Being a perfectionist isn’t the perfect way to live — in fact, it’s far from it. When you strive to achieve perfection, you get stressed, frustrated, and can damage your relationships because perfection is an illusion. Perfectionism can hold you back in life and cause you to miss out on some awesome opportunities. It’s just not worth it. Below are 10 signs you’re a perfectionist. If you’re not careful, it might end up destroying your life.
1. You’re All Or Nothing.
You won’t be able to lose weight before your friend’s wedding in a week, so why hit the gym? You can’t keep your house clean 24-7 because you have kids, so why mop the floors? If you can’t achieve something right now, you lose interest in doing it. Conditions have to be perfect, otherwise, it’ll be too stressful for you to deal with. The problem with this is that it prevents you from seeing what you can achieve in smaller steps. Your all-or-nothing mentality can make you miserable and frustrated.
2. You Have Sleepless Nights.
If you have to prepare a work presentation or you have to make your friend a dress for her upcoming birthday, you’ll work super hard to achieve your goal, even if this means losing sleep over it or forgetting to eat healthy meals. When you dive into a project, you give 100 percent of yourself – but don’t neglect your self-care!
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4. You Don’t Do Second Place.
If you come second in a competition or achieve the second-highest score for a test, you feel like you might as well have come last. This is one of the most obvious signs you’re a perfectionist. You want to be first at everything, or you won’t feel like you deserve the accolades. SMH. It’s sad because winning isn’t everything. It’s also unfair on yourself to lack appreciation for what you’ve achieved.
5. You Scrutinize People’s Comments.
When you share a blog post on social media and some people make mean comments, you stress about it and scrutinize the feedback until it drives you crazy. When the person you’re dating texts you every day but doesn’t ask you out, you might spend hours trying to figure them out. You’re highly afraid of failure and rejection, which makes you forget your self-worth.
6. You Criticize Other People’s Efforts.
Although you might work to the point of exhaustion to achieve a task, not everyone is like this. But that doesn’t mean they’re not putting in lots of effort or that they won’t succeed. As a perfectionist, you might criticize them or put them down because they don’t meet your extremely high standards, which is unfair and can alienate people in your life.
7. You Can’t Help But Procrastinate.
You might not realize that perfectionists can sometimes procrastinate on tasks. This happens because they’re afraid to fail, which causes them to work themselves up into a freak-out session instead of getting into the task at hand. To deal with perfectionism procrastination, try to see the growth opportunities in failure so that it doesn’t have such a strong hold on you.
8. You Beat Yourself Up.
Perfectionists aren’t just critical of others – they’re also super critical of themselves. They laser-focus on achieving goals and if they don’t, they’ll give themselves an earful about their flaws and imperfections. Yikes. This behavior can lead to self-esteem issues and zap your confidence, causing you to feel stuck in negative thinking. Try to be kinder to yourself. You’re doing your best.
9. You Want A Perfect Partner.
Do you have a long list of what you’re looking for in a partner, which makes it feel impossible to find someone who will tick all your boxes? Or, do you expect your partner to meet all your standards and expectations, even though some of them are unrealistic and put pressure on them? If that sounds true, your perfectionism is putting strain on your relationships and pushing people away. No one’s going to be perfect or completely meet your needs, so don’t put all this pressure on your relationship.
10. You Torture Yourself With Guilt.
You might’ve had the most productive day, but this still might not be good enough in your eyes. You might be tortured by guilty feelings about what you could’ve done better or the small tasks you didn’t manage to cross off your mammoth to-do list. The sad thing is that your guilt is clouding all the great things you did achieve. Don’t let those be pushed aside!
11. You Have A Specific Way Of Doing Things.
When it comes to doing tasks and getting things done, you have a “right” way of doing things and you want other people to follow your rules. If someone helps you with something and you criticize how they do it, this causes stress – for yourself and others. You’d rather do things yourself instead of delegating, which just puts people off from working with you because you’re difficult. Ouch. It helps to remember that there are many ways to get things done. Be a tad more open-minded, okay?
