A while back I was reading an article about perfectionism and how it affects our daily life.
The article referred to how searching for the perfect environment, the perfect project, the perfect life, in the end, it drives you crazy. Because in your mind you will search for that perfect feeling every time you want to do something, and you won’t find it because, let’s be honest, nothing is perfect.
And looking for perfection, beside the going a little nuts part, leads to procrastination. Yeah, looking for perfection leads to procrastination, or a kind of procrastination. Let’s think about it for a second. You will start a task, let’s use the example that I read about, you’ll begin to work on a article, or a blog. Being a perfectionist, you will want to write the perfect article/blog. And you will start to write, and rewrite, and rewrite, looking for the perfect phrase and words and punctuation. Maybe, in the end, you will get your perfect article. But at what cost? All that time you spent rephrasing all your words, deleting and writing again, will be for naught. Because your article won’t be any better than in the beginning, it will just be a Marie with another hat ( Romanian proverb, look it up 🙂 ).
While I was reading, I started to ask myself. Am I a perfectionist? Does the story match with me? Am I the character of the story? And after a few days, while this questions was in the back of my mind, I needed to admit that I was. I was the character of the story. I wouldn’t be any more perfect, oh the irony, if I the story was inspired by me. It fits like a glove.
And when I realized this it blew my mind. Because on the outside I hate perfectionism. I like to say that things like “nothing is perfect” and such. This is why it baffled me when I realized that on the inside, at a subconscious level I had the seed of a perfectionist in me. And I don’t know what to do about it.
Maybe if I face the harsh truth it will go away, but I doubt it. I just hope that being conscious about it, it will make me to have better decision and act faster. And stop looking for the perfect moment.
Maybe my life just got a little better with this piece of insight. Maybe …