Heal Your Perfectionist
If you have perfectionist tendencies like me, you may not realize the extent to which it is effecting your life.
Many of us mistake perfectionism for a holding ourselves to a standard of excellence, and they are VERY different things with VERY different outcomes and a VERY different experience of life.
How do you know the difference?
Standard of excellence: High standard for the quality of your work, allows for ‘failure’ in the process, continuous improvement, neutral evaluation
Perfectionism: An unreasonably high expectation, doesn’t allow for failure, strives for perfection before getting started, keeps you from taking action, sets smaller goals, fault finding evaluations, self criticism, high pressure/low action
My inner perfectionist was full of fear and self loathing.
I found very harsh critical thinking about why I had to produce at a standard that I would never hold anyone else to. I had a pattern of ‘bullying’ myself to the top. This thinking pattern was so automatic that I honestly didn’t know it was there.
Once I brought it to the surface, I was shocked to see how poorly I treated myself. I would have never accepted that treatment from anyone else.
As I worked through these thought patterns and perfectionist tendencies, I started to heal the hurt and broken pieces of me that created that protection mechanism in the first place.
So if you have hopelessly high expectations of yourself, or find that you don’t take action because you’re always trying to perfect something, or your fear of failure keeps you playing small…
I invite you to bring your perfectionist out of hiding.
Leave the judgement, criticism, blame and shame at the door, and gently invite her to let go of this need for perceived control and trust that you have her back as you navigate this beautifully perfect, unperfect life.
Here’s to healing your inner perfectionist so she can courageously set big goals again, and go after them. So she can fail and succeed. So she can come out of hiding and show up to experience the fullness of life.
