How can we move past the race for unending perfectionism?

Studies show that when parents and teachers praise their kids for being perfect, they feel alienated and anxious. In contrast, when praised for just trying hard and putting in effort, they feel motivated.

We are in a cycle of seeking irresistible perfection. We want everything to be perfect. At a restaurant, if we have a fabulous meal and are given a fabulous service, after we pay the bill and lift our stuffed bodies up, if we see the patron at the next table get a discount, suddenly, the experience is not very nice. We feel we should also get a similar discount. 

I find perfectionism ruining things for me. When you are a perfectionist, you can't enjoy even your successes — there is always something you could have done better. There can never be a perfect holiday because someone booked a better hotel or negotiated a better flight deal or went to a more happening vacation country. 

Soon I found that I was not alone, an epidemic of perfection was growing at a rather alarming pace. Once thought to be a solution for success, research now shows that perfectionism fuels fear, frustration, and disappointment.

At the very forefront of this onslaught are young women who are facing what psychologist Steve Hinshaw, calls the 'Triple Bind'. 

Anna Quindlen

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

The first bind is, that since times immemorial, girls have been pressured to excel at traditional "female" roles; of being caring, nurturing, empathic, tolerant, cute and even sexy. Think Helen of Troy, Sita, Kunti, Draupadi or Mother Teresa. 

In the last few decades, they are being subjected to yet a second bind - they are now expected to storm the traditional "male" roles; career oriented, fiercely competitive, demonstrate assertion and strength, and be immensely successful. Think Chanda Kochhar, Marissa Meyer, Sheryl Sandberg and Angelina Jolie. 

Interestingly, in the last decade or so, a third bind seems to be gaining strength. Steve Hinshaw states that there is now an expectation that women need to be 100% perfect, every single time, in every single aspect. Quite intuitively, the highest and most unforgiving form of expectation is self-expectation. Young women, who cannot score a perfect 10 on all these conflicting demands begin to see themselves, unworthy. If she prioritises, then it’s perceived to be a lose-lose situation. 

Perfectionism is NOT about setting high expectations or being successful in your endeavours. It is about being concerned about making mistakes and about worrying about what others think.

What is the genesis of perfectionism? 
We are not born perfectionists. We pressurise ourselves to become perfectionists. Sometimes the environment and role models urge us to do so. 

So why is this unending perfectionism bad? 
For starters, perfectionism keeps us from taking a risk, and trying to be average in something new. Even when we are trying something new, like rock climbing or yoga, we want to be perfect from Day One. When we cannot do the perfect wheel pose, or for that matter, meditate for a few minutes, we feel bad. 

Kristin Neff, another psychologist who studies self-esteem and self-compassion says, “We love the illusion that it’s theoretically possible to be perfect, to never have things go wrong, to do everything we want to do.” 

It has been hardwired into us, by scientists like Darwin, when they coined the phrase, 'survival of the fittest'. The Theory Of Evolution is attempting to perfect itself into the Theory of Perfection; where we state to ourselves, that if you are not the best at everything, then there is something wrong with us. Basically, we all believe that we have to be above average in everything that we do. Mathematically, this is impossible. 

When we think we are not in the Top 5 or Top 10%, we feel we will be left behind. In my business, if I state nine strengths and one weakness to a client; the client’s attention is automatically focused on the one single weakness. 

Often my clients want to “redo” the assessment; so that they can score higher in their own strengths; even when the strengths report is confidential. If there are 25 competencies, they want to score an 8 on 10 for all 25 of them. In some strengths, they want to score 11 out of 10 and apparently, they are just perfect in that strength, every single moment. 

Which takes me to a very interesting study; where participants were asked to describe themselves on a video and later they would be given feedback by someone on how warm, friendly, intelligent, likable, and mature they appeared. Here is what the devious psychologists did: they rigged the feedback! Half the participants were randomly given positive feedback and the remaining were given neutral feedback. 

When presented with neutral feedback, those with a higher level of self-esteem, tended to get flustered and even deny the feedback. “What! I am average, I am not likeable and warm”? “The person rating me was an idiot”. On the other spectrum, self-compassionate people remained calm regardless of whether the feedback was positive or neutral. They accepted the feedback as a reflection of their personalities 

This suggests that self-compassionate people are better able to accept who they are, regardless of the degree of praise they receive from others. Self-esteem, on the other hand, only thrives when the reviews are good and may lead to evasive and counterproductive tactics when there’s a possibility of facing unpleasant truths about oneself.

These expectations may seem innocuous, but it seems to be having a real physiological impact on young women. Studies show that one in four young girls in the United States suffer from self-mutilation tendencies, eating disorders, violence or significant depression. 

Before you think this is not true for India, hold on, my colleagues and I get so many calls and coaching requests from both young and mature women who have achieved so much in every domain of their life, but still feel that their lives are empty. They just have to be the perfect boss, the perfect subordinate, the perfect team player; they have to be the perfect wife, the perfect lover, the perfect sister, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter-in-law; and be hot, good looking, sexy; and straddle all these roles effortlessly. 

