The Perils of Perfectionism
When I was 6 years old, I started French Immersion at school in Canada. I didn’t say anything for almost the entire year. According to my mum and my teacher, this was because I wanted to be sure that I could say everything perfectly before I even opened my mouth.
Little did I know that this incident from Grade 1 was just the beginning. Since then, perfectionism has defined my life. It has paralysed me to the point that I haven’t applied for jobs because I can’t nail down the perfect cover letter or because I’m convinced that meeting only 4 out of the 5 requirements renders me entirely ineligible to even submit an application. It is the reason that I have 60 draft articles for this newsletter but hardly manage to publish more than once every few months. Because of perfectionism, for nearly 10 years I described my Norwegian language skills as “decent” or “okay” when in fact they were “very good” or even “excellent.”
Perfectionism has left me with decades-long guilt over my inability to parlay an elite education into a real career. At university I had wonderful profs who nurtured and challenged my intellect, and who clearly hoped that I would follow their footsteps into academia. When I mentally checked out of my master’s degree during my second year and then declined to pursue a PhD, I couldn’t bear to stay in touch with them. Just imagining their disappointment made me cringe with embarrassment and shame.
Perfectionism also—somewhat paradoxically, perhaps—means that sometimes I just don’t bother to try. This is most evident in my lack of skills as a housekeeper and the perpetual mess in which I live. On a fairly regular basis, I will try to tidy and then give up. Why bother when I clearly can’t do it perfectly and will never have a sterile, gleaming kitchen like the ones featured so ostentatiously in aspirational magazines? (The phenomenon of perfectionists giving up when confronted with their previous failure has been studied, and apparently I’m not the only one.)
Okay, I hear you say, why have you written four paragraphs whining about how perfectionism has destroyed your life? Why not do something about it? Learn from your shortcomings and change your fucking life instead of moaning about it into the online void! Well, this article is—I hope—the beginning of that change. I wrote it in one go, I didn’t edit it, and it probably shows. In the same vein, I want to play the piano again, this time without caring if I hit a wrong note here or there; I want to finally finish writing that novella regardless of whether each sentence is a shining exemplar of the English language; I want to post pics to Instagram that show my real, everyday life instead of the torturously staged snapshots that currently dominate my feed. I want to tidy the living room even if it will never be worthy of a photoshoot, and I want to send off those job applications because they’re good enough just as they are.
And I will do these things. One at a time, day by day, until I break the bonds of this toxic perfectionism that’s held me prisoner for nearly 40 years. I will do my best—and accept that sometimes my best isn’t perfect. And then, having done my best, I will be happy with what I have achieved instead of frustrated or sad or angry about what I haven’t or can’t: I will refuse to let guilt and shame wrack my conscience in the aftermath of less-than-perfect results.
If you aren’t convinced, I encourage you to read Thomas Curran’s The Perfection Trap (or at least listen to his TED talk). This book inspired both this screed and my pledge, and even if you disagree with his contention that the supply-side economy is a major driver of perfectionism, his analysis of the pernicious social and mental effects of perfectionism are well worth reading.