A friend calls herself a recovering perfectionist. I suppose I could consider myself one, too, though I did make the switch in my mind some years ago to striving for excellence rather than perfection. At the time, I'd come to see that the latter is a prescription for stress, exhaustion and general unhappiness, while the former maintains a high standard but allows for much more sanity in daily life. But old habits do occasionally die hard, and it's no secret that we women are harder on ourselves than anyone else could be.
These days, I find tremendous freedom and self-gentleness in continually refocusing my attention on the amount of progress I've made toward something, rather than how much still needs to be done -- or how I could have done it (whatever it is) better.
Progress. It's a wonderful thing. :)
congrats on the progress toward realizing perfection can be dangerous. It's certainly worthwhile to do a super good job, but you can't please everyone all the time, not even oneself. And no doubt, what's done is probably excellent. whew!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joanne. And what's done is probably excellent indeed. :)
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