I don’t know if I consider my story-telling an art, but have decided that the important thing is to share … even if it isn’t “perfect”. Keep telling myself that’s what revising of the draft is for.

I love this post more than words can explain. I struggle with anxiety and have been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder but have elements of obsessive compulsive personality disorder minus the personality disorder. Words don’t describe the severity of my perfectionism. With all that said, your post resonates so deeply with me. I struggle to go to school, work, and at one point wanted to be hospitalized but never was because my anxiety kept me from gong about seeing how to. Now, I’m doing better but the anxiety still hurts. I love science but I have a need for the creative, writing and acting. I can’t tell you how much it hurts to not be able to write because my brain never shuts off the side that is perfectionist. Or to not reach my full potential in school because my perfectionism keeps me from functioning. You have a knack for highlighting the human experience. Thank you. :)

Wow, you hit home with this one. As a perfectionist who’s often frozen because I know nothing I will ever do will be “good enough” or perfect, I spend a lot of time fighting myself. Since I found your writing last year, I’ve evolved from an aspiring novelist to a freelance writer, but you’ve given me hope that there is an artist inside me, an artist that can produce beauty for others. Thank you. So. Much.

This post really hit home. I’m one of those people who grew up labeling myself a perfectionist. I took pride in overachieving. I got awards. I got praise. Never mind that I only “overachieved” in the stuff that came easiest to me. I conveniently avoided the stuff that was hard (the stuff I desperately wanted—needed—to pursue for my personal and creative growth). It’s taken me years and years to break out of that cage to the point where I can work through the pain of being imperfect and come out the other side feeling fulfilled. Because I can feel myself growing. Perfectionism, by contrast, is so small. So hollow.

What a great post! Perfectionists are creepy. I especially love the excerpt: “The giant crab explains to Grasper that a crab grows only as large as the world he lives in, and as big as the heart inside him.” Beautiful!

I also enjoy taking the opposite view on perfection… that the idea of perfection is wrong. We are perfection.. that the universe,.our beings, everything is already “perfect”, and the concept of striving to improve on that perfection is the fault (imperfection) of our minds. Perfection is subjective and I can define it as I please, so this struggle, learning, growth, accomplishment, failures – is the perfect form of what I am and who I want to be…

I suppose it is partly about taking control and ownership of my personal existence as well, and the meaning and purpose I attribute to it. I don’t need to alter my idea of perfection into what others “believe” perfection is or should be. Maybe it is just how I dealt with the issue you focus on here, and perhaps it makes our relationship to the ideas of perfection less clear, but there is some merit in releasing our attachment from the idea that there is anything less “perfect” than the here and now, present of our existence.

However, I also notice how motivated I am by future projections of “ideal”/”perfect” conceptions of the “ego”/self/reality.. and how the idea or dream of what an accomplishment or act means, not just to myself but to others, provides some energy and strength to accomplish things that I wouldn’t otherwise. I strive for that ideal, but it can never be reached nor realized, which can be crushing in itself. Some element of idealism, dreaming, and foolish optimism to challenge ourselves towards things is beneficial, even fully recognizing that it can never be achieved. But I wonder how much of this merely reflects the way my own mind works, vacillating between idealistic dreams and pragmatic realism.

At least the more I learn about myself the closer I feel to a heightened peace and sense of purpose, providing fulfillment and passion in whatever activity I’m involved in.

That is my path to “perfection” at least.

What awesome comments, thank you. Not to brag or anything, but I swear that this blog has some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, articulate readers on the Internet. :)

I believe in “idealism, dreaming + foolish optimism” to spur us on to mastery + personal greatness, don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s about learning to see perfection in the process itself — that we are attaining it every moment we work toward our goals/dreams — or not even attaining it, but expressing it through the further unfolding of who we truly are.

I’m perfectly imperfect. And I love this essay. Thanks.

And, by the way, storytelling is very much an art and it can touch people deeply.

@mandy @Kay Theodoratus Stories rule the world. :)

As with everything you’ve written that I’ve read so far, I love this post – and synchronicity being what it is, it came at a perfect time. My partner and I were just talking last night about what makes an artist, and what it means to create – how many forms that can take. So the Seth Godin quote was particularly meaningful to me. I’m currently working on writing my own story (literally! because of course, we are all always writing our own stories metaphorically!) and finding it overwhelming and illuminating and perfect and imperfect and wonderful and… !
I appreciate your blog so much for the inspiration it gives me to keep writing. Thanks.

