“Oh, you will be fine, you always are.” If I could get a pound for every time I hear that phrase, I would live in a mansion bigger than the one 50 Cent resides in, as well as driving a Maserati as my second car.
I am a perfectionist. I always have and always will be.
Years ago, in grammar school, our P.E. teacher asked us to try out rope jumping, which I most certainly did. I practiced so much, that my mum took the rope away, only to find me skipping with a string cord that I tied together.
In regards to your career or your university assignments, being a perfectionist can be a massive advantage. I always work over and beyond, and never hand in work that I am not a 100% happy with.
To the outside world, the life of a perfectionist appears, as the name already implies, perfect.
However, rarely people ask themselves what price one has to pay in order to live up to the standards an over-achiever sets him- or herself.
At times I have to force myself to relax, while in the process of writing an essay, and also have to remember to eat and sleep properly.
Besides being a teachers dream, the idealist persona can go from highs to the lows quiet quickly.
When one “fails” at a task, perfectionist people tend to beat themselves up to such an extend, that the movie scene showing Rocky Balboa fighting Apollo Creed looks like a nice afternoon stroll compared to what us nitpickers go through.
Nonetheless, everyone knows that in the end, life is about what you learn on the journey and what you do with it. After years of wearing myself out, trying to live up to unrealistic ideals that I have set out in front of me, I came to the conclusion that it is not so much about what I achieve in life, but it is who I become.
A wise person once told me that,“ if you want to run fast, go alone. If you want to run far, go together.” Us perfectionist people have to realise that, believe it or not, people still appreciate our input after we mess up with a task.
I had to acknowledge the fact that I am not “Miss Magic”, and therefore cannot be an absolute legend in everything that I am doing.
Obviously this does not mean that I will go to the other extreme and embrace the YOLO mentality all of a sudden.
I guess I will never be one of those chilled out people, who just “wing it” when it comes to their university assignment 24 hours before the deadline, because they have been out all weekend partying with their mates.
I will always be a perfection-seeking type of person, which in itself is quiet a positive character attribute to have.
However, when it comes to ones self-esteem and identity, I found it to be crucial to capture the value we carry outside of what we can deliver.
After all, even Dumbledore from Harry Potter stated that, “ it is not our abilities that show who we truly are, it is our choices”.
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