The Imperfect Perfectionist
You may believe that you are your own harshest critic. That is probably exactly how it should be. No one is better suited to complete an honest and accurate assessment of you than you, so go ahead and be a responsible critic of yourself and your efforts.
You should expect more from yourself than anyone else will expect. You should be willing and able to set a standard for yourself above where anyone else could set it for you. Demanding your best effort and realizing when you can do better are traits that will serve you well and virtually ensure that you will make good decisions that are consistent with your goals and a self-directed lifestyle.
The trap to avoid here is not to overdo it. Being unrealistically hard on yourself will only serve to impede your progress and damage your own self-worth. In being overly critical of yourself, you may inadvertently create a situation that stunts your personal growth. In some cases, you may even convince yourself that you will never live up to your own standards or your own definition of perfection.
Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? Your concept of perfection might be enabling you to not make any decisions at all because you have made yourself believe that you will just end up finding all of the flaws and errors in those decisions, real or imagined.
My friend, the Imperfect Perfectionist reached this exact same point in the road a while back. Before he knew any better, he was content to live his life under the belief that he wasn’t accomplishing much because his standards were too high. It was somehow okay if he didn’t finish a project or meet a deadline because his perfectionist standards were more important than production or the intended results.
Then, one day and purely by chance, he ran to a couple of old college roommates, the Guiltless Wonder and Infinite Self. They got to talking and reminiscing about old times and it wasn’t long before they were filling each other in on what had been going on in their lives. It is important to note that, at this stage of his life, the Imperfect Perfectionist was known simply as the Perfectionist. As he told his story, Infinite Self almost immediately recognized that Perfectionist was simply living under a similar false pretense to the one that Infinite Self had previously subscribed.
Perfectionist was using his perfectionist standards to excuse his behavior and give him cover for what had otherwise been a less than remarkable existence. When the Guiltless Wonder and Infinite Self shared their insight and the experiences that helped them to become super heroes, Perfectionist grasped what they were telling him and decided, on the spot, that he did not want to hold himself back any longer.
Ironically, at the exact moment that Perfectionist decided that he would become the Imperfect Perfectionist, he gained super hero abilities. By embracing his imperfections, he, in a way, became perfect or at least a person who possessed extraordinary powers.
He decided that his objective, from that day forward, would be to seek a path and journey that provided him with the best possible way forward. He would no longer expect to make all of the right moves and take all of the right steps.
He began to understand that he could not become a good decision maker without making some bad decisions along the way. His key would be to determine what he could learn and how he could grow from his experiences. In order to do that, he just had to make sure that he had actual experiences and that he didn’t shrink from the challenges they presented to him.
He accepted the fact that he was not perfect and that he never would be. He further determined that he would be guided in his endeavors by his pursuit of perfection, all the while remaining imperfect.
So, how in the world does that make sense? How can the Imperfect Perfectionist be happy, imperfect, and pursuing perfection at the same time? The answer is that he understood he could be imperfect, but that he could still achieve and experience perfection. Further, that answer had been right in front of him the whole time.
When he really thought about his life and his experiences prior to his transformation into the Imperfect Perfectionist, he remembered many moments and instances that were actually perfect.
He thought about the day he met his future spouse and despite how much time had passed since that encounter, he still remembered everything about that moment as if it had just happened a few hours ago.
He thought about the arrival of his child. He could feel the immensity of that arrival in his heart as if it was actually happening all over again right at that moment.
He thought about the time that he hit the game winning shot for his eighth grade basketball team during a game against their arch rivals.
He thought about all of those instances and moments and several more and he realized that the common thread amongst every single one of them was that he would not change a thing. Each of those moments played out exactly how he wanted them to and how he might have dreamed they would had he thought about them happening before they actually did.
By definition, that is perfection and he knew it was achievable because he had experienced it.
If you were to embrace your imperfections and commit to the pursuit of perfection anyway, just like the Imperfect Perfectionist, what might you be able to accomplish?
Scott Arney
Chief Executive Officer
Chicago Patrolmen’s Federal Credit Union
