#perfectionism

#perfectionism

From the second he described it, my jaw was on the floor.

We are approaching the end of the year, an opportunity to reflect on the progress you have made toward personal goals and set new ones for the upcoming year. According to a 2024 Pew Research survey, 30 percent of U.S. adults make at least one New Year's resolution. New Year's resolutions reflect a desire for personal growth. The majority of resolutions revolve around health goals such as exercising more often or eating healthier, reaching personal financial milestones, and addressing interpersonal relationships.

My grandmother strove for perfection, convinced that it was an attainable goal if only you worked hard enough. This meant eating less to lose weight. Food deprivation became a family bonding activity when my grandmother was on a diet. Diets lasted decades. We had marathon cleaning weekends while friends went to the mall. Play clothes were swapped out for school clothes for our rare trips to Burger King.

We, of course, make any changes she requests and respect that she takes every single thing we do so seriously, but you know, sometimes it's a Wednesday, and you just want to do your job and be done with it without being bogged down by changes that weren't actually necessary but perhaps made the work just a little bit more perfect.

Sacks was referring to specific points in the past, which we may cite as examples of nostalgia. But his comment reveals something deeper, which applies to obsessiveness, broadly, and perfectionism, specifically. Both often entail a preoccupation with a lost past, but one that substantially differs from anything resembling reality. While nostalgia romanticizes the past, it, at least, captures some part of it. With perfectionism, the longing is often for the possibilities of one's past, rather than for the past itself.

We live in a world that worships polish. Perfect photos on Instagram. Seamless podcasts with no awkward pauses. Articles that read like they've passed through a dozen editors. And now, with AI tools that can produce mistake-free writing in seconds, the bar feels even higher. Machines can generate flawless sentences, perfect grammar, and shiny ideas on demand. Meanwhile, I'm over here second-guessing a paragraph, rewriting the same sentence six different ways, and still wondering if "Best" or "Warmly" is the less awkward email sign-off.

It isn't an oversimplification to say that perfectionism, at its core, is about a deep and irrational need for emotional and often even physical security. As much as I dislike searches for abstract "root causes," because causes tend to be complex, we can safely (no pun intended) conceive of the specific goals and specific desires in perfectionism as being in service of self-preservation, feeling protected from external and, thus, internal skeptics and critics.

Bipolar disorder I and II are each marked by lengthy periods of a depressive episode, which is expressed in a change in appetite (more or less eating), a change in sleep (more or less of it), anhedonia (i.e., the inability to experience pleasure in activities in which one did), and apathy (i.e., not caring about anything, including, at times, even pursuing treatment).

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, unfortunately, didn't have much to offer us in his consolations about death, but, more importantly, he succeeded in helping us believe that life was worth living, even if this was somewhat unintended; he was a nihilist through and through. Philosopher David Bather Woods, in his new book Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist, chronicles Schopenhauer's life and thought in a manner resembling a parable.

"I have a way of getting mad at everything, and I want everything to be perfect," Diggs said. "But I think it's a competitive edge, as well, because you're always chasing to be better and always want better. ... I always want excellence. I don't attach myself to the results, but I always want more. "That kind of was embedded in me when I was a kid. My dad never gave me a 'good job' or pats on the back, so I probably should work on that."

Looking back on my own decades in life-student, waiter, pilot, FBI agent, graduate student, author, speaker-I can honestly say I've felt like an imposter at nearly every stage. From my first solo flight in a Cessna 152 at 17 to my first arrest of human traffickers in the Sonoran Desert, miles from any help, I often wondered, Do I belong here? Am I ready? Even as I rose through the ranks, I sometimes asked myself: Did I earn this, or am I fooling everyone?

I was on stage at the New York Comedy Club, about to deliver my first five-minute stand-up set in America. I'd memorized and rehearsed and memorized every word. After I delivered my first joke, my mind went completely blank. Nothing. For 30 excruciating seconds, I stood frozen like a deer in headlights. When I looked down at my palm for my SOS backup notes, all I saw was a giant smudge mark. My nervous, sweaty hands totally smeared the ink.

Sprawling out in Savasana can feel as close to perfect as you can get. As a result, you might attempt to curate a perfect experience. Maybe you arrange your arms and legs so they're *precisely* equidistant from your body or cover yourself with a blanket, pull it taut, and smoothen it of any wrinkles-and only then can you allow yourself to relax. But sometimes, it's these moments of striving for perfection that make us a little too "Princess and the Pea" about Savasana.

This Virgo season has been unlike any other. It has given us a full month to practice a new way of being. The first new Moon and lunar eclipse on August 22nd cracked open the door to healing old stories about our worth. The solar eclipse on September 21st is about to blow that door wide open, offering us the chance to step through and claim our power once and for all.

Biglaw in particular runs on insecurity. Not only do lawyers work insane hours, they're expected to perform with absolute precision. From day one, the message is clear: Miss a deadline (even if arbitrary) or make an error (however inconsequential), and your career is toast. The culture of extreme perfectionism breeds fear and anxiety, yet it remains the industry standard. The question is what this is doing to lawyers' mental state.

I'd look for something new to take on: a class, a language, a project, a degree. Once, in the span of a single week, I signed up for language classes, researched getting certified in something I didn't actually want to do, and convinced myself I needed to start training for a 10K. Because if I was doing something productive, I wouldn't have to sit with what I was feeling. That was the pattern: uncomfortable emotion → frantic pursuit of something "more."

Perfectionism is philosophically encapsulated by an existential conviction. Many perfectionists are not only certain of the objective validity of their rigid way of living; they're also emboldened by the sense that their lives have an objective meaning, afforded to them in the way a god may grant his messiah a grand objective. Peers and loved ones question the perfectionist's obsessiveness because its root is often hidden, protected from the slings and arrows of reason. Perfectionism persists in large part because it remains unchallenged.

Being an over-thinker or perfectionist can sometimes slow down decision-making. Shifting to a "temporary solution" mindset can help people make good decisions faster.

Perfectionists often feel a deep sense of shame over even minor infractions, which exacerbates their internal distress and leads to black and white thinking about worth.

Perfectionism is a simple way to avoid dealing with complex life problems. Perfectionists compare themselves only to their best parts, fixating on qualities they lack.