I’m not telling you to hold on to being a perfectionist because it is a bad part of you that you need to work and get along with anyway, but because it is one of the best things about you. It’s actually what’s right with you.

You cannot remain passionate about attaining a certain outcome unless you take action towards the attainment of such outcome before it’s too late. No one who has delayed taking action concerning what they were passionate about being or doing for years has managed to get there eventually. In fact, they ended up being advocates for why it’s a waste of time to even try to do or become those things. They find pleasure talking people out of similar dreams all the time, like they’re so noble and virtuous and trying to make the world a better place by stopping other people from ruining their lives by being or doing something that is too ambitious. They take pride in holding other people back, and they call this being rational and realistic. They discourage people from pursuing their dreams, goals, aspirations, desires, ambition, passion, and the betterment of their own lives for a living, and they never feel guilty about it. They think they’re doing the right thing. It’s like a law of nature. You either do it, or end up pushing yourself and other people away from doing it, because you must think you were right about the disastrous decision of giving up on your dreams for the rest of your life, or else you’d regret it for eternity. You’d rather betray your most authentic self, than go through regret, because for some reason you prefer the absence of taking action to putting in the work. You don’t want to be wise. You want to just sound wise. You are afraid of change not because you don’t want to lose your authentic self, but because you have a phobia of getting better. You hate to improve, because you think you’re perfect the way you are from the start. There’s a difference between having a mother that says meh toward whatever achievement you make, no matter how great it is, which makes you think you’re not enough as a human being no matter what you do, and thinking that you are perfect in every way imaginable from the start without even trying anyway, just because this kind of parenting is criminal. She is wrong for having denied you all encouraging emotions. Including the emotion of being impressed by how amazing you are, even if you really weren’t that special back then. It wasn’t the truth, but it was still essential for your growth and development. Still, that doesn’t make you perfect the way you are from the start without even trying. I can’t grant you that, no matter how profound the trauma of the withholding of emotions that you’ve been through is and will always be. I’m not minimizing your trauma, and I’m not victim blaming you. I’m not invalidating your trauma or feelings. I’m not trying to tell you to snap out of it, or that it’s not that big of a deal. I’m not telling you that you are wrong to be or feel hurt this way or to that extent. I will never do any of that. Ever. Narcissistic abuse is arguably the single most horrible and severest form of torture and abuse there is a human being could ever go through, no matter what. What I’m having trouble with is the issue of wanting to heal and find your own true self, while simultaneously demonizing an essential part of your own nature and who you really are; you being a perfectionist. You think you should destroy any perfectionistic tendencies you harbor within you in order to unlock your full potential and maximize your progress, when the desire or attempt to do so only serves as a tool to maximize your self-loathing and imposter syndrome, without positively impacting your success, productivity, creativity, progress, or potential in any way, shape, or form. You want to embrace your true self and nature, except when it comes to your perfectionism or perfectionistic tendencies. I wonder where you guys get your reward from. Will you ever reach true fulfillment at some point, or are you just going to settle for talking about fulfillment only instead for the rest of your lives without ever bothering to try to taste it for yourself at least once? Have you ever tried to pursue being a full-blown perfectionist to the fullest and see where does that lead you? Have you ever felt a proclivity toward correcting mistakes indefinitely with no end in sight just for the love of it, because you are not doing any effort to bypass or suppress the perpetual desire of wanting everything to be divinely perfect? Are you sure that the only outcome of embracing being a perfectionist is to end up being concerned about nothing but avoidance of making mistakes and avoidance of any form of risk taking? Did you find yourself focusing more on the annihilation of mistakes instead of improving the quality of your content, writing, work, or whatever that which you’re creating? Or did you realize that your reluctance or fear of trying to do anything well enough or perfectly is because you don’t believe in yourself, your potential, and your capacity for doing great things enough?

Suppressing your perfectionistic tendencies won’t do you any good. It will just force you to always have no option but to settle for mediocrity.

It’s part of you. It’s part of your nature. It gives you reason to keep going when all else fails. It provides you with endless intrinsic motivation. It makes you aspire for the best. It makes taking care of the quality of your work a no-brainer. It makes whatever that you achieve infinitely more rewarding. It ensures you are always striving for improving yourself and getting better at whatever that you’re doing. It makes you embrace constant and never ending improvement. It means you’ll always be raising your standards and try to make the quality of your life and work better to the best of your ability. It gives you endless energy and makes everything meaningful and worth the struggle. It helps with celebration. It leads to more fulfillment and being whole. It is essential for facilitating the process of radical acceptance of yourself. It is who you are, your true self. Why is that bad? Why are you “struggling” with being a perfectionist? Why is being a perfectionist a trait, characteristic, or part of you that you need to totally reject or disown? Think again.