Are You Stuck on the Hamster Wheel of Perfectionism and Procrastination?

What do perfectionism and procrastination have in common?

• They are both manifestations of anxiety and fear.

• They are both related to the need to control the future.

• They are both rooted in judgment.

• They both perpetuate additional anxiety when we judge ourselves for not being good enough, or not getting something done in a certain way, in a certain timeframe.

• They are both ways we stop ourselves from being as potent as we truly be.

Perfectionism is the compulsive need to do everything according to some arbitrary gold standard.
 

Have you ever asked yourself where those standards come from? Your friends, family, society?

Do you get that those standards are invented?

Take a look at body size. A few hundred years ago, being rounder was considered highly attractive. In other parts of the world, that's still true today. But in America, thin is in. Who created that? If you were choosing your body size just for you, what would you choose? What would your body choose?

 

Procrastination is putting off or delaying the completion of a task.

Why do people procrastinate?

For a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's to get an adrenaline rush at the last minute. Other times to prove to ourselves that we can wait until the last minute and still pull it off. And in other situations because we are so concerned with getting it just right, we don't take action at all. Perfectionism, meet procrastination.

 

Perfectionism and the procrastination that comes from it are rooted in judgments, especially “It's never good enough,” or the more toxic version, “I'm never good enough.”

There's an obsessive-compulsive aspect to this thinking that can start to feel like you're running on a never-ending hamster wheel. If you were to actually attain the holy grail of perfection with one thing in your life, you'd be worrying about the next imperfect thing in no time. This is how people get addicted to plastic surgery, for example. The target of the obsession is irrelevant; it's the obsessive thinking and “comparing yourself to others” pattern that creates the compulsion to perfection. And the procrastination comes in when you paralyze yourself with your obsessive self-judgment.

So how do you change all this? Read more here