Any perfectionists here in the community?
Perfectionism – A focus on needing to do everything perfectly. Little tolerance for making mistakes, little to no tolerance for failure.
Perfectionism is a double-edged sword.
If you have it and use it the right way, it can help you cut down obstacles, cut through blocks and achieve your dreams. However, when you turn it against yourself, the way a lot of perfectionists do, it can shred your confidence, kill your love for the sport and kill your performances. There is nothing wrong with striving for excellence. There is nothing wrong with trying to be perfect. There is a whole lot wrong when you start to expect it and then when you don’t get there, turning on yourself and beating yourself up. This is one of the things that perfectionists are really good at.
The other thing that perfectionists are really good at is catching themselves doing things wrong. Even when they haven’t even done anything wrong and they are getting positive feedback from parents and coaches, they’ll take their microscope out and find out everything they did that was awful. Here is the problem with that attitude: When you over-focus on all the mistakes you think you have made and when you refuse to pat yourself on the back when you have a good performance, what that does is erodes your confidence. Over time it will kill your motivation and eventually kill the joy you have in your sport.
The thing about failure, setbacks, and mistakes is…
THEY ARE CRITICAL.
You cannot become successful without them. In fact, failure and mistakes are the perfect stepping stones to success. When you look at any successful athlete, their successes are always built on a solid foundation of failures.
So, you can’t get down on yourself when you mess up.
You can’t get down on yourself when you fail.
That is part of sports.
What you want to do instead is to use your setbacks and failures and mistakes as the critical and important feedback that it is. Within the angst and unhappiness of screwing up are the secrets to becoming better. Every time we fail, it is important to look at what we did wrong, what we did that didn’t work and what we need to do differently next time. If you really want to be a perfectionist, you need to learn how to be perfect about how you handle your imperfections!
This is how we strive for excellence.
We want to spend time looking for the feedback that is going to help you get even better than you are right now.
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