Perfectionism and The Virtue of Good Enough

At this point in life, I like to think of myself as a recovering perfectionist. I may only be 24 as of writing this, but I think that I’ve still spent too much time fretting over perfecting the ultimately inconsequential. So let’s talk about why that matters.

(Ironically, I had lost all my progress partway through writing this blog, and boy, if that ain’t an exercise of humility when preaching about accepting things being good enough, I really don’t want to find out what is)

I hear you asking, “What’s so bad about perfectionism? Shouldn’t we want to give our best to try and achieve perfection with what we do? What’s the point of trying if you’re not really giving it your all?” All valid questions which I’ll be tackling here! I think perfectionism is a great example of “too much of a good thing”, which then begs the question of how one can reduce it back into only the good parts. To get to that end, let’s answer some of those questions we have.

“What’s so bad about perfectionism?”

Fundamentally, we may wish to strive for greatness, but aiming for (and expecting) actual perfection is the formula for dissatisfaction. Setting an expectation of perfection will serve two purposes, one primary, and one secondary. The primary purpose is to demoralize and crush you for anything less than perfect. The secondary purpose is to cause you to strive toward a goal you might be able to reach some of the time. Holding this expectation upon yourself will naturalize and familiarize it to you, which in turn causes you to turn it on others, regardless of if that is/was your purpose for employing it. I think that perfectionism hinges heavily on the potency of shame as a motivator. The idea that we should feel shame for being less than perfect often acts as compulsion to “do better”, whatever that may subjectively (and critically) mean.

Perfectionism will always deliver us back to this truth: Nothing is really the way that it should be.

The status of the broken world we live in will always stand in opposition to our beliefs of perfection and order. Even if we are not individuals who obsess over a perfect order, inviting perfectionism into our minds will create a sense of polarizing taste and distaste. Fundamentally, we can fully understand and believe that things are not the way that they should be. We can believe that things are out of order and that we should try to bring order where and how we can. The mistake we make is thinking that this belief and eradicating perfectionism from our minds are mutually exclusive. Perfection exists, but our job is not to create perfection. It is to join in the process of all things being made new.

“What’s the point of trying if you’re not really giving it your all?”

Great question! How about… Progress? Improvement? Iterative growth? Scaffolding? Correct me if I’m wrong, but people don’t go to the gym to set new personal bests every single time. Marathon runners don’t train by trying to just run a marathon shorter than the one they are preparing for. There is more to development than setting new records and new benchmarks. If we are expecting to blow our old records out of the water every time we try to do something, we will be very suddenly halted by disappointment. Expecting that you can/will give your all to every single thing you try is an extremely draining and unsustainable way to live a life. The older I get, the less I care about the height of the peak and the more I care about the duration of the sustain.

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs here but I think there is a difference between giving your all and giving your best. Your all means that you are giving every bit of effort you can muster. I really don’t see how this is sustainable. Your best means that you are giving the most effort you can reasonably dedicate to the task. Your all looks to the immediate objective, but your best looks to the long-term goal by stewarding its resources in a sustainable way.

“Shouldn’t we want to give our best to try and achieve perfection with what we do?”

Yes! But no! We may not initially see it this way, but there is a world of difference between giving our best and achieving perfection. Giving your best introduces the concept of pragmatism into the conversation, which I think is actually key to cracking this whole case wide open. Giving your best actually demonstrates an understanding of what you can do, rather than what is needed for this mystical perfect order that we allege we have the power to create.

Let’s jump back to pragmatism, because I think there’s a lot here. I think that perfectionism and pragmatism are two sides of the same coin. Perfectionism is the motivator for what could be, and pragmatism is the motivator for what will be. Where perfectionism sees the areas we fall short in, pragmatism sees the areas we can do more in. Perfectionism is irrespective of the amount of effort we can put in, and what our ability to output work is. Pragmatism is conscious of the amounts we can apply, and what may happen if we do apply that effort. Maybe the answer we really need to be able to give when we ask ourselves, “Am I doing all that is expected of me?” is, “You are doing as much as you can to go from where you were to where you need to be without collapsing along the way.”

I know this isn’t really the most encouraging way to look at perfectionism, and maybe it’s not even the best way to go about self improvement. This is a touchy topic because we run the risk of just accepting and allowing mediocrity to become more pervasive than it already is. I truly understand that and I feel a lot of hesitation writing all this. However, at the same time, I know the despair that perfectionism has caused in so many, including myself.

So, call it coping, but I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think we need to humble ourselves and realize that we are not perfect, nor are we feasibly capable of creating that perfection. Sometimes we will knock it out of the park, and sometimes we will see where we can grow, and more importantly, how we have grown. If nothing else, my thesis here is to encourage yourself to keep moving, even and especially when you feel like nothing you do will ever be enough. We need mindset shifts to help us refocus on what matters, and give us reason to keep trying. Perseverance and perfectionism are far from mutually exclusive.

I’ve been feeling an ever-growing tension within myself between perfectionism and pragmatism.

I think I used to really have a hard time with reconciling the expectations that I and others have of me with reality. The gap between where we are and where we are expected to ideally (and sometimes unrealistically) be can be a crippling void. This space creates a feeling of hollowness in us that can make us feel like not even trying anymore. It can debilitate us from wanting to even achieve what we can because we feel that we will always be faced with the reality of our insufficiencies.

In reality, our personal insufficiencies highlight a few things to us. Foremost, where we can grow. Secondly, where our strengths lie. Thirdly, our inability to be a perfect 100% in all things. Lastly, the reality of our need for someone who was perfect and stood in the gap between us and the perfection we could not achieve on our own. The model of Christ being the perfection we never were to redeem us and bring us back into God’s perfect order with continual mercy is nothing short of humbling and awe-inspiring.

So in sum, I think we need to stop thinking of our perfection as an achievable outcome. Let’s take ourselves off the pedestal of ability to be perfect, and remember that our failures point us to the one without them. Pragmatism is the friend we didn’t think we needed, but can guide us to a greater measure of peace and productivity. Let’s keep working on the things we need to, focusing on the areas we require improvement in, and not let the space between our reality and idealism dissipate our momentum.

Thanks for not reading.