Anne is a writer. She hit upon a great idea for an article. It would require a lot of interviews, but the idea was brilliant. She posted a segment of the work on her blog and was contacted in four hours by a publisher. Anne could turn the idea into several spin-offs, so there was a great future ahead.
Changing time won’t change deadline
If you are a perfectionist, you know the next part of the story. Anne missed the first deadline. And the next. And the project is still not complete.
Anne is a perfectionist, too. She does excellent work and doesn’t want to turn in anything less than the best.
If Anne follows the road of perfectionism most writers and artists (and office workers, moms, employees, and supervisors) take, she will start a dozen projects and finish none of them, because they are not “finished.” Or “quite right,” or “done editing.”
She will have another great idea, and start it, and never finish it, either. Over her lifetime, she will start a thousand projects, ideas, articles, books, blogs, and relationships. None of them will end satisfactorily; many of them will never be finished at all.
Perfectionism sounds like something everyone would aspire to, but in real life, it is a pitfall to satisfaction. Perfectionism is the enemy of “good.” Or even “great.”
Don’t confuse “excellent” with “perfect.” Perfectionists are not satisfied with excellent, because there may be an invisible flaw that someone will find. And expose the perfectionist as a fraud.
And being exposed as a fraud takes the identity from a perfectionist. And the 
power they hold over others. As long as they don’t hand in the project or complete the work, they hang onto their identity.
Perfectionists are driven by fear of inadequacy–and sooner or later, often sooner, they will fail. Perfectionists fear this failure so much, that they begin to control their lives, their work, their employees, their family and friends in an ever-widening circle of perfectionism. By judging other people severely, perfectionists point to the flaws of others as a distraction from faults growing in their own lives.
They are never happy, always striving, forever hearing the threat of “fraud,” “unworthy” and “failure.”
Continue reading Part 2 of Perfectionist and Procrastinator on Sunday, Dec. 22. Discover a common cause of perfectionism and a new perspective. The Inner Critic takes the form of perfectionist to make sure you never are satisfied, and don’t get your creative work completed.
–-Quinn McDonald is a recovering perfectionist who helps others open the door to being great, if not perfect. See her work at QuinnCreative.com
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