Hello, dear friend,
I hope you are well.
Taking care of all the parts of yourself, especially in a period of high activity, is more important than your down periods. Keep an eye on your daily core habits; these things actually make up our lives.
I was talking to a young person recently about what creates a healthy brain. I concluded that the small things we do consistently stack up to ensure our whole bodies function well, the way God made them. To be well, start with sleeping well, eating well, and exercising frequently.
Being a recovered perfectionist, I used to be quite hard on myself, and I thought I was doing myself a good deed by setting high standards which even I couldn’t meet. I would be expecting people to read my mind when I couldn’t even decide what I wanted for lunch. It led to much frustration, striving and worrying about things that yielded no worthwhile results.
Perfectionism is often disguised as a virtue. We call it having high standards or being detail-oriented. While striving for quality is admirable, perfectionism is frequently a survival strategy rather than a pursuit of excellence. It is the mind’s way of trying to stay safe from the pain of judgment, rejection, or failure.
To move from the exhaustion of perfectionism into the freedom of true growth, we must understand what is happening beneath the surface and how to align our efforts with a healthier, more hopeful perspective.
The Science of the “Safety Strategy”
Research suggests that perfectionism is not about a desire for success, but rather a way to regulate difficult emotions that people might be feeling. A study by Hewitt & Flett (1991) identified Socially Prescribed Perfectionism—the belief that others hold unrealistic expectations of you—as a significant driver of anxiety and depression.
It is what keeps us working late, taking on more volunteer roles, staying at parties longer than necessary, picking up mental load that is not ours… the list is endless. This paper clearly concludes that the drive for perfection often leads one to operate in a state of hyper-vigilance.
The brain’s amygdala (the fear centre) treats a minor mistake as a threat to social belonging. Fear is often normalised because it has been there for so long, and we have learnt to cope by just acting with it rather than addressing the underlying issue.
This is why “letting it go” feels physically impossible; your brain thinks your safety is at stake. You are literally going to be alone and die in the prideland, eaten by lions and vultures. That is what you think will happen if you don’t hyperfixate on this cake being perfectly iced. Bless you
Excellence vs. Perfection
The Bible offers a powerful distinction between the heavy burden of legalistic perfection and the life-giving pursuit of “wholeness.”
- Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” It is not about a lack of mistakes; it is about the wholeness of character and purpose. It provides a clear narrative that the goal is to be like God in character and in the fruits produced, resembling him exactly: righteousness, peace, joy. Now tell me, how is fear like God, the fear of not being liked? Have you met God?
- In the area where you are weak, you will struggle without getting the right image and the right character input into you. We have all been hurt because we are human. We walk among people whom we hurt daily, and who hurt us daily; it is the human condition.
In the middle of that, God provides us a way of escape: the way of the spirit, which allows you to be in this world, but not of this world, made of the flesh of God himself, carrying his breath in our nostrils. He lends us a supernatural ability to stay calm even though storms rage and the world is dark; we still see light in Him.
There is no other comfort in this world by which we can be comforted. We may get temporary fixes, but they soon fail. Perfectionism is a temporary fix, and I’m sure you know it can fail you.
That moment when you almost threw your own hand at someone or sent a dish flying across the room out of misplaced anger, because things weren’t going well; the string of broken friendships you have, because the standard you set for interpersonal relationships is actually unattainable.
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Reflect on this dear friend: If your worth is already secured by grace, how does that change the “stakes” of your current project or task? Does the need to be “flawless” come from a desire to honor your gifts, or a fear that you aren’t enough without them? Look at how you feel at work, when you dress up, the story you tell yourself about people you admire or people you call friends …. how you make decisions. Pause.
Interpersonal Issues
Perfectionism acts as a barrier to intimacy. If you cannot be seen as imperfect, you cannot be truly known. In interpersonal dynamics, perfectionism can manifest as:
- Defensiveness: Viewing feedback as an attack on your character. I remember someone I know saying this exactly. The feedback made him feel defensive. Sad, because people soon stop giving you feedback, and you are now on the expressway in a costume.
- Projection: Holding others to the same impossible standards you hold for yourself, leading to resentment, mostly because even you cannot live up to them.
Reflect: The Relationship Check-In
- Think of a person you love. Do you love them because they are flawless, or because of their unique, human qualities?
- Now, ask yourself: Why do I deny myself the same grace I extend so easily to them?
The Motivation of “Good Enough”
The first time I heard about “good enough” was in the context of studying perinatal psychiatry, thinking around the archetype of motherhood and what society expects from a person in that role. Motivation fueled by fear eventually leads to burnout.
Motivation fueled by purpose leads to endurance. Transitioning to a healthy level of excellence allows you to be more productive because you are no longer paralyzed by the fear of making a wrong move. Mistakes are welcome because we then frame them as learning opportunities and don’t have to flog ourselves or get stuck on them. The advice is to move fast and fail quickly to innovate and evolve to where we need to be.
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Some useful ideas
- Practice “Selective Excellence”: Decide which 20% of your tasks require 100% effort, and allow the rest to be “standard.”
- Celebrate the Effort, Not Just the Win: Focus on the discipline you showed, rather than just the final metric.
You are the “work” in progress; you don’t have to produce a masterpiece to be considered one.
Final Thoughts
Healing from perfectionism begins when you realize that you do not have to earn your place in the world. You are allowed to be a “work in progress” and a “masterpiece” at the same time. You are complete and a work in progress, discovering the final masterpiece only when you meet the maker.
Self-Reflection Question: What is one thing you have been avoiding because you’re afraid you won’t do it perfectly? What would happen if you permitted yourself to do it “imperfectly” this week?
