Perfectionism – The Flawed Ideal

We all strive to be perfect, or at least most of us. And it’s understandable – we were told at school to try harder, and to try to get things exactly right. We were rewarded if we did and told off if we didn’t. It was a training ground for perfectionism. But is that a good thing, or a well disguised minefield for future disappointments?

The thing about perfectionism is that no matter how good you are, you can never be perfect. The more you strive for perfection, the more you’ll fail. It’s inevitable, and you’ll keep on failing, for the simple reason that the thing you’re striving for is unattainable. You will never achieve perfection, so the safest thing is to stop chasing it.

‘Failing’ at a diet

Let’s say you’re on a diet and the last thing you want to do is fall off the wagon and eat a biscuit or a piece of cake. So you’re having a bit of a bad day and you suddenly get the feeling, out of nowhere, that you could do with a biscuit. Just one … a single chocolate biscuit would make all the difference. This is the voice of addiction whispering to you, the voice that says, ever so softly, “look, it’s only one biscuit … go on, one biscuit isn’t going to make any difference … and it’ll make you feel so much better“.

So after a bit of uneasiness, during which you accuse yourself of weakness and being a failure, you give in. You have that biscuit. But you find that half the pleasure of having it is gone, since you had to argue with yourself over having it and that took away half the fun. And then you find, after all that, that it doesn’t really make you feel any better at all, or if it does it’s so fleeting you barely noticed it. So you start thinking you’ve failed. Again! Not a good feeling, not at all.

And then you rationalise and tell yourself it makes no difference now so you might as well open that biscuit tin again and have another … or maybe even two … OK, three at the most. You’re stuck in this mental bargaining for a while, trying to convince yourself that it’s OK to have a few biscuits while, all the time, there’s another voice, quieter but still insistent, telling you you need to stay strong, and it will make a difference if you have a few biscuits.

And so it goes on. It’s a very uncomfortable little battleground, and you’re there, fighting, because you see yourself as so perfect, or close to being perfect, that you daren’t just have a biscuit. Or better still, have the presence of mind to just make a rational decision not to have the damn biscuit and stick to the decision you just made.

The trap of perfectionism

This is the trap of perfectionism in a nutshell! You’re aiming for a goal you will never, ever, attain. And the sooner you can recognise this fact, the better. Once you get past that hurdle of trying to be absolutely perfect, it all becomes so much easier.

The problem is that you actually do care about yourself. You want to be healthier. You try to exercise regularly. You try to stick to a healthy diet. And you make every effort to try to stick to your healthy routines. Do you see the problem here? It’s not that you have wrong ideals, it’s that you’re trying to stick to them! In the words of Yoda, “Do not try … there is no try … DO!”

Yoda’s just a character in a sci-fi movie, but there’s truth in what he says. There’s no future in trying. You either want to do something, or you don’t. And if you want to do it, really want to, then do it! There’s no middle ground. That doesn’t mean you must never ‘fall off the wagon’, it just means that you need to realise that trying will get you nowhere.

As Yoda said, just do it!

You want to stick to a healthy diet? Then do it! Decide you’re going to do it, no matter what, and just go ahead and do it. OK, you might have a blip now and then, but that’s not important. Just get back on the healthy eating routine, and once again have the firm intention that you’ll just stick to it. You’re not a failure because you ate something you shouldn’t have eaten. Failure doesn’t come into it. Take that word and throw it in the trash. It will not help you to use that word!

Allow yourself a margin of error. You’re human, you will make mistakes. No problem. Just keep on moving forward. And be a bit kinder to yourself. Be more relaxed about your eating habits. Stop beating yourself up! Remember, it’s natural to make mistakes and to do the wrong thing sometimes. It does not make you a failure!

Actually, the more successful you are, if you’re trying to lose weight, the more it can become addictive. You managed to lose twenty pounds … fantastic! Now you want to lose twenty more. No, stop! You don’t want to lose twenty more! You’ve managed to lose twenty pounds, and that was a great result. Trying to keep up this losing weight is a huge mistake. You want to have a clear idea in mind of how much you want to lose before you even start. That way you can just quit once you lose the weight.

Stop trying to lose weight

And by the way, do yourself a favour and stop thinking about it quite this way … as losing weight. The important thing is to lose excess fat! You want to lose that fat, that’s all. It’s irrelevant what you weigh. You could lose fifteen or twenty pounds of fat and look fantastic. Actually, you could lose ten pounds of fat and gain a few pounds of muscle at the same time (no, it’s not impossible!), and you might not have lost much weight at all, according to the bathroom scales. But hey, you’ll look like you’ve lost twenty pounds, and you’ll look a lot better and you’ll feel a hell of a lot better!

It’s not about the numbers, it’s about shedding a few pounds of fat and getting in good shape. The numbers, in themselves, don’t mean a thing. You can get so wound up with them, believing them ultra important, that all it does is drag you deeper into perfectionism … which, ultimately is damaging.

Don’t be so uptight about food

So, be more relaxed about your eating habits. Eating is one of the great pleasures in life – let’s not ruin it by making it a chore. And be more relaxed about your exercise habits, for that matter. Stop all the harsh demanding of yourself. The less rigid and unyielding you are, the more you will naturally and easily adopt sensible habits, and keep to them.

But while you’re becoming more relaxed about your eating habits, you have to come to terms, also, with the fact that sugar and all the sources of sugar are actually highly addictive. Being more relaxed about it might help you stay away from it, but don’t count on that.

Perhaps the best way to come off the sugar train, and stay off it, is to [first] recognise that it’s highly addictive, and [secondly] to tell yourself, quite firmly, that you’re staying away from it from now on because it’s bad for you, and because you have more respect for yourself than to keep pumping that stuff into your system. Just like you might do if you were trying to come off class A drugs.

You wouldn’t just say, that’s it, no more coke for me (‘cos that would never work) … no, you’d say, OK, that’s it, I’m staying away from coke, and all the circumstances that make taking coke possible, because it’s very, very bad for me and I have way too much respect for myself to keep shoving that junk into my system. Now you’re talking! That kind of thinking might actually get the results you’re after.

Face it, perfectionism is doomed to failure

So, to wrap up, face the fact that perfectionism is ultimately damaging. It’s a flawed ideal, this trying to be literally perfect, in whatever way. It’s just not possible and it always ends in misery. Instead, aim to make steady progress towards your goals. If you want to create and maintain a healthy eating regime, just do it. Work out a ‘diet’ that works for you, and one that you believe you can stick to.

Then go ahead and begin. And do it fearlessly, knowing that if you make a ‘mistake’, then what you’ve actually just done is step carefully onto a wobbly stepping stone … wobbly, yes, but it’s still a stepping stone on the path to your goal. You’re still making progress! And you can carry on, knowing that you’re getting closer to attaining your goal every day. And this approach can work for any goal, not just shedding fat.

And remember to be kinder to yourself. Stop being so unremittingly demanding. You wouldn’t do it to someone else … why do it to yourself?

In the words of Desiderata, “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

Note: if you’d like to read more about Desiderata, go here.