Five Psychological Strategies to Ease the Stress of Perfectionism

Over the past three months, I’ve been running an experiment. It’s something I’ve never done before, and in some ways it’s been quite challenging. In other ways, though, it’s brought enormous relief from stress, and I’d call it a successful effort.

What I did seems to go against conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a smart choice.

So what exactly is this challenge? Well, I’ve been working to be mediocre.

Yes, that sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? But hear me out.

Last year, I became more aware than ever of how much unconscious stress I placed on myself to be above average. I’ve always known I have a Type A personality, but I didn’t realize how much it was actually harming me. A big part of that awareness came from recording my dreams and discussing them with a psychotherapist, and another part emerged through a mindfulness practice.

So for six months, whenever I felt the urge to relax and that little voice in my head appeared telling me I could be doing more in that moment, I would ignore it. I’d decide to watch an extra episode on Netflix. I’d choose to sleep those extra fifteen minutes. I’d leave the small bit of extra work for tomorrow.

What came out of that was unexpected. The more I ignored the voice, the louder and more aggressive it became.

Getting in touch with that part of myself ended up doing three things.

First, it showed me that I had a perfectionism problem I wasn’t fully aware of. Second, it showed me how complicated and persuasive that little perfectionist voice could be. And finally, most importantly, it taught me how working through that perfectionist tendency could lead to less stress, more productivity, and greater wellbeing.

So, the moment of truth. How do you know if you’re a perfectionist?

You often feel overwhelmed by the fear that your goals won’t succeed

You’re constantly searching for the “right” moment to do something

You have a persistent sense of dissatisfaction with what you’ve achieved

You’re obsessed with small mistakes that have little impact on the bigger picture

You neglect self-care in favor of achievement

I developed five psychological strategies to work through this perfectionism. They allowed me to take steps toward accepting the average parts of myself, and they helped me release a shocking amount of hidden stress.

I decided to share these steps with you here so you can begin to accept who and where you are, and enjoy the journey a little more.

1. Rethink what it means to be mediocre.

In our society, we often treat anything less than the best as failure. This isn’t an exaggeration; it’s simply the reality of our distorted notions of achievement that haven’t kept pace with larger, more interconnected societies, where it’s increasingly difficult to stand out.

When we hear the words “mediocre” or “average,” we treat them as dirty words, though they should simply mean the middle of the range. If you’re average at something, that shouldn’t have any bearing on your self-esteem. Most people are average at most things for most of their lives. Does that mean most people should feel bad about themselves?

Accepting the ways you’re average doesn’t mean you can’t strive for excellence in some areas of your life. It simply means that the desire for excellence doesn’t need to be driven by the feeling that you’re incomplete. It can come from a love of competing with your former self, a need to serve your community, or even just the pleasure of a challenge in the present moment.

2. Challenge the all-or-nothing fallacy.

Perfectionism is a direct result of the all-or-nothing fallacy, also known as black-and-white thinking. When we believe our worth is completely tied to our achievements, for example, we can’t help but strive obsessively to do everything the right way, because any mistake would damage our entire self-esteem.

We can also see this when we search for the perfect moment to start something, when we pour all our effort into a single project and neglect our health, and in a more toxic way, when we try to evaluate our lives against overly broad categories of success or failure.

When you see this kind of thinking emerge in your mind, challenge it and replace it with more nuanced explanations.

For example, I used to believe I was either being productive or being lazy. When I was being productive I wasn’t being lazy, and when I wasn’t being productive I was being lazy. I started to challenge that idea with a more detailed explanation: that breaks are sometimes lazy and sometimes productive; they serve many purposes. They can be rejuvenating, rewarding, and sometimes they don’t need justification at all.

3. Become friends with what you don’t know.

Another core trait of perfectionism I noticed in myself is a strong desire to control outcomes. We have this tendency partly because we have an intensified fear of things not going the way we want or expect.

In part, this happens because perfectionism creates stress, and when we’re stressed, we become more susceptible to cognitive biases. For example, we might believe that if things don’t go as expected, everything will fall apart, we’ll lose opportunities, or we’ll be criticized by others.

One way to counter this attitude is by becoming more comfortable with the unknown. You can only influence a certain amount of any situation you’re in, whether it’s work, money, or relationships.

I became more comfortable with the unknown by tracking my fears over time. By seeking counterexamples of when your fears aren’t true (and often they aren’t), you can see how worries about the future are exaggerated by your brain, and you can start to have more control over your emotions.

It can also help to practice setting a wide range of goals with varying levels of difficulty. Meeting the easier goals should satisfy your need to be in control and achieve success, and working toward the harder goals will simply be a challenge to be creative, go beyond, and move through the uncertainty of things outside your control.

4. Become friends with what you don’t love.

Similarly, perfectionism is closely tied to the relationship you have with what you don’t accept about yourself.

You probably know that acceptance lies at the root of love. So it’s not surprising that people often recommend you love yourself when dealing with internal conflict. Well, it sounds simple, but it’s never quite that easy, unfortunately. So I’ll propose something more manageable: become friends with what you don’t love.

If there are parts of yourself or your experience that you can’t accept or love, just befriend them. Ask what purpose the things you don’t like serve; get to know them the way you would a friend.

Ease into the evolving relationship you have with these harder-to-accept parts, and over time you’ll see a shift in your perspective that calms your anxiety around them.

For example, I used to have an antagonistic relationship with my anxiety. The fact that I wasn’t always cool, calm, and collected was something I found hard to accept, and it created internal conflict and, obviously, more anxiety. When I could see that anxiety was just one part of my brain trying to help me, I was able to accept it. And over time I started to appreciate that peculiar part of myself.

5. Reevaluate how you measure success.

If your perfectionism is driven by the belief that you’re not successful enough, then it’s not necessarily you that needs to change. It might be that the way you’re measuring success needs to be reevaluated.

For example, it’s common for us to compare ourselves with others, and while we’re often told to focus on ourselves, making social comparisons in specific situations, like workplace evaluations or competitive sports, has some usefulness, though limited. If we didn’t make those comparisons, it would be hard to see how we were improving and in what areas we could help the group more.

When you start to generalize that idea to the rest of your life, though, that’s when it becomes a problem. If you start telling yourself that someone else’s life is better than yours or that they’re more successful than you, that’s almost always a generalization. What makes a life better? What does success mean? Are we talking about financial achievement? Free time? Deep relationships? Take a look at how success could be more effectively defined in your own life.

My own definition of success used to be based on how well I compared with people in my life on standardized measures like money, relationships, and new experiences. Now I see success as my ability to find meaning in the present moment, stay motivated for the future, and spend my time working on something that helps me, the people I love, and the rest of the world.

Not all elements of my definition may be relevant to anyone else, but because they’re more fluid and flexible and can grow with my personality, they keep me from falling into the habit of perfectionism.

To bring all of this full circle, consider this: you can be average in one area and successful in another. That doesn’t mean you have no value, aren’t worthy, aren’t lovable or deserving of respect, and don’t deserve some downtime now and then.

Being average is normal and isn’t an indicator of your worth. You have inherent value, just as you are. And if you want to get obsessed with a project or be a little perfectionist now and then, that’s okay. But let it be motivated by a love of the creative process itself, not by the anxiety that you can never do enough.

What experience have you had with perfectionism? Have you used any of these strategies to find more peace? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Originally published at Tiny Buddha