10 Tips to Address Perfectionism

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on 10 tips to address perfectionism and find balance. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. What does perfectionism look like? Well, it can look like different things for different people. For many people, perfectionism is all consuming. When they start to do something, they end up focusing on it and having that laser focus, so to speak. But it keeps them from being able to engage in other areas of their life. They may not get as much sleep, they may not go to the gym, they may not spend time with friends and family. They are doing and focused on their task for an extended period of time. Now, having a laser focus is not necessarily bad, but when you have that laser focus and it starts negatively impacting other areas of your life, where you start neglecting other areas of your life for an extended period, that then it starts to become a problem. People who are perfectionistic may feel like they're never done. They keep working, they keep revising, they're revising the 15th revision in order to try to get it just a little bit better. And there's definitely something to be said for taking pride in your work. But given the principle of diminishing returns at a certain point in it's worth calling it. You know, the amount of energy it's going to take to get from being 98% perfect to 100% perfect may not be worth all of the time and energy. People who have perfectionistic tendencies often have difficulty getting started because they are so overwhelmed by the anxiety that comes along with feeling like anything that they do has to be perfect that they may be paralyzed. A lot of people who have perfectionistic tendencies also tend to impose conditions of self worth on themselves. If they don't perceive themselves as perfect, they perceive themselves as completely imperfect. And we're going to talk about extreme language in a minute. But it's important to recognize if you are imposing conditions of worth on yourself. And finally, people who are perfectionistic are often self conscious. They may feel like other people are evaluating them as harshly as they're evaluating themselves. They may feel guilty if they do something that's not absolutely perfect because they feel like they have let other people down. So perfectionism has a lot of different presentations depending on the person. How does perfectionism impact people? Well, we'll use the PACER method to examine that physically, perfectionism often keeps people in a state of high anxiety or it keeps them from getting enough sleep. So they're getting worn down, they are neglecting their physical health, and they are staying anxious and agitated and restless. Affectively, when people are perfectionistic, a lot of times it is hard for them to relax because they always think that they need to be working on improving something, perfecting something. So it's hard for them to relax and enjoy themselves. It's hard for them to do anything that is recreational because it becomes competitive. Whether it's video games or golf or tennis or running, or even going to the gym. Instead of being able to enjoy something for what it is, they feel like they have to be perfect at it. Cognitively, perfectionists have difficulty focusing. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but when they become so immersed in whatever it is that they're trying to perfect, sometimes they can get overwhelmed. And when they're overwhelmed, it's hard to think clearly. When they, when they're anxious, when any of us are anxious and we've got a bunch of adrenaline coursing through our, our system, it can be hard to make good decisions. It can be hard to think clearly and think creatively and flexibly. So cognitively, perfectionism actually tends to work against people. Environmentally, when people are perfectionistic, a lot of times they have difficulty creating an environment that's warm and welcoming and invites other people to be there to be supportive. So a lot of times environmentally, their place, their, their personal environment is filled with tension, it's filled with stress, and it's often filled with whatever they happen to be focusing on at that moment. Now, some people can be perfectionistic in terms of their environment. Housekeeping, they may keep it. So you could do, not literally, but figuratively. You could do surgery on their kitchen floor. But it is important to recognize that people's environment, when they're perfectionistic, does get impacted. And relationally, when people are perfectionistic, as I mentioned on the last slide, a lot of times they attach conditions of worth to their perfection. So if they feel imperfect, they may feel unworthy, they may have a low self esteem, they may have difficulty connecting with others because they feel guilty. If they are less than perfect, they may be too exhausted from their perfectionistic strivings to engage with other people and nurture those relationships. So perfectionism can also have a negative impact on relationships. And of course, people can be perfectionistic in their relationships too and feel like if this relationship is not perfect, then it's not worth doing. There are a lot of issues that may contribute to people developing a sense of perfectionism. But we're going to talk about 10 tips to address perfectionism. First, explore and address your fears and judgments about imperfection. If you're imperfect what are you afraid is going to happen? Are you afraid that people will abandon you if you make a mistake? Are you afraid that people will reject you if you are less than perfect or if what you do is less than perfect? What messages did you receive from your family, from your teachers, from your culture when you were growing up about the need to be perfect and about the folly of imperfection? And do you agree with those messages or not? When you examine those messages, think to yourself, is this something that I want to pass on to my children? Is this something that I would tell a child and figure out if those beliefs, if those mores, are actually helpful or hurtful? Number two, and I say this in a lot of my videos because it is a huge component of the PACER method. Define your rich and meaningful life. Know what it is you want out of life. Because once you know what your goal is, then you can more