#5

100% or Nothing: Life as a Perfectionist.

By Sid Watson.

Illustrations by @jaybarnham

Not to start with too much of a cliche, but for as long as I can remember I’ve been a perfectionist. Not in the immaculate room, perfectly ordered desk type of way, but in sense that I still can’t watch the US Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman recite a poem, or watch the olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim land a trick, without judging myself for not having achieved that level of success. For me, if its not absolutely perfect (on the first try mind you), there’s a (now small) part of me that thinks failure. 

For much of my life most people would say, just try, people don’t care if you succeed or fail, its ok. But if you’re anything like me you’ll know that “people” weren’t the issue: I cared. If I knew that there was a “perfect” score in whatever field I was engaged in, I would be disappointed with anything less than the proverbial 100%. I used find myself spending hours, even days or weeks, trying to come up with the perfect way to a approach an essay or problem. Much like an overexcited golden retriever bringing sticks to a less-than-impressed owner, I would mentally suggest ideas to the deeply unforgiving audience that was (and to some extent still is) my mind, and the response tended to be somewhere between, “you can do better” and “this is embarrassingly bad at this point. Why even bother?!”. And since there was so much pressure for perfection, I would (and in my worst moments still do) sometimes allow my fear of failure to override me into simply doing nothing, because if I never tried, I could never fail. 

“And really, that’s all we need to do: try.”

Now, not only is being both promoter and the harshest judge of one's self a rather bizarre situation to find oneself in, but it also becomes incredibly exhausting and, in the long run, limiting. Indeed as time went on and I experienced (to my dire disappointment) failure, I realised it wasn’t as apocalyptic as I imagined; the world hadn’t come crashing down when I got a B grade, or didn't become the British under 18 rowing champion, or when I didn’t get into an Ivy League University. In fact these experiences, though disappointing in the moment, built resilience and, looking back, they led me on a path to be exactly where I need to be. So, I started to see truth in what I was always told: it is ok to fail, because failing is the only way we can grow! And actually, the biggest limiter to my success was my own fear.

I know that if you’re anything like me, this is certainly easier said than done; indeed, even as I write this, I’m on my fifth draft, editing and re-editing, but hey, at least I’m writing at all! And really, that’s all we need to do: try. Try and fall over and do it badly and make mistakes and get fed up but still come back and fail and fail and fail until someday without knowing it you’ll be more fluent in that skill than you ever dreamed. So if there’s anything a severely underqualified 20-year-old such as myself can recommend to cure your perfectionism (or even just grow as a person), it is to learn to live with failure, and pick yourself back up and try again.