How Perfectionist Mentality Holds You Back

If you don’t believe me, take a look at some of the proven ways of perfectionism, or believing you have to be number one at something, can hurt you rather than help you.

#1 Failure to start

Perfectionists are plagued with this someday syndrome. They think too much about what they want to do, so much so that they never actually begin. They never take that first step because what if it’s not right?
They sit on their ideas and their dreams for months to years, letting their fear of imperfection decide for them what their life will be like.

#2 Inability to see anything you have finished as truly complete

Sure, you might publish that blog post or turn in work, but you never release that project from your mind. You never mark it off as being done and completed. You go back to it, and you think of ways that you should or could have improved on that situation whether it be in how you played the instrument or how you should have served that ball better in Volleyball.
You carry all those what-ifs with you, and as the accomplishments in your life continue to build, you never celebrate. Instead, you carry all those questions with you of what you could have done, which inhibits your ability to move forward and try something new.

#3 Inability to finish

There are thousands of potential entrepreneurs out there who will never own a business because of their fear of failure. There are thousands of books left unpublished on laptops that will never have someone else read them for the fear that those eyes might not like what they see. Sure, some of those books and some of those businesses might have failed if they had ever gotten the chance to get started, but not starting them is a failure in and of its self. It’s a failure by not taking action.
Don’t let yourself not finish something because you’re afraid you won’t be good enough. Don’t let your perfectionism overrule the joy of learning how to play chess or learning how to play an instrument.

#4 You Ruin your Curiosity and Creativity

Yes, perfectionism is a good reason to be efficient and move forward on a task, and consistently refining that task to make it better, but you tend to kill creative genius when you do this. What if you allowed some spontaneity while writing a song or playing one? Who knows, you might come up with the next radio hit, but you’ll never know if you don’t let yourself have that freedom to make mistakes with your spontaneity.

#5 You Limit Opportunities

Your obsession with the small details can make you blind to the huge opportunities that are in front of you. When you’re not seeing life as a whole, you lose focus on what matters. The small details are important but focus only on the small details that actually matter.

#6 You Won’t Be Fun to Be Around

Take it from someone who knows, perfectionists are not very fun people to be around, and your mentor is probably not going to appreciate it. They especially won’t appreciate it if they’re not perfectionists, too. There is such a thing as being too serious and too detached when learning something.

#7 You Will Never Truly Learn

If you’re afraid to make mistakes, then you will never truly learn. Do you think Picasso became a world famous artist by painting the way he did at the age of five, ten, or even fifteen? He had to make mistakes somewhere along the way in order to truly learn how to become an artist. Jimi Hendrix had to learn how to play the guitar somewhere. He didn’t just pick it up one day and actually play Little Wing when he was ten.
Name any person who you follow that is a professional and I guarantee you that no matter when they started their profession, they weren’t already professionals, mistakes were made and lessons were learnt.