Perfectionism & Self-Worth

When I was in the corporate life, I have been in many job interviews to recruit and be recruited.

There is this though question, I believe everyone who has been to a job interview can relate to:

What is your greatest weakness?

Most of the people might find it appropriate to answer this question as “I am a perfectionist” considering that it is a kind of weakness, yet it is something good to be a perfectionist.

After my transition into healing realms, I learned a lot about human psychology.

Today, I know that “perfectionism” if nothing else, a roadblock to move forward and get things done.

It walks hand in hand with procrastination.

Perfectionism not only kills the joy of life but also kills the creativity.

One of the most powerful parts of self-healing is to enter into a positive emotional relationship with ourselves.

Most of us need a lot of work on this. We simply do not accept ourselves as the way we are, and perfectionism is a sign of this.

There is a part of us that does not feel “good enough” no matter how much we accomplished. How good we were at school, how many diplomas or certificates we got, how successful we are at our jobs.

There is a critical voice inside us telling “you should do more and harder to be better”

The truth is, every one of us try to be special in some way to prove our self-worth and this might not be conscious. We base our self-worth on what we expect of ourselves according to standard that were set in our childhood.

Somewhere in our childhood, we formed a belief that “we will never be good enough and/or worthy enough”

We expect an impossible mission from ourselves. Then we criticize and reject ourselves when we do not achieve that perfection.

Even if we achieve something in our target list, we devalue it as soon as we accomplish it and move to next goal before sinking into it and without celebration.

We focus more on what we have not done than what we have accomplished, this is a vicious cycle.

Our biggest task is to know ourselves better and to journey a real-self by searching, discovering and uncovering the mask-self.

Because whatever happened to us in our lives, it did not change our core-self which is already perfect as it is. Our job is to meet this pure essence.