Just wanted to tell you this is the best thing I’ve read all week. As I was reading your descriptions of struggling with Yoga, I was remembering my first days of surfing. I showed up at the beach every single day with a giant costco surfboard (those things are basically a label that you don’t have a clue what you’re doing). By the end of 6 months I could rip on that thing, and now I’m riding a shortboard. I realize that’s probably all gibberish to somebody who doesn’t surf. The point is that it took a lot of wipeouts, setbacks, and more to get the point of actually being able to surf. Really loved this post.

Justine, you are an inspiring, talented writer that I feel so blessed to have found! I cannot stop reading your posts…each time I finish one, I see another title that catches my eye and speaks to my heart. This one in particular spoke to me as an artist and former perfectionist.
My grandmother said to me in a dream a few years ago….”Jennifer, Life is perfectly imperfect!”
A few days later I found Lori Fields at Real Beauty Is….(perfectly imperfect!) Serendipitous. I feel the same about finding your blog, as I have struggled recently with violence against young girls around the world, and teaching my own daughter to find her “voice”…I read your article about Malala, and it reinforced the need to find our voice. All I can say is “thank you” for sharing yourself and your voice with us. Grateful!

I enjoyed your post. I was caught/am caught in the same things.

Just in case this helps to know, you cannot be good at yoga, or bad at it. You either do it or you don’t do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t do it, as long as you don’t hurt yourself and you learn to tell when you are and are not doing yoga. It has no goal. There is nowhere to go. Bendiness and looking good doesn’t really have much to do with anything, and absolutely nothing to do with anything if it is someone else’s bendiness or looking good.

It’s nice if your body feels better and works better afterwards but that’s not the point. The point is, as with the writing, just to be yourself as you are right now whatever that is. Whatever it is is not important. If you can do that then you are in a state of yoga. If not then you’re not. And that is the same for a master or a beginner or even people who never heard of yoga and would call it something else. Yoga is out beyond failing and succeeding, like that field Rumi talks about – “there’s a place beyond good and evil…” It’s way past all that. Of course that doesn’t mean that you can’t use it as another perfection stick to beat yourself up with – “Oh my god I’m not doing yoga!! I’m such a failure!”

I taught yoga for years and in my intermediate classes there were always people I could see who were really going for it physically, but nowhere near it in reality even if their alignment was right: their bodies were full of struggle – and I could not persuade them to stop flogging themselves with achievement and etc. I felt like I was presiding over the anti-yoga eventually, like it had become this prison they were stuck in, instead of the opposite. Short of yelling ,”You have to chill the shit out!” I found myself wondering how I’d transmitted all that tension. And I realised it was my own terror of being inadequate that had come over, not with my words, but entirely in spite of them. I apologised and I gave up teaching the class, not because I didn’t know what I was talking about, but because I felt that I was subconsciously sabotaging the entire job.

Perfectionism is another way to beat yourself up, really it’s a way of protecting your vulnerability from having to suffer the shame of failure or the humiliation of public failure. But it can never work out, all it does is help you suffer more. There is no escape from failing if you are going to act at all, it’s just normal, ordinary, everyday stuff. But we are the kind of social species that thrives on status seeking and it is status risky to expose yourself as a failure because others may just reject you and use your failure to make you an outcast and demote you. That’s what the terror is all about. You may even demote and outcast yourself if you feel sufficient shame. On the other hand, if you feel sufficient worth in yourself then you’re nearly bulletproof. You can face your mistakes, make your apologies, laugh at yourself and move along with things.

How do you transition from shameful outcast to immunised by self-worth? The only answer I’ve ever come up with to that is – you must make a leap of faith. Nobody can endorse it (although religions and gurus will try, but if you put yourself in their hands you’ll flop because you just gave your power to someone else UNLESS they are that super rare completely actualised genius who knows how to dish out the right placebo at the right moment, but you know, what are the odds of that?). You become your own benevolent authority – so an authority on you, not on others…just on you.

We do live in a world of status seeking, power hungry, looking-for-the-main-chance opportunists who will eat you alive given half a chance on the one hand, but you also make yourself a person of power and significance when you act authentically and that makes you a worthwhile ally – as your blog and its responses show.

The only thing you can win or lose is…you. Authenticity is an interior sport. I won’t necessarily buy you anything beyond that but you have other tools to get things beyond that. The reverse consequence is that you’ll always feel dissatisfied without it. Perhaps safer, but definitely unsatisfied.

Thanks for such a thought provoking post and sorry for rambling on.