Do you tend to spend more time and energy than you have trying to make things flawless? Are you sensitive to criticism and feel upset when met with any disapproval or less-than-glowing feedback? Do you put a great deal of pressure on yourself to accomplish a great deal to high standards and feel upset if you fall short?

These are all signs of perfectionism.

If you’re a perfectionist, you might already understand some of the ways that this makes life more challenging and less enjoyable – the pressure, the incessant doubt and questioning yourself, the time wasted in revision and indecision – but there could be more ways perfectionism is affecting you that you aren’t aware of.

Perfectionism is harmful not only because of the time it costs and the pressure it places you under, but through the types of beliefs and self-talk that are required to maintain it as well. People with perfectionism tie their self-worth to their performance and ability to please others, so if they believe they aren’t doing or accomplishing enough, they tend to tell themselves they’re worthless. This makes mistakes and failures very painful.

Although the idea of lowering your standards can seem counter-intuitive and self-sabotaging, moving away from perfectionism typically has far more benefits than disadvantages. Reducing perfectionism means changing the criteria you measure success by while accepting that what you think of as failure isn’t accurate, and even when you do ‘fail’, it’s not as consequential as you believe.

Changing beliefs and thought patters is rarely easy. It can take a long time and potentially always require some degree of effort. But by understanding the different ways that perfectionism could be affecting your life and the benefits of adopting new thought patterns, you can start to improve your relationship with yourself and what you can and should achieve.

What is perfectionism and why is it harmful?

What is perfectionism and when is it ambition? What are the consequences of perfectionism? What are the benefits of adopting a more moderate and compassionate mindset?

Perfectionism is a way of thinking that demands you meet impossibly high standards, whether those are your own and/or what you imagine others expect from you. It’s typically driven by a belief that if you make mistakes, produce less than perfect results, or don’t do everything in your power to perfect things, then there will be terrible consequences. Mistakes are unforgivable and failing could ruin your life because this would show everyone how incompetent you are. Perfectionists also use mistakes as evidence to support their beliefs that they’re useless and unlovable, and failure in an activity makes them a failure as a person.

These beliefs are focused on yourself, society, and/or others.

Perfectionism that is focused on yourself involves setting high standards and often exhausting yourself trying to meet them, although this rarely happens because they’re unattainable. This could be a student who believes they have to get 100% on every test and assignment, a professional athlete who never believes they played as well as they should have, a parent who always believes they aren’t doing a good enough job, and many more. People with this type of perfectionism are often depressed because they can rarely meet their expectations and often feel like a failure.

Societally-focused perfectionists believe that others expect perfectionism from them and they’re either letting people down or confirming critical beliefs if they fall short of meeting impossibly high expectations. Because they’re trying to please others, it’s difficult to find any joy in accomplishments since they don’t know when to consider a job well done; they aren’t measuring by their own standards but by what will amaze as many people as possible. These beliefs can cause anger at the people they imagine are obliging them to put in so much effort, depressed at being unable to meet expectations, and anxiety because of the impossible situation they believe they’re in.

Some perfectionists also expect perfection of others. They’re very demanding, have incredibly high standards for the people in their lives, and typically insist that their ways of doing things are the only right ways. This could be a boss who is never happy with their employees’ work, a friend who always has to be right, a partner who frequently correct their spouse, or a critical parent. These types of perfectionists are likely to spend a great deal of their time angry, frustrated and disappointed because no one can seem to get anything right. This behaviour is also likely to drive many people away and alienate the people they’re closest to. Perfectionist bosses usually contribute to toxic work environments.

Typically, perfectionists experience a combination of these types of perfectionism. If you have high standards for yourself, it’s likely because you believe that at least some people expect this from you. If you demand perfection from others, you likely have high expectations for yourself as well. Even if you don’t correct people who do things differently, perfectionism can make you believe that their methods are wrong.

However, perfectionism has to be limited to certain areas of a perfectionist’s life – trying to make everything perfect would be overwhelming. One perfectionist could spend hours finalising projects at work but is much more relaxed in their personal life while another obsessively cleans their house but their career is suffering because they often arrive late and leave early to have more time for housework.

