What would we be like if we stuck to our most ambitious New Year’s resolutions? If all of our cringy parts were ironed out and all of our best potentials were realized? We like to imagine this version of ourselves. It’s admirable. It’s free from shame. It’s almost perfect. It’s unattainable.
The Total Self Overhaul
New Year’s Day is one of the most common occasions for reinventing ourselves, alongside birthdays, new school years, and breakups. We may have grand plans for how we will improve ourselves, with as many facets to them as there are character skills in a role playing game. We want to level up our character until every stat is maxed out.
I call this elaborate personal transformation the Total Self Overhaul, or the TSO for short (not to be confused with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which is also holiday season themed, but not otherwise relevant here).
The TSO often includes several elements, such as:
- Establishing an exercise routine
- Dressing and grooming more stylishly
- Improving our social skills
- Keeping up with chores like clockwork
- Catching up on our to-do list
- Implementing a new organizational system
- Learning a language/instrument/sport/hobby/etc.
- Starting a meditation or yoga practice
- Reading more books
The key feature of the TSO is that all the elements are treated as if they have to go together. We either make all the changes or none of them. We think the TSO is the perfect plan for getting our life on track. We think we’re not enough as a person, but the TSO will fix that.
So, giddy with optimism, we launch our TSO. It goes well for a week or two, then pieces start to fall off. We try launching it again. And again. And before long, our life consists of little more than agonizing over the TSO, trying and failing to carry out the TSO, criticizing our last attempt at the TSO, and life passes us by in the meantime.
The TSO Is Perfectionistic
The problem with the TSO is that, while each of its many facets may be doable in theory, the whole thing is more than most mortals can manage to pursue all at once. Insistence on the totality of the TSO keeps us stuck. We want to become that perfect version of ourselves we see in our imagination, and we are loath to settle for less.
Making progress in just one or two areas would technically be an improvement, and yet we may see it more like a failure, because it isn’t a complete overhaul. As long as we remain fixated on the TSO, we increasingly feel a sense of stagnation. This all-or-nothing approach to self-development can be considered a form of perfectionism.
Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a cluster of personality traits that psychologists have measured using self-report questionnaires. Research has identified two subgroups of traits, one of which can be healthy, while the other can lead to problems:
- Adaptive Perfectionistic Strivings
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- Setting high standards
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- Organization and neatness
- Maladaptive Perfectionistic Concerns
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- Concern over mistakes: e.g., “Messing up is unacceptable.”
- Doubts about actions: e.g., “I have to do the right thing.”
- Socially-prescribed perfectionism: e.g., “Everyone expects me to do better.”
People with high strivings and low concerns tend to be optimistic and confident. High perfectionistic concerns, with or without strivings, have been found to be associated with poorer mental health outcomes.
Perfectionism is Transdiagnostic
Perfectionism itself is not a diagnosis, but it is both a risk factor and a maintenance factor for several mental health disorders. That means being high in perfectionism makes a person more likely to develop a disorder and more likely to meet criteria for that disorder over a longer period of time. These associations have been found with the following disorders:
- Depressive disorders
- Anxiety disorders
- Eating disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
Being Flexible with Standards
We do not have to lower our standards to be free from perfectionism. This is the biggest concern people have about making changes in this area. “My perfectionism got me to where I am,” they’ll say. “It’s a strength that I can’t give up.” This concern can be such a hang-up, I’ll say it again: We do not have to lower our standards to be free from perfectionism.
We overcome perfectionism by becoming more flexible in how we apply our standards. We treat every situation as unique and apply high standards only when it serves us to do so. We make distinctions between when it’s important to us to perform at a high level and when good enough is good enough.
High standards are not the problem. The problem is when we believe the mental chatter that says high standards must be achieved, always, completely, to perfection, every time. This is rule-based living. Flexibility is the opposite of rule-based living. Flexibility sees performance standards on a sliding scale, and it says, “I get to use my judgment to decide where to set the scale on a case by case basis.”
Healthy Self-Worth
We also work with perfectionism by expanding our sense of self-worth beyond the realm of achievement. We cultivate feelings of belonging and connectedness that do not depend on performance. Equipped with a more stable sense of self-worth, we depend less on rigid rules and trust our judgment more. This enables us to apply high standards only when they are true reflections of who we want to be.
A New Way of Setting Goals
Let’s make this the year we free ourselves from the tyranny of the TSO. Let’s remember that we are worthy exactly as we are, and that personal growth is an expansion of who we are. This expansion process will always be ongoing, and we get to decide what to prioritize as it unfolds.
Let’s prioritize changes that make life richer. If you decide to spend any part of this upcoming year perfecting your guitar chops on Pachelbel’s Canon in D, do it because you love the process.
References
Egan, S. J., Wade, T. D., & Shafran, R. (2011). Perfectionism as a transdiagnostic process: a
clinical review. Clinical psychology review, 31(2), 203–212.
Ong, C. W., & Twohig, M. P. (2022). The Anxious Perfectionist: How to Manage
Perfectionism-Driven Anxiety Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. New
Harbinger Publications.
Shafran, R., Egan, S. J., & Wade, T. D. (2023). Coming of age: A reflection of the first 21 years
of cognitive behaviour therapy for perfectionism. Behaviour research and therapy, 161,
104258.