The Cure for Perfectionism (A Sneaky Name for Self-Judgment!)

By Nanice Ellis
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Perfectionism is sneaky – on the surface it sounds like it could be a good thing. After all, what’s wrong with perfection?

It is true that perfectionism is a strategy for success, but when you measure success by your ability to be consistently perfect, success is perpetually out of reach. The strategy of perfectionism, sooner or later, does the opposite of what it was intended to do.

If you look closely you will see that, like a wolf in sheep’s clothes, perfectionism is just another name for self-judgment. In the name of perfection, we give ourselves permission to be self-critical and undermining every time we fall short. Never quite meeting our own standards of perfection, because good is not good enough, we become our own worst enemies. If there is such a thing as perfect, and we believe that we must live up to this unrealistic ideal in order to succeed, we set ourselves up for perpetual disappointment, failure and maybe even depression.