The Tyranny of Perfection

A woman at a scrapbook convention admitted to me that she'd been collecting paper and supplies for five years, but she hadn't made a single scrapbook page. "I'm afraid of goofing up," she explained.

Fear can paralyze you, and it can certainly add unnecessary stress to your life. A New York Times article (3/12/2011) crowed in its headline, "To err is human, and maybe psychologically healthy."

The article quotes Dr. Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation in Boston, as saying, "perfectionists want to rigidly follow rules to get things 'right,' and this often means they're terribly uncreative because creativity involves making mistakes."

Professor Randy O. Frost has done studies in which participants were asked to write passages. Those who were high in perfectionism wrote passages that were "judged significantly poorer in quality than subjects low in perfectionism."

Frost theorizes that "maladaptive perfectionists avoid writing tasks, procrastinate about them, and avoid having others review and comment on their work to a greater extent than nonperfectionists."

That's understandable. I've been working on a new series idea. My agent made several suggestions, my beta readers made a few, and my husband had some also. At each turn, their suggestions temporarily stunned me, caused me to freeze up. But after a short time spent licking my wounds, I could see that all their comments were helpful. It was my initial RESPONSE to their suggestions that was the problem.

Recently a young family member was working on a project. "What will I do if no one likes it?" she said. "What if it's rejected?"

I told her, "If you choose to live a creative life, there is always that chance. That's why so few people can succeed as artists. Whether it's a musician playing a composition, or a painter displaying her work, or an author submitting a piece of writing...we put ourselves out there, and we're open to rejection."

I should have gone further. I should have added, "But the alternative is to give up. Whatever you do, it will never be perfect. Not in your eyes and not in the eyes of all your critics."

That woman with all that paper, collected over five years, what has she learned? Nothing. Frost noted that perfectionists, by avoiding sharing their work and getting feedback, may not develope the same quality of writing skills as non-perfectionists. Feedback (okay, criticism) stings. But input helps us see our work from others' viewpoint, and that ability to stand outside of ourselves is invaluable.

This weekend I wandered the streets of Juno Beach enjoying the outdoor Art Fair. Not every display was to my liking. But as I walked along, I admired their efforts. We're kindred spirits, those artists and I. We know what it's like to make a lot of mistakes. We've overthrown the tyranny of perfection.