I often ask clients what it means to them or about them that they did or did not perform some task or action. Among all the potential reasons or responses for failure to act, one underlying theme plays often. It is the theme of perfectionism.
Sometimes, clients tell me that they are afraid to take action because they dread failure. Sometimes, they do not know how to complete or even to begin the task, and they are afraid to ask for help. They see asking for help as weak and a failure in itself. Often they are convinced that whatever they do, it will not be good enough. The thought process goes something like this: If the outcome is not perfect, it is not good enough, and it means they are not good enough.
What happens when perfection is the only acceptable outcome? What happens when making mistakes is not an option? Often, nothing happens. No efforts, no failure, no learning, no chance for growth or change. Here is what Alfred Adler said about making mistakes.
What do you do first when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning to swim.
Of course, there are many reasons other than perfectionism that prevent people from taking action on a task. Sometimes it turns out that they really did not want to do the task at all. Sometimes they just had other priorities at the time.
So I might ask a client: Are you OK that you decided not to do a task? “Yes, I am,” is sometimes the answer. Often, “Yes, but…” is the answer. The “but” is frequently connected to feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and to worries about being judged.
Fear of judgement can lead to perfectionism. This stops people from living the kind of lives they want to live and doing the things they want to do. It causes us to spend unnecessary time and effort trying to hide our imperfections. Learning to let go of perfectionism means accepting our limitations and those of others. It can free up time and space to do the things we want to do, to try, to err, to overcome, to relax a little, to smile more, to be.