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Do you remember when you first started “adulting”? Maybe you finally had your own little kitchen and you decided to cook a real meal for yourself. You had all of your ingredients, you followed the recipe, and you were so looking forward to that “good meal” moment . . . except it turned out to be a total disaster.
Maybe your early adulting failure involved shrinking an entire load of laundry, or buying a piece of furniture that you couldn't put together. Whatever it was, your first thought probably wasn't “Oh well, learning experience!” It was likely more like, “How am I this bad at simple things?”
We all have that voice, right? The one that turns something like burning dinner into a sign that you're failing at life in general.
Who Sets These Standards Anyway?
There’s no law that says you have to meet really high standards. And honestly, who even set them in the first place? Why are you trying so hard to meet them?
Don't get me wrong, caring about what you do matters, and being dedicated to that is good. But chasing a perfect outcome? That's just a trap that keeps you stuck.
I watch my niece sometimes, and she'll draw the same butterfly 50 times. Each one looks completely different: some have wonky wings, some are missing antennae, one looks more like a weird aircraft. But she's not sitting there having an existential crisis about her butterfly drawing. She just . . . draws another one.
When do so many of us lose that willingness to let things be imperfect? When did we start believing that not being good at something immediately means we suck?
Do You Know?
Have you noticed how your shoulders stiffen and how your breath gets shallow when you're trying to get something “just right”? Your body notices when you're in perfectionism mode even before your brain catches up.
If “perfectionism” is your default setting, here are four things you can do to override it:
1) Don’t Aim for 100% on Your First Attempt
This sounds counterintuitive, but aim for 40%. Not because you're lazy, but because achieving 40% is enough for your first-ever try at anything. At 40%, you're still putting in effort, but you're not so tense that you squeeze all the creativity and joy out of whatever you're doing.
Try it next time you're doing something new. Aim for "good enough" and see what happens to your stress levels.
2) Check In With Your Body
When you’re working on something, take a two-minute pause and notice the tension in your body. Our bodies store suppressed emotions in different areas. Are your shoulders practically touching your ears? Is your jaw clenched like your teeth are glued together? Are you holding your breath? Are your glutes clenched?
Those are early warning signs that you’re entering perfectionism mode. You want to recognize them before your mind spirals into “This has to be flawless” territory.
3) Celebrate the Mess-Ups
When you mess up, just pause. Rather than telling yourself “I'm useless,” trying to laugh about what happened, ordering pizza if you burned dinner, or texting a friend about your epic fail.
The point is to break that automatic shame spiral before it starts. Because honestly, most of our “disasters” aren’t irreversible and make pretty good stories later anyway.
4) The Two-Question Check
Before you spend an hour perfecting something, ask yourself:
- Will this matter in 10 days, 10 weeks, or a year?
- Am I doing this because it needs to be better, because I'm afraid of judgment, or do I want to feel in control?
Most of the time, the honest answer is that you want to feel in control or avoid a bad feeling.
Perfectionism isn't actually about doing good work. It's about control. It's about trying to manage how people see you, how they judge you, and whether they accept you.
The truth is, you can't control that. You may choose the best words to write what you think is a perfect text message, but your friend might still misunderstand it. People are complicated. Mess-ups happen.
What you can control is how you respond when things don't go as you hoped.
What's one imperfect thing you did this week that you're actually proud of? I bet it's more interesting than any perfect thing you could have done.
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