Stickler for Rules

 

How difficult it is for you to let go of your previous mistakes? Do you find it hard to delegate tasks to others in fear that they might mess it? Do you stay gloomy when even a simple conversation does not go as per your plans? If all this sounds like you, you might be a perfectionist after all. A perfectionist is a person whose goal is to plan every move, rethink every thought and weigh every word before speaking. A perfectionist has an impulsive urge to know the outcome before they invest their time or efforts or resources into something.

I know what you might be thinking that all of us were curious as kids and now that we’re adults, our priorities have changed and that we may not delve deeper into the basic stuff, stuff that we’ve been doing for years like making a cup of tea. Well, yes, time and again everyone gets such feelings, but a perfectionist stays a perfectionist for tasks ranging from threading a needle to running a country.  Everything needs to be accurate, precise with zero deviation from expected outcome. They become so obsessed with the goal that they temporarily forget other things in life. Perfect grades, success, competence at the job, perfect performance evaluation, that proposal you have been waiting for so long, that perfect dress that needs you to walk into store after store, in short, everything that is a part of life becomes a war to be won. As a perfectionist, you won’t see the flaw in the plan, but the realist will immediately see what’s happening here. Instead of living and enjoying every small thing in life, a perfectionist feels everything as a chore, a chore to be completed successfully with flying colors (duh!?). Perfectionism is more like an impulsive habit than a consciously created action.

A small accomplishment will feel humongous because of the efforts involved. This feeling brings both a sense of success and fatigue of “getting things done”. We as perfectionists want to do everything perfectly so that we can rest peacefully once it is done, but do we get to rest? Something else comes up that require our perfection bone to be tickled again. A mind that is fatigued out reels under the pressure of accomplishing things one after the other, which makes even the most interesting tasks feel boring and mundane. The mind is occupied with thinking and rethinking and overthinking that it stops being open to creativity and stays restricted as a stickler for rules. With so many “I must” and “I mustn’t”, we are exhausted that we digress from the real things in life.

You might argue that perfectionism brings productivity. But I can argue back that what “is” will become what “was”. However perfect the sunflower is, it will die. The world is ever changing, and it is only but futile to strive for perfection for everything and stop to enjoy and appreciate the “near-perfect” things too. As Ralph Emerson said, “enjoy the journey not the destination”. The world is not made up of just Zeros and Ones (those knowing about AI will recognize it as a Fuzzy Logic concept, for others, well it is like a yes/no concept, there is also a “maybe”). Life has 0.1 through 0.9 between Zero and One, learn to enjoy them all. Try and accept that whatever you do, however you do, getting it done is all there is to it. Everyone is perfect in their own ways, and perfection is simply a point of view.