Some people believe that perfectionism is a valuable quality because it’s associated with high achievement and success. While it is true that there are some accomplished perfectionists, it’s far more common for perfectionism to be an unhealthy barrier to success. Few perfectionists accomplish very much because perfectionism is so paralysing.

Perfectionists rarely try anything new because if they aren’t sure they can do an excellent job, the high chances of struggling and producing less than perfect results is too intimidating. This limits them to things they’re confident they can do well so there’s very little they’re willing to try. But growth can only happen when you leave your comfort zone and challenge yourself, so perfectionists seldom experience opportunities to grow.

Perfectionism can make it take a very long time to get things done because perfectionists typically procrastinate before beginning anything because the pressure they put on themselves to do well and their fear of making mistakes and feeling like a failure makes beginning highly intimidating. And since anything less than perfection is failure, these disappointed and frustrated feelings are largely unavoidable.

Even once they get started, perfectionists often struggle to finish, even if that means missing a deadline, because they will re-start and re-check their work multiple times trying to make it meet their standards. Those with societally-oriented perfectionism can struggle even more to feel confident they’ve truly finished since the goal is making something that will impress others and they can’t know what this requires.

The demands of perfectionism can also take the joy out of what are meant to be fun ways of relaxing. For example, a perfectionist might decide to join a book club but spend hours re-reading the chapters and practicing different comments to make at the meetings, turning the club into yet another source of stress and a drain on their time.

Perfectionists also tend to struggle with making decisions. Even small decisions, such as texting a friend to make plans or buying a new toaster, can be highly stressful for a perfectionist. Their drive to be perfect and the consequences of failure means that making any decision has the potential to result in deep and painful feelings of regret, shame, anger and disgust with themselves if they make the wrong decision. They will often spend a great deal of time weighing up the pros and cons, as well as avoiding having to make a decision whenever possible, even if there are consequences for delaying. This could be a perfectionist using up all their phone plan’s data because they take too long considering which internet provider to sign up with after moving or avoiding making plans in case a something better comes up but they often end up doing nothing.

Perfectionists also tend to limit themselves to just two options in whatever they attempt. Known as black and white thinking, this mindset is exhausting because it reduces all outcomes to either success or failure. There’s no such thing as being okay at something or having an alright day – it’s either perfect or terrible. And since perfect doesn’t exist, it leaves perfectionists feeling like a failure the majority of the time. When perfection is the goal there are few ways to succeed and countless ways to fail.

These are just some of the more prevalent and common perfectionistic characteristics. You may also have perfectionist tendencies if you have any of the following habits:

• Harshly criticising yourself for your mistakes and feeling like a worse person because of them
• Experiencing high levels of self-doubt, even in things you’ve done many times and have received positive feedback for
• Paying far more attention to negative feedback, no matter how much more positive reactions you receive
• Wanting to control other people and/or circumstances, even if this is impossible (ex. behaving a certain way so others will think highly of you)
• Imagining that people are thinking badly about you – judging, being disappointed, frustrated, mocking, etc.
• Believing that the worst is going to happen, and that the consequences are more severe than they likely could be (ex. thinking your partner will leave you if they don’t buy a perfect Christmas present)
• Finding people more accomplished than you are to compare yourself to, including professionals and celebrities
• A tendency to give all of your attention to certain tasks to the detriment of other areas of your life
• Refusing to be inflexible in the rules you give yourself (ex. expecting to be as productive as usual during a highly stressful period of your life)

What drives these ways of thinking and behaving is what perfectionists believe about self-worth.

Although people have different reasons for developing perfectionism and their self-talk will vary, the central message of perfectionism is that their value as a person is tied to how good of a job they do and what they accomplish. Being successful is what makes them likeable and lovable – not their inherent positive qualities or the imperfect ways they can contribute to the lives of others.

Doing anything less than perfect causes them to feel ashamed, which is an intensely painful and isolating emotion that makes people believe they’re inherently flawed, different from others, and unworthy of love and connection. In an attempt to avoid this painful feeling, perfectionists will go to great lengths attempting to produce perfect results that are beyond criticism because criticism means they haven’t failed at a task, but they’re failing as a person.

