I have a confession to make. I sometimes make careless mistakes with my writing. Although I don’t like to let obvious grammatical or spelling errors slip by, I figure the alternative is worse. The alternative is spending an inordinate amount of time checking my posts and columns for accuracy. Frankly, I’d rather be golfing, or riding my bike, or even just scratching myself for that matter.
Nevertheless, quality is important and this fact makes me somewhat obsessive when I write. I hope to have found a reasonable balance between shoddy work caused by lack of standards, and hopelessly unproductive or inefficient work caused by perfectionnism.
In a column I wrote two weeks ago, I decided to tackle perfectionnism. In cognitive therapy, we try to help people recognize the personal biases that affect how they see themselves. One such bias is called a schema of unrelenting standards – the feeling that nothing a person does is good enough. A person with this bias is like a judge who was bought off, they will almost always feel that their work is inadequate. In the column, I use the analogy of colorblindness to discuss how to look for outside evaluations of the quality of one’s own work. When we recognize that we are unable to judge what looks good, we have no trouble counting on the judgement of others.
Perfectionnists must do the same thing. They must first acknowledge their bias, and then disregard their automatic instincts begin trusting the evaluations of others.
Perfectionism and colorblindness
(source: Journal Métro, June 3, 2008 Perfectionnisme et Daltonisme)Are you a perfectionist or are your personal standards reasonable? Can you judge yourself and the quality of your work fairly? High standards are often good things to hold. When we expect a lot of ourselves we usually achieve more. The problem is that some people’s standards are so high that they are nearly impossible to reach. Despite great success in many areas of their lives, they are often disappointed with themselves and are prone to feelings of dejection and depression.
Are you a perfectionist?
It is not difficult to know if you are a perfectionist. I’m sure you already know it and, if not, you’ve probably been told a hundred times. You can also tell because you’re never happy with yourself, no matter what you do. When it’s done right, you simply feel it is normal and no big deal. When you don’t reach your expectations, you feel like an idiot. Worse still is when you apply those standards to everyone else. That’s what makes some people angry all the time.Colorblind standards
How do you go about changing your standards when you are a perfectionist? It’s not easy, but let’s look at a less emotionally charged problem for a hint. If you were colorblind and wanted to dress well for an important occasion, what would you do? Faced with a closet full of clothes in varying shades of meaningless hues, you would probably ask someone else for their opinion. Simple. By recognizing that you cannot judge the appropriateness of colors, you would base yourself on the opinions of others. This is what perfectionists must learn to do.Recognize the biased judge
The problem with most perfectionists is that they judge themselves in a biased fashion. They normally are much more lenient when judging others. They can recognize when something another person does is well done, or at least good enough. In order to feel better about themselves, they must learn to ignore the biased judge inside and look to others for a more balanced picture. This can include good grades in a class, comments by colleagues and superiors, sales figures, or any number of outside judgements or objective measures.Just as a colorblind person quickly learns that he cannot see colors the same way as others, the perfectionist also must learn that he cannot see the quality of his own work. They must both rely on other people. The colorblind person must do so in order to look good. The perfectionist must do so in order to feel good.
Tagged as negative self-perceptions, perfectionism, Self-perception.
Posted in Happiness, Human nature.
Posted on 22 Jun 2008
