Doing it Right, not Perfect
(In collaboration with the Identity Development Institute)
“The perfection of means and the confusion of ends seems to be our problem.”
--- Albert Einstein
A couple weeks ago, I started the facilitation program with the Identity Development Institute with the aim of becoming a certified Identity Development facilitator.
In our last facilitator training session, we discussed the idea of perfectionism – what it means to each of us, and why it has gained such traction in our culture.
It reminded me of a talk I recently watched in which the speaker mentioned that our times call for “doing things right, not perfect.”
This resonated deeply with me and I have since been exploring the difference between the two.
Here is what I’ve concluded so far:
“Doing things right” means to act with presence, in response to inspiration and motivation that arise from within. It means to determine what is essential for me (which can also be stuff that just needs doing), take responsibility for doing it, and then act in accordance with my skills and capacities.
In “doing things right,” I stay close to who I am and what I want. Through Identity Development (ID), I realize how little I have stayed in connection with myself, and how unquestioningly I have tried to perfect life, both professionally and personally.
Perfectionism is a stress reaction, or in ID lingo, a “survival mechanism.” It reflects a desperate attempt to finally be “enough,” to gain the recognition and acknowledgment we did not receive when we were little.
Perfectionism is about control; it’s an effort to counter the powerlessness we felt when our needs and space were not honored, and an attempt to please a society that’s not great at valuing different levels of performance, looks, and viewpoints.
Perfectionism opposes aliveness. It diminishes the ebb and flow of emotions, of inspiration, of physical and mental capacities. It narrows scope and exhausts resources.
The more ID sessions I witness and participate in, the more reluctant I become to engage with the stress of perfectionism. ID sessions help me to gradually meet the grief and anger that have piled up in response to not having been heard and seen as who I am from infancy on, which supports me in finding a more skillful and authentic way of doing the things I do and being the person I am.
Our society would surely be more complex, nuanced, and varied if we traded the need to be perfect for just doing and being in accordance with our authentic selves. Seeing how perfectionism has led us astray from individual and collective ease, freedom, and joy, such a trade might well be worth trying!