Be Less Hard on Yourself with Perfectionism Mad Libs
I'm a (personally valued quality) person who sometimes (exception).
Don’t call it a life hack! But do call it a concrete, use-anywhere tool to help you be less hard on yourself.
Those of us with perfectionism hold high and personally demanding standards for ourselves. We aim to hit it out of the park in areas that are important to us, whether that’s work performance, grades, fitness, social behavior, productivity, staying emotionally regulated, or other things that we think reflect on us as a person.
We aim for “all.” And that’s great—please do aim high!
But there will be times when, because we’re human, we inevitably fall short. And then, because perfectionism is black-and-white, we find ourselves stuck at “nothing.”
For example, a client we’ll call Juliet is a pediatrician who prides herself on taking good care of her patients. It is important to her to be a “good doctor.”
In our session, she was horrified at herself for missing a case of appendicitis. A child came in with abdominal pain and Juliet thought it was just constipation. She sent the family home, only to find out the next day they had gone to the emergency room and the kid had been admitted for emergency surgery.
Juliet was mortified: “She could have died! How did I miss that? I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years! I’m a terrible doctor!”
Juliet was right to be upset: that’s normal. But Juliet felt like the mistake made her a terrible doctor. Twenty years of getting it right, or at least no more than minor mistakes, somehow vaporized. One miss rendered her a bad doctor.
This is classic perfectionism. When the standard for “good” is set at “flawless perfection,” one mistake sends us ricocheting down to “bad.”
Now, sometimes all-or-nothing is actually required. For example, pilots should be sober on 100% of their workdays.
But more often, all-or-nothing isn’t feasible or realistic. Life is messy, not completely under our control, and constantly changing. We can’t always do everything that we expect of ourselves.
Conventional wisdom says to lower our standards. We’re told to shoot for “good enough.”
But that doesn’t sit well when meeting our demanding standards means something personal about us. We’re not going to settle for less because that would mean we’re somehow “less.”
(Stage whisper: measuring our value through our performance is a phenomenon called overidentification, sometimes technically called over-evaluation, and we’ll cover this more in future newsletters!)
So here’s a subtle but effective way out of overidentification. I call it “Perfectionism Mad Libs.”
In perfectionism, we try to perform well 100% of the time in order to prove we’re good.
But what if we can still be good, even with some exceptions? What if we don’t have to prove ourselves 100% of the time?
Here’s the Mad Libs fill-in-the-blank: I’m a (personally valued quality) person who sometimes (exception).
I’m a smart person who sometimes doesn’t know the answer.
I’m an organized person who sometimes drops some balls.
I’m a dedicated person who sometimes doesn’t try my hardest.
I’m a productive person who sometimes blows things off.
I’m a peaceful person who sometimes loses my temper.
I’m a fun person who sometimes has a serious moment.
I’m a serious person who sometimes lets loose.
I’m a successful person who sometimes fails.
I’m a disciplined person who sometimes lets myself go.
I’m a healthy person who is sometimes unhealthy.
I’m a creative person who sometimes gets blocked.
I have good judgment and sometimes make dumb decisions.
Juliet can be a good doctor who sometimes misses a diagnosis.
We’re getting away from an “all-or-nothing” mindset and moving toward “all with reasonable exceptions.” We retain our sense of ourselves as good people but build in some oh-so-human wiggle room.
For you, continue to aim high. Keep your standards rigorous. But also build in room for the inevitable blips and slips.
Bottom line: You can be good and make mistakes.
You can be good and fall short.
You can be good and not do everything you expect of yourself all the time.
That’s called being human.
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Be kind to others and yourself!