How do I help students who are perfectionists?
Students with perfectionistic tendencies often don鈥檛 think they have a problem. Here鈥檚 something I wrote about the topic for as a :
鈥淭o get ahead in this world, don鈥檛 we need a little bit of perfectionism?鈥�
As someone who has researched perfectionism for over a decade, I鈥檓 asked this question a lot. And I used to think that was true. It鈥檚 hard to succeed nowadays. You鈥檝e got to sacrifice yourself, keep pushing well beyond comfort, and live life on your tiptoes. That鈥檚 just the zero-sum nature in a lopsided society where there are only a few winners, I believed.
Yet, finds that perfectionism has no relationship with performance. Perfectionistic people strive really hard, but they鈥檙e no more likely to be successful.
One reason is that perfectionistic people work hard but unsustainably so. They often find themselves in the sapping zone of diminishing and inverse returns to their efforts.
Another is that many perfectionists are world champions at self-sabotage. When things get tough, when it looks like failure is heading their way, the anticipated shame and embarrassment are so fierce that perfectionistic people are reluctant to put forth any further effort that might allow others to discover their shortcomings. So, they procrastinate or simply give up to ward off fears of failure.
In trying to avoid failure, perfectionists often do the very things that make failure more likely.
For perfectionists, dialing down goals and aiming for excellence instead doesn鈥檛 usually work. Rather, it鈥檚 important to learn to embrace the inevitability of setbacks, failures, and things not going quite as planned. And being able to sit comfortably with these humanizing experiences, to let them be, not needing to rehabilitate them or drive them out of existence.
顿辞苍鈥檛 strive to be perfect.
Do recognize that perfectionism doesn鈥檛 lead to success. And help the young people in your life embrace all of themselves, including their imperfections, for the astonishing little explosions of humanity that they are.
