People gravitate to inspirational speeches or stories that highlight hustle culture. Always strive for perfection, give no excuses for your mistakes, you are the only one to blame if you fail to accomplish your goal; turns of phrase like these are riveting. Indeed, others’ stories of success are incantations that bewitch perfectionists like me to raise our standards to an unreasonable high level regarding whatever accomplishment we are up to. That said, are they all applicable to every one of us? At times, when I keep pushing myself to a certain point, I get overwhelmed by the immense pressure and feel demotivated to keep up, which hinders me from taking any step further. Personally, when I feel stuck in a rut, burning out, I realise pushing the break is as important as pushing the gas.
Oftentimes, I perceive myself to be quite the perfectionist since I only allow very little room for making missteps in my ambition to achieve perfection in something—in anything—when I took part in a recital competition, I aimed for supremacy. When I joined the athletic team, I let no rival run ahead of me, even my teammates. Also, I perceive it partly stems from the child rearing style of my parents in my youth. I grew up in an ordinary Chinese family, and my parents always compared my brother and I to other children. Perhaps, God knows in what way, they believed it would be one effective provoke to keep us motivated. So, to receive a few raised eyebrows from my parents, I became very competitive and ambitious even when I was in primary school. My perfectionistic genes are partly inborn, and partly nurtured.
Having high expectations, on the brighter side, is conducive to living up to our ideals as they are as indispensable to us as a sea breeze is to sailing ships, serving as a driving force. However, we are always stressed out, possessing unrealistic expectations that are barely unachievable, at least in the short run. In my past experiences, so deeply-rooted is this mindset that it’s often hard to iron it out. In the first few months of relearning English, I spent hours working on my speaking skills in the hope of acquiring a so-called “perfect” accent. My training has centered around shadowing, mimicking how actors speak while browsing through Netflix or Youtube.
In theory, practice should make perfect. Indeed, I did manage to improve my fluency and pronunciation slightly, and yet, in practice, I still fell short of my expectation when I played back my recordings. It was as if a tart-tongued hater hopped into my head nitpicking with downright mockery. Intonation: too weird; pronunciation: not accurate; flow: not smooth. No matter how I tried, I just didn’t sound like a native speaker; it just didn’t click.
Doubtlessly, you must have run up against experiences like mine as everybody has certain ambitions in their craft to become successful. To that end, we unknowingly set up ridiculously high standards, for fear that even an iota of slacking would have ruined our best-laid plans. The result is we are prone to beating ourselves up when things go south, which is detrimental to any learning process. To paraphrase the psychologist, Scott Bea: perfectionism has been internalized in our culture such that not many of us value the importance of taking a break.
As far as I’m concerned, the first action after pinpointing the final destination is not to run the engine at full tilt, but to evaluate whether the route or destination is viable. Having unrealistic aspirations is stressful and futile as if going after the oasis reflected in the mirage. At times, however, it seems impossible only because we tend to rush the process. Examples would be: pursuing a proper accent within months, mastering an instrument after a couple of lessons, or preparing a decent meal after browsing a few videos. Anybody would lose it when putting in around-the-clock effort, but to no avail.
In truth, behind the scenes of those successful stories are trials and misadventures that are often just briefly touched upon or neglected. Even the smartest brains across the globe need years to notch up their success. Stephen King is one inspiring figure to me, the most renowned horror novelist whose stories were once utterly rejected and literally impaled on the wall during his early years of writing. Seen in this light, perhaps we should go easier on ourselves with more patience. Striding one step forward at a time is more than enough as eventually, all the sweat and tears will add up and pay off.
To put yourself in this mindset, you are more likely to accept yourself as you are, with less self-loathing and more understanding.