These beliefs are sustained through their self-talk. They’ll tell themselves that they have to be perfect and rehearse the different painful scenarios that could happen if they don’t meet their high expectations. When they’re unhappy with their performance or what they do – which is the majority of the time – they launch into self-abuse and harsh criticism that’s often far worse than what anyone else could say. They’re often the first (often only) one to call themselves a failure and berate themselves for their mistakes. These abusive tirades are part of what makes mistakes failures so painful – it’s not what others say but what they tell themselves, so self-talk is the major driver of perfectionism.

Yet society sends plenty of messages praising perfectionism, but conveniently neglects the drawbacks. People who overcome the odds to have an idea or product they obsessed over launch them to success are considered evidence that perfectionism is helpful, maybe even critical, to success. But the vast majority of perfectionists struggle to accomplish even a fraction of what they’re capable of because they’re held back by perfectionism.

Perfectionism isn’t a tool to help you succeed. Successful people rarely get where they are by agonising over small details, missing deadlines because they struggle to finalise their work, pushing their mental and physical health to the limit spending as much time as possible perfecting things, or asking themselves what others will think while beating themselves up for all mistakes and criticisms.

If you’re a perfectionist, you could likely get just as much if not more done and have much better mental health it if you lower some of your standards and improve your self-talk.

However, being a perfectionist and trying to meet the expectations of a perfectionist isn’t the same. Struggling to please a demanding boss, parents who are always critical, or a partner who expects you to meet their very high standards them doesn’t necessarily make you a perfectionist. And if they’re a perfectionist then meeting their expectations is impossible.

Moving away from perfectionism doesn’t mean completely changing all of your standards but asking yourself which are helpful and which are unnecessarily demanding and cause too many challenges so you can adopt measures for success that enable you to be satisfied with yourself and what you’re capable of more often.

Exchanging perfectionism for healthier beliefs

Are you worried about potential consequences of giving up perfectionism? Do you think that being a perfectionist is necessary to accomplish your goals and/or maintain what you’ve achieved so far? Does the idea of being less demanding and critical of yourself make you uncomfortable?

You could think that your perfectionist approach has been helpful, so you’re worried about the consequences of easing your expectations for yourself. But unless you experiment with a less demanding approach, you can’t know if you could accomplish as much, and possible more, by being less perfectionistic. You might be able to write a good paper that needs only a few reviews, correctly book a flight without checking and re-checking the dates you selected, or buy new headphones without spending hours comparing different products. Until you do something with what feels like not enough preparation – without a perfectionist’s approach – you’ll never know how much is enough.

Typically, people who oppose moving away from perfectionism are those who (likely because of black and white thinking) believe that the only alternative is the polar opposite of perfectionism: overachieving is replaced with never trying, instead of berating themselves for all negative feedback they stop listening to what other people have to say, self-criticism becomes congratulating themselves no matter how poorly they do, etc. But these unhealthy opposites of perfectionism aren’t the only alternatives. There are different ways of perceiving success and accomplishment that make life more enjoyable:

• Instead of asking yourself if it’s perfect, ask yourself if it’s good enough
• Instead of believing your negative thoughts and leaving your personal abuse unchallenged, ask yourself if you’re being fair and realistic
• Rather than blaming people for not doing things the way you wanted, ask yourself if your expectations are too high
• When you’re learning something, aim for improvement instead of perfection
• When you imagine the consequences of mistakes, consider different possible outcomes that aren’t as catastrophic

The goal of reducing perfectionism isn’t to stop putting in any effort, but to identify what the right amount of effort is. Learning to accept what is enough is the fundamental principle of moving away from perfectionism. Especially in the digital age where information, possibilities, comparisons, and sources of feedback are unlimited, it can be difficult to recognise when you and your accomplishments are enough. But accepting good enough is critical to your mental health. There will be times when you make mistakes and experience regret, but these are universal and unavoidable experiences. Life can become much more enjoyable when you accept that perfect isn’t possible and mistakes are forgivable.

If you want to reduce your perfectionistic tendencies, the best way to start is understanding them:

What are your main perfectionist habits?

What do you expect from yourself in these types of situations?

What do you say to yourself?

What consequences do you imagine will happen if you relax your expectations?

What are the common consequences of being a perfectionist?

You don’t have to completely quit being a perfectionist. Demanding that you ‘never’ be a perfectionist is a paradox because this is a perfectionistic approach to behaviour and thoughts that you can’t always control.