effectively identify ways to use your energy in a meaningful fashion to move towards those goals. Which takes us to committing to purposeful action. Once you define your rich and meaningful life, what you really hope to have, what you want, then committing your energy to moving towards those goals. Is your energy better spent revising this project or this report for the 17th time, or is it better spent turning it in after the 15th revision and going and spending time with your kids or spending time with your family or going to the gym and taking care of your health? What is a more effective use of your time and energy in the big scheme of things? Number four, and I alluded to this earlier, recognize the principle of diminishing returns. We can try so hard to be perfect, but once you get up there into that, you know, 85, 90, 95% area, it becomes much, much harder to improve anymore. So it's easy to improve, you know, from 0 to 50 and then from 50 to 75 isn't too bad. But then once you start getting into those, you know, that upper end of perfection, it becomes much harder. For every percentage better that you get, you have to exert exponentially more energy. Is it worth it? Is it worth it to stay up all night revising this again to get from 98% perfect to 100% perfect? Explore differences in self, other expectations. A lot of times people who are perfectionistic hold themselves to this standard that's way up here, but they don't hold anybody else to that standard. They will make excuses for other people. They accept other people for being imperfect, but they don't accept themselves. So it's important to examine, are you being unreasonable with Yourself compared to what you expect out of others. Number six. Examine what you hope to achieve with perfectionism and alternate ways to meet that need. What are you hoping? We already talked about what your fears are. But if you're hoping to achieve acceptance, if you're hoping to achieve love, if you're hoping to achieve, you know, financial independence, whatever it is with perfectionism, are there alternate ways to meet that need that allow you to use your energy to enhance every area of your life instead of having to devote all of your energy and all of your time every single day to that one sliver of what is important in your rich and meaningful life? Number seven. Differentiate behaviors from the person. Differentiate behaviors from the person. I know I said that twice because it's important. When I make a mistake, I made a mistake. It doesn't mean I am a mistake. It means I made a mistake. It's a behavior. It's something I did when I fall, when I, you know, do whatever I do that is imperfect. That is a behavior. That is not who I am. That is a behavior at a moment in time. Could I have done it more perfectly at another moment in time? Well, maybe. But that issue, whatever it was, that I failed at, was a behavior that I did at that moment in time. Now, I may look at it and figure out ways that I could improve that behavior, like studying for a final exam, you know, how could I improve that in the future so I do better on my examination. But that doesn't mean that I'm stupid or a bad student. That means that day, that weekend, I did not engage in the best study behaviors or I did not do my best work. That doesn't have an impact on who I am as a person. Number eight, restructure extreme language. And this is really important. Perfectionists tend to be very extreme. I always fail, or I never succeed at this, or I must get it perfect, or nothing less than the best. And it's really important to examine the impact of language like that. You know, number one, is it even possible? And number two, you know, assuming it's possible, what are the. The limits on that? Can you do something perfectly? We just got out of or finished watching the Olympics. And yes, people can do things perfectly. They can get a 10. It doesn't mean they're going to get a 10 every time they execute that routine. It means at that point in time, they got a 10. We can strive to do it. We can strive to improve, but it's not realistic to expect that humans are going to be able to do anything 100% perfect 100% of the time. So restructuring extreme language is really important. Number nine, set achievable goals. Instead of saying I must get straight 1/ hundreds in every single class this semester, saying my goal is to try to get all A's this semester. This was something I worked on with my daughter when she started college because she would push it past that point of diminishing returns. It wasn't okay just to get any old A. She wanted an A plus in every class. And you know, we had to have this talk about the fact that at the end of the day when anybody's evaluating your transcript in college, at least an A is 4.0. If it's an A plus or if it's an A or if it's an A minus, it's still a 4.0 on a 4.0 scale. I know that's not exactly how it is in, in high school these days, but it's important to recognize, you know, is there any benefit to pushing it and continuing to try to enhance something that's really already reached its maximal, maximal benefit for me. So those achievable goals are really important. What is it that you need to do? And you know, what is, I hate to say it, but what is the bare minimum? You know, and if you're a perfectionist, your bare minimum is probably going to be way up there. But what is the minimum that you need to do? And when you reach that, it's important to be able to step back and evaluate and go, okay, I've gotten this done. Now is it more important to go to my kids soccer game or go to the gym or go home and actually get some sleep tonight, or more important, to revise it at least one more time. And that's really what we're talking about here, is choosing the most effective way to use your energy to create a rich and meaningful life as you define it. And number 10, you know, I talked about we're going to address perfectionism to find balance. Well, find a balanced buddy. And what I mean by that is somebody who can, you can rely on to ask you questions like I was just saying, is it worth your energy, Is it worth your time to revise that one more time or is your energy better spent doing something else? They're not telling you what to do, but they're encouraging you to step back and objectively evaluate the benefits of perfectionism at that point in time.