Being a perfectionist is all sorts of imperfect

Who was it who said if you can’t do it perfectly then don’t do it at all?  Was it Einstein, Henry Ford, my mum or Ronald McDonald (all formative figures in my 70s upbringing)? 

I’ve no idea.  And with no due respect to whoever did say it, what a load of baloney.  But despite that, and despite the fact that I’m 147 years old and should know better, my head still wants me to live or die by this maxim.  

Exhibit 1: At work, I spend ten times as long as I should rereading emails for fear that a word is misspelled or I’ve said something that could, potentially – in the worst case scenario (you know, that scenario that never happens) – put someone’s nose out of joint.    Maths is not my strong point, but here comes the technical bit:  Spending 10 minutes writing a perfectly adequate email + spending 30 minutes rereading and rewriting it = not the best use of anyone’s time and not very PERFECT, is it?

Exhibit 2: I am doing some self development work because there’s a bunch of stuff in my life that’s not how I want it to be.  But I’m coming up against so much freakin’ resistance from that bit of my head that wants to keep the status quo, the bit that says, don’t bother unless you’re gonna achieve your goal immediately and PERFECTLY.  So I do the reading, the planning, the talking about it – all pretty perfectly even if I say so myself – but when the rubber hits the road, and there’s  a risk that that my lifelong hardwired habit won’t change in a NANOSECOND, I want to run away and hide, pretend I never said I would do any of it and hope it all goes away.   Brace yourself for another complex equation, people: Wanting to make positive change + running away when it gets hard for fear of things not being perfect = [yup, you guessed it].  

I rest my case. 

So why do I do this to myself?  Because I’m terrified: of trying and failing, of the teacher (there is no teacher) giving me less than an A+, of my mum (who has dementia) being disappointed, of someone (god knows who) raising an eyebrow at a typo, of finally being exposed (by and to EVERYONE) as an imposter.  

And underneath that fear is this: My belief that just being me, just being Jude – without a top grade or perfectly crafted hilariously funny email to show for myself – is not enough.  

So, what I’ve learned is this:  My perfectionism is like a well meaning but misguided parent, it really does love me and it wants to protect me when I’m scared but its advice is, quite frankly, a load of rubbish.  That doesn’t mean that the next time that it shows up I won’t be scared, but maybe this awareness will help me to create some space to respond differently.  And maybe – just maybe – in all the time that I save by not rewriting every single bloody email, I can start to work out how to believe that just being me, just being Jude, is enough. 

(P.s. Where the hell is Mark Darcy when you need him?).

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