Certain scenarios require a great deal of attention so it’s not always perfectionistic to have high standards, and expecting more of yourself temporarily won’t harm your mental health. For example, parents of a toddler have to be much more careful about leaving dangerous items around the house than those without young children. A diabetic has to pay far closer attention to what they eat than someone without a similar condition. You could also choose to take a perfectionistic approach to an application for a job you care a great deal about while being less rigorous in your applications for others.

Identifying perfectionistic beliefs and thoughts can be difficult. If you’ve had your perfectionist habits for a long time, you might not be aware that you’re expecting more from yourself than what is reasonable. To gauge your perfectionism, it can be useful to talk to people you trust about how they think, feel, and speak to themselves in situations where you think you might be perfectionistic so you consider how your beliefs compare.

Talking to others can also be very useful if you tend to imagine that people share your high expectations and/or you believe that others are highly critical of you. It can be uncomfortable, but asking someone how much they expect you to get done, what they think when you make mistakes, and how they would feel if you started doing less can teach you a great deal. However, people can expect more from you than what is fair, so be sure to ask yourself what you think of their answers. If meeting their expectations without putting in more effort than you can comfortable sustain doesn’t seem possible, listen to your feelings and decide how you want to respond.

Paying attention to your thoughts and self-talk is incredibly useful because it gives you the opportunity to ask yourself if they’re accurate and if not, you can challenge them and ask yourself what a more moderate view of the situation could be. If you’re telling yourself that you’re an idiot because you forgot to buy a few ingredients off your shopping list, you can remind yourself that everyone forgets things sometimes and you were in a hurry so not at your best. Or that you might not be happy with how you handled yourself at a party but it’s unlikely that others will remember your story that fell flat.

An important and useful practice for moving away from perfectionism is asking yourself if your standards are realistic. If they’re too high, consider instead what would make you proud of yourself. If you’re trying carpentry or sewing for the first time, it’s unlikely that you’ll produce a store-worthy product right away. But if your goal is to keep trying until you make something you would have in your home or give to a friend and you accept that it may take multiple tries before you accomplish this, you’re being realistic instead of perfectionist. You can also reassess what you thought you were capable and admit you were wrong – you might have thought that you could start a garden but realise that it’s harder than you imagined so you have to lower your expectations.

Ask yourself what you’re imagining the consequences of mistakes will be. Believing that your entire team will think you’re incompetent and your career will be stalled if you make a few mistakes in your presentation is likely unrealistic. They may think less of your public speaking skills, but they probably won’t entirely devalue you as a colleague who has many other talents. Even if your imagined worst-case scenario is more likely to happen, consider what you could do and how you could navigate the experience.

Additionally, ask yourself if your emotional reactions are reasonable. If you’re shaming yourself or feeling guilty for something that wasn’t your fault, that’s not helpful. You can learn a great deal from your emotional reactions, but you can also teach yourself the wrong lessons. If things went wrong but there wasn’t anything you could have done about it, you’re not accomplishing anything by making yourself feel responsible. Feeling guilty for forgetting plans with a friend and asking yourself how you can make amends and remember next time is useful, but if you missed plans because your appendix burst and you were in hospital, then guilt isn’t helpful. Being able to tell the difference between what you can and can’t control is a very valuable skill so you can direct your energy where it can make the most impact.  

Challenging your negative, polarised, and exaggerated thoughts can be incredibly powerful. Thoughts that go unchallenged are accepted as facts, so if you question your beliefs, you introduce doubt about whether your beliefs are true or if there are other ways to perceive your assumptions. And if you’re imagining the worst, your beliefs are probably exaggerated and adopting a more moderate perspective would be more accurate and make the situation less painful. Saying to yourself ‘my boss thinks I’m stupid and is probably going to fire me’ is very different from ‘I don’t think my boss is happy with how I handled that situation. I wonder how much trouble I’ll be in’. You’re not telling yourself that everything is fine, but you’re not overexaggerating either.

Paying attention to what you’re saying to yourself also involves paying attention to your self-talk. If you’re being unfair and unnecessarily critical, ask yourself how you would speak to a friend in the same type of situation and how you would feel if someone else was speaking to you the way you’re speaking to yourself. Being cruel to yourself is exhausting and reinforces perfectionistic beliefs. Being patient and compassionate with yourself while you work on making these types of changes is essential for having a positive experience, rather than giving yourself yet another reason to be disappointed with yourself for your perceived failures.

