As a recovering perfectionist I always wanted to overdeliver, in everything I did. I remember getting off stage in the early days of my public speaking career and the first thing I’d do, before the applause had even finished was go through my notes and highlight all the bits I’d missed or got wrong. Even though the audience had loved it, even though no-one knew what was on my script I still expected to deliver each keynote perfectly and beat myself up if I didn’t.
Over the years I’ve learned that done is better than perfect and to not let perfection get in the way of great work. This has helped me achieve more and also stopped me burning myself out! It’s not that I’ve lowered the bar on my standards, I’ve just reset it to a realistic level.
For me, perfectionism was driven by my fear of failure which is ironic as so often it set me up to fail by taking on too much, aiming for something that wasn’t achievable. I was always trying to overdeliver and go above and beyond to prove myself. I now realise this was down to my own self-doubt and fear of being found out. The only person I needed to prove something to was my inner critic and for most of us the person in the room with the highest expectation of you, will be you. So how do you know if you’re a perfectionist?
You’re working hard but still feel like it’s not enough, you have excessively high expectations and beat yourself up for not meeting them, you struggle to delegate or ask for help, you feel overwhelmed, you worry you’ll get found out and that you’re not good enough. You think if it’s not perfect you’re failing. You feel alone and that there is something wrong with you!
We all have our strengths and weaknesses and I remember Jackie Clark of The Aunties saying ‘own your shit, own your shine’ which sums this up perfectly. We so often focus on eliminating our weaknesses whilst at the same time playing down or ignoring completely the things that make us great.
We hold perfection up as the standard we must achieve and then we beat ourselves up for not attaining it. We feel like we’re falling short as much of what we aim for isn’t possible. Whether it’s trying to look like the airbrushed photo of a magazine or wishing our life looked more like someone’s social media high lights reel – we’re aspiring to an impossible standard that’s not real. We’re setting ourselves up to fail.
I tell you what is real – imperfection! Imperfection is human and it can still be pretty amazing. We will make mistakes but we’re also capable of brilliance – just not all the time!
I love the way the Japanese refer to perfection. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Wabi-sabi is a concept I wrote about in the Superwoman Survival Guide and is centered on the acceptance of imperfection. Appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete in nature.
Imperfection is our true nature and it is beautiful. When we appear perfect we are less genuine and authentic. Dame Jenny Shipley once told me ‘the closer you are to perfect the less people will trust you’ and this makes so much sense.
Perfection is imperfect, we’re setting ourselves up to fail. It’s not surprising this is linked to overwhelm and burnout when we hold ourselves to these excessively high standards. Sometimes done is better than perfect yet we’re conditioned to always want to achieve more or better – it’s no wonder we feel like we’re falling short!
So what can we do about it and how can remind our inner perfectionist to rein itself in?