Caitlin Moran

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy, and smug they might be.

The solution is self-kindness. 

The first steps, Neff suggests, is to move from the stick to the carrot. It is strange, we have all heard of the carrot and stick approach. We know while motivating others, the carrot works better than the stick. However, when it comes to motivating ourselves, we believe that we must use the stick approach. 

Lewis Carroll | Alice in Wonderland

Have I gone mad? I’m afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usually are.

Think about it, when was the last time you treated yourself to a carrot? When was the last time, you treated yourself to a stick? 

WHY? As a society, we believe that self-criticism is a noble pursuit. It is almost as if society has sanctioned self-criticism. We believe that only if we are critical of ourselves, then we will be motivated into action. Only if we use the “stick” on ourselves, will we change. We should not give ourselves carrots. 

As a matter of fact, many clients truly and deeply believe that they need a bigger stick to motivate themselves. Why else would they be so self-critical? They believe that being compassionate towards themselves would lead to becoming a doormat and stagnation. 

Well, the fact that they chose out someone dubbed Mr. Positivity usually means, the stick has not worked and they need something different. So the stick is kept away and instead what is used is the power of language. 

A key component to self-kindness is in the realm of language that you use to describe yourself or your circumstances. In words, there is is immense power; like I'd written in an earlier column: How positive words can impact the course of our lives

The words that we use to describe ourselves influence our feelings and thoughts and subsequent actions. 

The second suggested measure by Neff is “Common Humanity" It is about acknowledging that what you are experiencing is genuine, yet common to humanity. 

At that moment; when we realise that we did something wrong or if something went wrong, the first reaction would be to centre the blame towards ourselves. The most common reaction I get is; “Why does this happen only to me?” We think that perfect is the default status. 

Kristin Neff

That’s what life is: Life goes wrong. No one in here signed a contract before you were born in this world saying I will be perfect, my life would be perfect, and yet it’s still like “this is not the life I signed up for! I’m pissed off about it!” Right? That’s how we react. The problem with that - and there are a lot of problems with that - but one of the main things is when we feel isolated and cut off from others, physiologically that’s very frightening.

Very often, when I would feel frustrated at work, my reaction would be the same as others. When I used to interview people and ask them why they are leaving their current jobs and why they wanted to start on a new job, the answer was always; “There is no challenge left and I am seeking higher challenges”. Well, interestingly, three months into the new company, when the honeymoon period ends, and they are thrown into mind-boggling challenges, the first reaction would be…I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS! Or I do not get paid enough to take this s***. It was good to know, that I was not alone!

Finally, comes self-comparison  
When I open Facebook and see all of my 3700 friends leading superbly curated lives, it might be easy to get sucked into self-comparison. When a hundred people update their promotions on LinkedIn everyday, or their profile changes show a sexier job in a happening unicorn, or them moving to a sexier country; it is natural to feel that way. You feel you are the only one “not happening”. Sometimes you even wonder; if good things happen to only bad people? 

There are theories that you should compare yourselves to people above you or below you. In a nutshell, it is neither. Compare yourself with only yourself. Enjoy being in the moment and savour those little victories. Let your own successes and failures be rich sources of learning and growth. Measure yourself by your own agenda and not someone else’s agenda or even expectations. 

To conclude, TAKE AWAY THOSE MIRRORS even momentarily. Everyone keeps looking at the mirror and they don’t seem to like what they see. With an alarming frequency, our minds and eyes might deceive us to see only a broken person. They see someone who is losing the race, whose resources are near depletion, who is overwhelmed by a spate of bad luck, and of course, they don’t look as hot as they did in 2014. 

A good step is to stop labeling the person we see in the mirror as good or bad. By labeling yourself, you are not changing yourself, on the contradictory; you might be compelling yourself to hold on to that label.

When we come into this world, all that we undergo is akin to what all of humanity undergoes; ranging from a tyrannical boss, a tough fickle customer, an unethical competitor, an uncooperative colleague, an uncooperative romantic partner, uncouth or noisy neighbours, an unreasonable regulator and of course, a demanding investor. Personally, I have faced them and I continue to face them and hopefully, I will continue to face them. 

The more you obsess with the mirror, the more distant you will take yourself away from those who are close to you, to those who can help you, to those who can fill your perceived scarcity with abundance. 

There are people waiting out there, to love you exactly the way you are and to undo those binds,

Pink Floyd  - “A momentary lapse of reason” 
One slip and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
A momentary lapse of reason
That binds a life to a life
You won't regret, you will never forget
There'll be no sleep in here tonight

Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love?
Or was it the hand of fate that seemed to fit just like a glove?
The moment slipped by and soon the seeds were sown
The year grew late and neither one wanted to remain alone

One slip ... one slip