You’re not a perfectionist, you’re insecure.
What I have noticed recently is that self-worth (more specifically, lack of self worth) is at the core of most of my problems.
In school, I conditioned myself to believe that my self-worth was attached to my grades (achievements).
Even though I don’t want to, I feel I have carried this belief set with me, to this day - and it’s causing problems.
Learning happens when we test our hypothesis in the real world. The faster we can go through the cycle, the faster we can learn.
But more often than not, it feels better to just observe, research and hypothesise, without actually testing anything. Thus, we get stuck in the red loop.
This is called mental masturbation, but I have used disguises such as:
Laziness
Perfectionism
Procrastination
Slow execution
Excessive Planning
Overthinking
[insert any other masking word here]
“I am a perfectionist” or “I procrastinate too much”.
I propose: at the heart of these issues is fear.
And at the heart of fear, I propose, is lack of self-worth.
“I am a perfectionist” or “I procrastinate too much” turns into “I am lacking self-worth”.
To expand,
One of the most fundamental human desires is to feel worthy.
This is why mental masturbation and hypothesising feels good. It helps increase your self-worth by making you feel smart in a safe insulated environment.
When it comes time to test, you are putting your hypothesis (and your self-worth) out for scrutiny. If you are wrong, it makes you feel bad.
This is why we procrastinate even though we don’t want to. Subconsciously, we are just trying to protect our sense of worth.
So you don’t move. You procrastinate.
Perfectionism is a disguise for the same fear. You know that when you put yourself out there, you will get judged. And you obviously don’t want to be judged poorly, so you strive for ‘perfect’.
Only issue is that you don’t know what perfect looks like (partially because you’ve never achieved it and largely because it doesn’t exist). So, you stay stuck in the red loop.
Slow execution, excessive planning and any other masking word is simply caused by the same desire to avoid risking your self-worth.
Foundational to this issue is the belief our self-worth is tied to our achievement or performance. Through this lens, procrastination and perfectionism then becomes an extremely useful coping mechanism for safeguarding your fragile self-worth.
This is why it’s so hard to stop procrastination and perfectionism. You literally have to fight against millions of years of evolution that has been hardwired into your brain.
