Perfectionism

A lot of people think that a perfectionist only strives to be perfect in all aspects of life. It is much more than that. A perfectionist not only strives to be perfect in everything, but feels they have to be perfect or else they are not worthy. When they are not perfect in what they do, they are very hard on themselves. It can feel like the end of the world. It can cause extreme amounts of stress. It can cause a person to go into depression. A perfectionist, no matter how well they do, will NEVER feel that they have done anything perfect. To a perfectionist, though they may or may not realize this, the goal of being perfect is like a prize up in the clouds, with no rope, the only way to get there is to jump as high as you can and hope to reach it.

Being a perfectionist has made my life very difficult. Often, my mind would shut down when I couldn’t be perfect, and I wouldn’t be able to force myself to try. This often led to me leaving to go in a private place and sulk. I could barely ever achieve anything because I would either start over a hundred times, or just give up on it completely. This made improvement in kung fu very hard, because I felt if I could not do something perfectly, it was not worth even trying. I always knew that I would never feel anything I had done was anything close to being perfect. But it was impossible for me to stop thinking about being perfect. Comparing myself to others didn’t help either.

The process of testing for my blackbelt greatly affected all of this. The few months before the testing had me very stressed, and in turn very depressed. I was crying all of the time and did little work at school. I was far from perfect when I tested. I often needed encouragement to keep going. When I was done I felt horrible about it. I felt I could have done way better. Those thoughts filled my head so much that I didn’t think at all that I had done my best; which I had done. Once I was started with training for the ceremony demo, and it had become obvious I had passed (which I wasn’t really given a solid answer at the time) I realized that what I had done was not perfect, but good enough (this was not an instant change and realization but it took time over the period of my practice). This was a whole new awakening for me. I became and still am able to accept what I had done as the best I could do. This became my new goal, rather than trying to be perfect. I am happier this way. I can finish projects without redoing over and over or giving up. I still tend to be a perfectionist from time to time (like straightening pictures, and trying to make my surrounding perfect in ways like that). But it does not get to me like it used to. I know when to accept when things are the best I could have made them.