Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This quote from The Quotations Page brings up a very good point:

It reads:

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

• Salvador Dali

I had a hard time releasing the desire for perfection when it came time to do step six and become willing to release all my defects of character. The biggest reason I clung to it (and keep clutching it back), is because perfectionism is one of those character defects that fools me.

The desire to be perfect can be VERY beneficial. It is what has made me successful. It has made me achieve things that even I thought I couldn’t achieve. It has given me a career.

But in the end, the desire for perfection is also quite crippling. It’s why I procrastinated on so many projects. I knew I couldn’t be perfect, so I would delay starting them and do them at the last minute. If it failed, I could blame it on my lack of time to complete the project.

It was crippling in other ways, like the times I wouldn’t leave the house because my underwear didn’t match my outfit. I LITERALLY did a load of laundry rather than wear the wrong color underwear with my clothes.

You see, the desire for perfection is never enough. No matter how perfect you try to be, just like Salvador Dali said, you can never achieve it. Not only that, the goal posts keep moving. Once you achieve one level of perceived perfection, it doesn’t give you the acclaim you were looking for, so you step it up a notch.

Perfection can never make you feel good for a long time. It’s just like binge-eating. Being perfect might make you feel a little good right now, but it wears off in a half-hour and then you have to deal with the consequences of your binge. You need even MORE food or perfection next time. It’s just as harmful to me as binge-eating was and once I realized that, it was easy to become willing to release that defect of character.

Overeater’s Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog. I speak only of my personal experience and not for OA as a whole.