Perfectionism is often a response of us tying our worth to our ability to do things.
We often asscociate being perfect with a high sense of worth. This ideology sometimes develops due to criticism from others in childhood when things weren’t “perfect”. When things aren’t perfect it can be common for people to experience low self esteem and confidence”.

Now perfectionism has its benefits. Often people who struggle with perfectionism are well organised, have a great attention to detail and are often well planned. However perfectionism becomes detrimental to ones wellbeing when you can’t remain in the present moment or truly enjoy things because you’ve tied your worth to your performance.

This is something I’ve also previously struggled with and one way that I’ve been working on overcoming this is by purposefully doing things badly. Yep thats right.

Now I don’t mean my important things like assignments, CVs, job applications.
But things like arts and craft, singing, playing an instrument. Things considered as hobbies.

Now the reason I’ve purposely done some of these thing badly is to first of all make myself feel uncomfortable (because uncomfortability = growth) and secondly to show my brain that my worth doesn’t change if things aren’t perfect, that nothing bad has happened to me because I’ve not done something well.

We often crave perfection because we’re scared of things going wrong if we don’t.

So by doing task that aren’t to the best of our ability we learn to be in the present moment and learn to enjoy the activity for what it is rather than the sense of worth it gives us.

Are you somebody who struggles with perfectionism? How do you manage it?