Managing Perfection and the Fear of Failing

A colorful illustration of a smiling girl and boy in front of a cracked mirror, surrounded by pressure symbols like trophies, checklists, and phrases such as Be perfect and Fake it till you make it with a broken heart and rainbow above.

By Kevin Lahey, LSW

“Perfection” and “failure”. I believe that most of us would agree that those are two words with a whole lot of weight behind them. So often, we live our lives seeking perfection and doing everything we can to avoid and prevent failure. As far as other things we can all agree, I think it’s safe to say that going through life like that can be pretty tiring. The purpose of this blog post is to, hopefully, reframe some of the perspectives you might have in regard to seeking perfection and fearing

Let’s start with perfection. Obviously, we all want to do things well. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it seems that, far too often, doing things well turns into putting pressure on us to do things absolutely perfectly. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll catch myself slipping into that mindset every so often, but I think it’s important to break out of that frame of mind. For whoever is reading this, take a moment to really think about what you consider “perfection” to be and if “perfection” is something we can really ever even attain. To me, I think the idea of perfection would be better replaced with improvement. Ultimately, seeking perfection is to seek constant improvement (up to the point where we can’t possibly get any better). Instead of always reaching for the end of the line (i.e., perfection), I think it’s better to just take things one step at a time, or one small improvement after another.

As for the fear of failure so much of us have, I think there’s another way to look at it. Sure, we could go on with our lives seeing failure as a worst-case scenario, but we could also look at failure as a learning experience. When we challenge the idea of perfection, we allow ourselves to view failure as an opportunity. That opportunity, at least for me, is the opportunity to see things we could improve upon or the opportunity to set new goals for ourselves.

I’ve given you a lot to chew on in these few paragraphs, so I’ll wrap things up here. It’s important to remember that part of being human is growing from our experiences. Without failure, how would we grow? If everything we did was perfect, what would we have to strive for? Instead, I think we should embrace our imperfections. Look at the things we mess up as a chance to learn. In the end, I think it’s perfect to be imperfect, and I challenge you to give that thought process a chance.

If you’ve got any struggles with always seeking perfection or being afraid to make mistakes, don’t hesitate to reach out to us here at Owens & Associates. Sometimes, talking through these ideas is what helps us to move past them and make changes and we’re more than happy to help you do that.

Give us a call 📞 847-854-4333 or an email 📩admin@owenscounseling.com to get the ball rolling on your treatment today.

Remember, we all deserve some support in our life, so we are more than happy to provide some!

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