One thing I find interesting is that, as an adult, we are criticised if we are deemed ‘perfectionists’.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, and where we learn to strive for perfection, and I could trace it back to school.
I remember being awarded for getting an A on my report, even in primary school.
I remember seeing those who got the highest grades being put on a pedestal at the end of year presentation night.
I remember seeing those who got ‘perfect’ results for VCE featured on the front page of the newspaper and getting scholarships and being told that would be the thing to strive for, mostly by teachers.
I remember my Japanese teacher in year 8 tell me that the only acceptable result was 100%.
I remember being told to work harder because my results weren’t what the teachers expected… in other words, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t perfect.
These messages were ingrained in me and have continued to adulthood. That feeling that if only I am perfect then I will get the results I’m told to expect from life.
One thing I found interesting when my kids went to school was the results changed. An A was no longer a perfect result, it was if you were performing 12 months ahead of the expected level, and a C was performing at the expected level. Even with this change, my kids still got a message that perfect was expected when it came to their school work.
Those ingrained lessons from school that your work needs to be perfect is a tough one to shake, especially as there are many areas as an adult where being ‘perfect’ is still required – one thing I can think of is job applications and having your cover letter and resume tick certain boxes.
One of the problems with ‘perfect’ is that it doesn’t always mean what we think it means… it’s not always about being perfect in a single way, it’s about ticking the boxes that the other person is looking for, whether it’s how to write an essay in the right way or whatever the task is, and often we don’t know what that version of perfect is, so we keep striving….
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