Are you a perfectionist?

Ah there it is, it’s out in the open. Did you say “Yes I am” loud and proud or did you said “Yes I am but I’m trying not to be”? But what is a perfectionist… really? Well, it’s a pain in the arse so to speak. It is someone for whom ‘good enough’ is never enough and they constantly tweak, fix and oftentimes never finish. A perfectionist agonizes over making decisions and choices. A perfectionist has a hard time answering questions. A perfectionist causes a lot of stress and anxiety not only for themselves but those around them.

What happens is that perfectionism often creates a lot of turmoil in our lives. It can take the joy out of life and truthfully it can drive people around us crazy. Perfectionism can show up for us when we are feeling ‘less than’, like we aren’t good enough or have to prove ourselves. We may have had an experience in our childhood — or adulthood actually — where we were criticized over something that made us feel that we had to be better and better.

I have a client (I’ll call her Jane) who was always compared to her sibling. Her mother would say “You are so immature. Why can’t you be more like your sister? She is mature and you aren’t.” So no wonder Jane felt that she needed to constantly strive do more. This experience has reinforced in her that she isn’t good enough in any aspect of her life and she is persistently going above and beyond to prove that she is good enough. Jane often goes to the place of “Why should I bother, nothing I do is ever good enough?” This translates into quite a lot of stress and negative energy in her life and her business.

Jane needed to change her ‘inner story’ in order to change her ‘outer results’. And once she got to the point where “good enough is good enough” she was finally able to be free of the “I’m not good enough” story that had ruled her life. She began to have more joy in her life and her business began to thrive. When she let go of being perfect, she let go of all of the negative energy that was surrounding her and creating a force field, if you will, that repelled what she actually wanted.

Perfectionist tendencies show up in all areas of our lives and remember, how we do one thing is how we do everything. While we want to put our best self and our best work forward, we also want to make sure that we aren’t creating situations where it is impossible to even get forward.

So where might you be holding yourself back because something isn’t perfect enough?