If your perfectionism drives you to people-please, ask yourself whose opinion truly matters to you and who you don’t need to impress. It’s useful to want to meet the needs of certain people when you’re capable of doing so, but trying to make everyone happy all of the time is an impossible and a thankless task. Narrowing your efforts to people whose feedback you value can give you a healthy balance.

To continue to be successful and accountable without being a perfectionist, you can aim for improvement over perfection. Asking yourself if you’re improving is much healthier and more rewarding than demanding flawlessness. You can’t get things right every time, especially when you’re attempting something new, but instead of thinking your mistakes make you a failure, you can ask yourself if you’re making fewer and less significant mistakes than you were in the past. Remind yourself that you’re learning and mistakes aren’t shameful experiences to be avoided at all costs, but valuable lessons that show you how to avoid repeating them.

But monitoring your thoughts isn’t the only way you can work on breaking perfectionistic habits. You can identify the ways that perfectionism affects your actions and work on changing these habits as well. If you procrastinate because you’re anxious about starting things, give yourself a specific time to begin – set a timer if you think that would be motivating and not stressful. If you spend too long researching decisions, limit yourself to a certain number of sites you can visit before committing – you can write down how many sites you’ll check and keep a tally as you visit them. If you often correct others, allow them to say or do things you think are incorrect or do things in a way you think is wrong without saying anything and congratulate yourself every time you do this.

While you’re working on moving away from perfectionism, it’s important to remember that it will take time. Every time you have a thought, it becomes more and more habitual, creating what can be thought of as a deep groove in your brain. Grooves are easy paths to follow, but they’re also difficult to get out of and easy to fall back in to. Especially during times of stress, itis natural to return to old ways of thinking and speaking to yourself, so don’t be surprised if old thought patterns reappear. This doesn’t mean that you failed, but that you made a mistake that you can learn from and aim to improve the next time you’re in a similar situation.

Initially it can be difficult to appreciate the benefits, especially if you haven’t been giving much attention to mental health. But if you’re open to recognising how your life and mental health can improve when accept your best and are less critical of your mistakes, adopting non-perfectionistic standards can become easier and more rewarding.

Many people making personal changes would benefit from working with a professional. This certainly isn’t necessary and plenty of people are capable of moving away from perfectionism without professional help. But working with a professional can make the process easier and more straightforward. They can help you understand the different concepts that changing involves, ask questions to help you identify perfectionistic habits you weren’t fully aware of, suggest exercises for making changes, and act as an accountability partner to keep you on track with less trial and error to uncover what you want to address and the best ways to make sustainable changes.

The ultimate goal of moving away from perfectionism is being satisfied with yourself when you’ve tried your best, accepting good enough, and realising that trying longer likely be stressful and change very little. There will be times when you aren’t happy with yourself and what you did, but these feelings are unavoidable, no matter how hard you try. It’s much better to learn what you can from these types of situations, whether it’s doing a bad job or making a mistake, and then move on without making yourself feel terrible.

Your mistakes and failures – real and perceived – don’t make you less valuable as a person. Your willingness to challenge yourself and learn from your mistakes and failures can even make you stronger and more satisfied with who you are.

If you understand perfectionism for what it is – a stressful and unrealistic way of thinking about what you must accomplish to prove your worth – and accept that these beliefs are deeply flawed and that hold you back while making life much less enjoyable, you can be far less effected by perfectionistic beliefs.

Anyone who celebrates perfectionism as a lifestyle is mistaken – there are very specific examples of perfectionism enabling people to become successful, but this is rare and these are almost never happy people. Rather than being a tool to help you achieve your full potential, perfectionism is much more likely to be a burden that prevents you from enjoying life to the fullest.

When you reduce perfectionism, you’ll make mistakes and get less-than-ideal results, but there’s no guarantee that these wouldn’t have happened anyway. But you’re likely to gain far more than you sacrifice. You can have more time, feel less pressure, be less bothered by your mistakes, feel more appreciation for what your and others are capable of, and more.

Changing perfectionistic thought patterns is a challenging process, but it’s worth the effort because of how freeing it can be.