Breaking Free from the Perfectionism Trap

It's a new day, and just like every other day, your aim is to avoid as many errors as you can. Make everything perfect and nice. The plans have to work out as planned. The codes have to work as good as expected. That's what most of my life was about for a while. Even at the time of writing this, I'm still kind of struggling with it, but this is what I've come to learn.

All my life I've been so scared of doing things wrong, so scared of disappointing the people that believe in me, so scared of taking the wrong decision. For a large part of me, it controlled who I was and the decisions I made. Not entirely in a bad way, but it seemed to make me do things that ordinarily I wouldn't enjoy doing. It seemed I made decisions to please others, to look perfect. It got to a point where I second-guess everything I do – unconsciously, might I add. Always looking for validation from people, so that I don't get to be seen as clumsy. It didn't take long for me to realize that as much as I wasn't doing anything wrong, I wasn't being myself. My fallacy, illusion, or misunderstanding of perfection was taking me on a path where I missed some necessary lessons I needed to learn in order to be better.

I realized that making mistakes is human, and it doesn't make me less of one if I make them. Seeking validation from people only made them feel good, or at best temporarily put me in a nice spot with them. But I've learned to be real – to do what I know is good, make mistakes, learn from them, and be better.

Mind you, I'm not advising against asking for other people's opinions or points of view on matters. But even when we do so, we have to be consciously careful so that we don't heavily rely on what other people say for our decisions and views. There's a difference between gathering wisdom and surrendering your own judgment.

The truth is, perfectionism isn't really about being perfect – it's about avoiding the discomfort of being seen as flawed. But here's what I've learned: those flaws, those mistakes, those moments when we fall short – they're not bugs in the system. They're features. They're how we grow, how we learn, how we become more human.

So now I try to embrace the messiness. I try to make peace with the fact that some days the code won't work, some plans will fall through, and some people might be disappointed. And that's okay. Because on the other side of that fear is something beautiful – the freedom to be genuinely myself, mistakes and all.