Perfectionism is Overrated.
so
around two years ago i was talking to a
friend and he was stressing out about
school and his social life
i remember asking him why he wouldn’t
cry or show any signs of weakness at all
now he just often talked in an upset
tone while his face was emotionless
he gave me a response that i still think
about to this day
he looked at me and said because my
parents
want me to be perfect now at first
i had no idea what he meant by that i
mean
wasn’t showing your feelings and
emotions supposed to be normal
what does he think it means to be
perfect today i decided to look into
this more and what i found was
in the end comforting today i’m going to
be explaining what perfectionism is
and going more in depth with the
negative impacts of perfectionism
now what even is perfectionism
just to do to figure this out i searched
up on copify.com and what showed up
was a list of things to learn and do now
when i saw this list i thought to myself
this is not what my parents taught me i
mean
they taught me that to succeed you need
to have perfect grades you have to be a
lawyer
you have to master every instrument
activity you pick up
and never complain because your life was
better than those around
you that’s what i was taught it meant to
be perfect
and that’s what i was raised with and
then
i realized how ridiculous my list was
not only that but how ridiculous parents
have been to teach their children what
perfectionism is
not only parents women and men are
depicted in movies where the heroine is
a damsel in distress and the man is
tough and never vulnerable
advertisements show that there’s a
specific body type people have to be
and if you aren’t that body type you
aren’t perfect
what you wear either makes you fit the
aesthetic or make you look completely
ridiculous
being perfect is that even possible and
what is the reality of a society
that believes it is so now perfection is
in the eyes of the beholder
therefore one who believes one thing may
be perfect
can be entirely different for another in
a way
perfection and beauty go hand in hand as
they’re both advertised and shown in the
way
people see them and they can be
completely changed over time
people that have strived to be perfect
for so long can feel
so so vulnerable and feel they’re not
good enough when they can’t achieve what
they want to perfect
people can get this need for many
reasons validation
love comfort self-worth but it’ll never
just come out of nowhere and people can
get it from such a young
age as well as fifth grader haley mcgee
ran home crying one day because she had
received an a minus
on a report card she grew up in a
setting where she had to be an
overachiever as that was the only way
she could receive the love and
validation from the adults around her
so getting an a minus was seen to her as
a failure
her self-worth diminished and went down
so much
because of what was on that paper
someone so young
lost all of her confidence because of an
a-minus
now let that sink in for a moment a
fifth grader
lost all of her confidence because of an
a-minus
someone so young lost all of her
feelings of self-worth
because of a piece of paper now as sued
has stated
setting high standards and aiming for
excellence are proven to be positive
traits
but perfectionism itself is a
dysfunction because it’s underscored by
a person sense of themselves
they had a part of themselves that they
didn’t like and decided to fill in that
void by being perfect
in a way it’s a coping mechanism that
constantly repeats itself
now this cultural phenomenon has started
because of modern parenting
and social media and when we ask our
parents
why we need to be perfect they say and i
quote
because it’s a booming society and the
job you want will always be taken by
someone better than you are
that you’ll live on the streets you’ll
never be good enough and
i think i just gave someone deja vu
crazy right
the problem with perfectionism is that
it never comes from nowhere it can come
from a person’s
self-worth of how they feel like they’re
not good enough it can come from
disapproval from parents and
perceived disapproval from society
there’s many reasons for this and when
we ask
why they just can’t get rid of it it’s
because it’s a coping mechanism
not only that a negative one that
impacts the human body in a negative way
to the point where
it becomes impossible to get rid of
now these can have many negative effects
some mental like depression anxiety or
some like anorexia nervosa or orthorexia
but it’ll never come from nowhere and
there will always
be a negative impact to it now
a common misconception that i hear quite
a bit especially when addressing one’s
flaws in interviews
is when asking what’s a flaw they have
they’d respond with
well i’m a perfectionist and
that’s not a good thing now the society
seems to have seen perfectionism as a
positive thing and i feel i need to
address
that trying your best and being a
perfectionist is not the same thing
if not entirely different trying your
best is going past your boundaries in an
understandable and a healthy way
understanding your limits
and being proud of what you’ve
accomplished being a perfectionist on
the other hand
is going past your limits in an
unhealthy way not understanding your
boundaries and not even feeling proud of
what you’ve accomplished in the end as
you feel
it didn’t reach that side of
perfectionism
now i’ve talked pretty negatively
throughout this
ted talk so now i think it’s time to
look at some positive
coping mechanisms that can replace this
negative one
now i’m not saying that these coping
mechanisms will work for everyone
because everyone thinks differently
not only that it will take a lot of time
and effort before things truly come to
effect
you can’t expect something to happen one
day and magically work and
wow i don’t have perfectionism no it
doesn’t work like that it will take a
lot of time and effort
so please bear with me on that one
because i don’t really have that much
patience
either understanding what perfectionism
is and the risks of it are important
when trying to understand a person who
has it
the person themselves may not even
realize that they have it
i honestly wish i could go back in time
and tell my friend all those years ago
that he didn’t have to be perfect if i
knew sooner i could have maybe helped
him
i would have told him that those movies
with what was supposed to be perfect
it was supposed to be the status quo
were so overrated
i tell the girl with the a-minus that
those grades don’t define you
even if it’s hard at the moment from
wherever you are just know that you’ll
be okay
simply put being perfect is so overrated
thank you
[Applause]