s not perfect it’s the best that they could give given the circumstance.
So today I’m unlearning what 14 years or so of learnings that the academe and 28 years of societal norms people have been telling me to believe. During these times where being perfect is overly glorified I go back to my core values which is growth and learn to love every pieces of my imperfection as these are healthy spaces for growth and new learning.
Let’s all be kind and always forgiving especially to ourselves.
Reading lists about perfectionism:
- https://www.healthline.com/health/perfectionism#symptoms
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/perfectionism
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180219-toxic-perfectionism-is-on-the-rise
Author’s Note: There’s a technical challenge for this month’s prompt which is to only use one non-essential adjective per 100 words. For this dirty first draft, the technical challenge has not yet been applied yet. 🙂
RODTrip 