Why do you need to accept your flaws? How can you overcome a desire to be perfect?
To stay focused on your goals, you need to acknowledge your flaws. Adam Grant explains that many people suffer from perfectionism, which counterintuitively prevents them from doing their best work.
Keep reading to learn how to overcome perfectionism so you can continue your personal growth.
Acknowledging Your Flaws
When you don’t learn how to overcome perfectionism, you exhaust yourself trying to fix unimportant problems that don’t need to be fixed. Perfectionism also causes you to emotionally punish yourself for your mistakes. This self-flagellation makes you more afraid of making mistakes, which in turn teaches you to avoid mistakes rather than learn from them. Trying to avoid mistakes is one of the most common ways people stunt their personal growth.
Grant argues that perfection shouldn’t be your ultimate goal. It’s impossible to create perfect work, he says. Once you embrace this fact, you can direct your efforts strategically rather than putting maximum effort into everything. Focus on improving the aspects of your work that will have the greatest impact on its overall quality, and let go of everything else.
Your work doesn’t need to be perfect to be groundbreaking; it just needs to have some excellent qualities. For instance, when Apple first launched the iPhone in 2007, critics derided it for being far too expensive and locked onto AT&T’s slow 2G network. If Apple had obsessed over optimizing their supply chain to lower the price of the iPhone, or tried to build their own perfect cellular network, they might have wasted millions of dollars chasing these unnecessary and potentially impossible goals. Instead, the iPhone’s user-friendly touchscreen, multitude of functions, and sleekly designed software were excellent enough for it to sell six million units in its first year and revolutionize the smartphone industry.
| How to Cure Perfectionism If you’re a perfectionist, ignoring flaws in your work so you can focus on the areas that matter most is easier said than done. On a practical level, how do you unlearn perfectionist tendencies? First, understand where perfectionist tendencies come from. In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown argues that perfectionists aren’t trying to create perfect work for its own sake; rather, they primarily want to control other people’s perceptions of them. They fear the shame that comes with being judged as flawed or incompetent, so they try to hide all their flaws. When they inevitably fail, they end up shaming themselves—as Grant describes. In Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff contends that the key to ridding yourself of this fear and shame is to be mindful of your negative emotions as they arise. Paying attention to the pain instead of trying to push it away allows you to take a step back and rationally challenge the false belief causing the pain. Once you realize that people won’t all condemn you for your flaws—because nobody is perfect—your shameful feelings can dissipate. Soothing yourself this way will likely make it easier for you to ignore the flaws in your work and focus on making it as good as possible. This will increase your odds of putting out truly groundbreaking work. |
