Present Perfect: A Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need for Control

The process view allows you to see your entire life as an unfolding work in progress, as an ever-changing blossoming of perfection. In a process view of perfection, failure is not an option, in the sense that you are always succeeding since you are always doing your best.

as a perfectionist, you define perfection as a theoretical best. That’s exactly why you are never satisfied with reality as it is. The real world—the one and only world that there is at any given point in time—always pales in comparison with a better world that you can imagine. In any

In being self-driven, you are driven by a self that you didn’t actually program.

you don’t like the way reality is right now, change the future. You see, acceptance isn’t approval, it’s just an acknowledgment of what is (more about this below). If you don’t acknowledge what is, what will you be improving?

When there is no audience and nobody to narrate for, the narrator goes away and the experiencer steps in. Be patient. Your mind has been talking for years. It won’t stop on a dime. Give it time: maybe a few hours, maybe a whole weekend. A meeting with perfection is worth the wait. In the state of wordless awareness, you’ll discover that there is no

constantly strive to meet everyone’s expectations and you essentially live in fear of others’ disapproval of you.

Approval-hungry/validation-hungry perfectionism parallels the so-called conscientious compulsive variant of OCPD (Millon and Davis 2000). Conscientious compulsives tend to be hard working, dutiful, and ever eager to meet others’ expectations. They fear “that failure to perform perfectly will lead to both abandonment and condemnation” by others (200

Preaching perfectionism for its own sake is akin to idealistic hazing designed to override the fundamentals of human motivation and to override free will.

You’ve come to equate the meaning of success with “not-failure” or “un-failure.” You are either a failure or a not-failure. If that’s the meaning you assigned to the notion of success, it’s no wonder you never really feel successful. You’re only someone who once again didn’t fail. So, of course there’s never any reason to celebrate or allow yoursel

Habitual behavior is a functional shortcut that spares us the trouble of thinking and the hassle of a conscious choice. As a perfectionist, you are a master habit builder. This skill is part of your efficiency, part of what helps you excel.