All 48 illustrations used in this video montage were created by Midjourney AI. The sentences from the voiceover were the AI prompts with default settings.
No copyrights were harmed in the making of this video.
Perfectionists are picky and preoccupied with making sure everything is flawless.
This leads to attempts to control situations or people.
The stress caused by perfectionism leads to feelings of anxiety.
Perfectionism leads to low self-esteem, eating disorders, sleep disturbances, and psychological distress.
“Almost perfect” is a failure to perfectionists.
We’re critical, judgmental, and hard on ourselves and others when “failure” occurs.
We live in fear of private shame and public humiliation.
We can’t enjoy growing and striving because of the dread of failure.
We wallow in negative feelings when our high expectations go unmet.
Paradoxically, perfectionists are prone to procrastination.
That trait is detrimental to productivity.
But perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand.
Perfectionists worry so much they become immobilized and fail to do anything at all.
Imperfect performance is so painful and scary, we’re defensive to constructive criticism.
Our own critical nature and rigidity push others away.
Perfectionistic traits often arise from the psychological wounds of childhood.
Repeated trauma involves control by an abuser.
Childhood emotional trauma, especially from neglect, means we must prove our worth.
Trauma survivors engage in perfectionism as control of one element of their lives.
Compulsive perfectionists have a boiling rage inside driving them to prove they’re worthy.
Discovering PTSD and childhood trauma helps reduce the pressure.
Self-sabotaging behavior often stems from feelings of anxiety, anger, and worthlessness.
Perfectionists don’t want to stop compulsion – it makes our lives orderly.
How do you tell if you’re a perfectionist?
We’re perfectionistic in all things.
We’re an all-or-nothing person.
We crave approval.
Feedback makes us defensive.
We’re critical of others.
We’re a big procrastinator.
We’re full of guilt.
A learning strategy to combat self-paralyzing perfectionism is embracing conscious mediocrity.
Perfection is the antithesis of progress.
We need to release our work when it’s not “good enough.”
To achieve excellence, we start with mediocre.
Mediocre work doesn’t make us a mediocre person.
Free yourself from the responsibility of making something incredible from the get-go.
Allow yourself to evolve with it.
Let other ideas and experiments influence yours.
Even when you know where it needs work. Share it.
Then moving on to the next step helps us be braver and hold ourself accountable to create.
It’s hard to settle for mediocrity when we know it’s mediocre.
But settle anyways.
Then don’t stop there.
Do it all over again.
Make and remake and start over.
Try something new and fall on our faces again and again.
By sacrificing quality, successive projects improve and we gain new skills.
Future achievement grows from adaptive practice.
To be prolific and productive, we need to let go.
“Embraced Mediocrity” is our new guiding principle.
