Are perfectionists born or are they made? That, my friends, is the question. I have often strived for perfection in many, if not all, areas of my life for as long as I can remember (which isn't a good phrase for me since my memory is hit and miss). But I can vaguely remember being obsessed with coloring inside the lines as a kid. I can also remember throwing away an entire piece of paper if I had to scribble out even one mistake while writing a paper in high school. To this day if I type something wrong I can't just click on what's wrong and fix it, I have to backspace over everything until I get to the error and then retype the entire sentence (I do this a lot on IM's, that's why my replies take so long sometimes). Perfectionist...um...ism has bled into my work life a lot too, I could never let something be good enough. It had to always be perfect. Once it started to seep into my dating life, (somewhere you will rarely find good enough, forget about perfection), my friends sort of staged a perfectionist intervention.
So now I am a recovering perfectionist in most areas of my life but I've noticed that the one thing I can't seem to shake is how critical I am of myself. For example, I often bust out my guitar and record covers of either my favorite songs, or the requests of family/friends. I do it for fun, usually no one hears them except the people I let hear them, there's no reason for them to be perfect. But at least eight times out of ten I feel compelled to go back and record them again, even for the tiniest mistake. Everybody I know could tell me they were perfect and I would still have to re-do them. I'm thinking this is also likely the reason I rarely put my own words to music, because I know I'll just over obsess and think they suck. Why am I this way? I have no idea. I don't come from a family of perfectionists, there was never any pressure on me to be perfect growing up. My mom is 100% 'try your hardest and I'll be proud'. So maybe that's one we chalk up for the born this way side of the equation.
The flip side of course is that there isn't a perfectionist gene that's been discovered so we don't know if anyone is really born this way. Parents have total control of their kids in those all important first three years so maybe it's something we all pick up on at around that age. Like we want to please our parents and we think that means being perfect so that's what we strive for. Maybe some parents choose to nurture this trait and create super perfectionists, while others don't and create only a slight perfectionist streak. But then, neither of those explains my situation so maybe there's something else that contributes to hyper perfectionistism.
I have been trying to not be so overly critical of myself, but it's been a hard habit to break. I know it's not good for me since perfection is an impossible standard to reach and it drives everyone around me crazy. Speaking of crazy, my crazy aunt (funny crazy, not bananas crazy) thinks I may have a touch of OCD because I re-do stuff and have to do it in a certain way. (But then she's also convinced the burn I got on my left ring finger on Turkey Day either means I'm going to get married soon or that I'm scarred for life and will forever be a bachelor so...yeah, consider the source of that OCD comment). *sigh* Keep trying until I get it right, I guess. Isn't trying to deal with your flaws fun?
