Beyond
perfect
WE DEDICATE A LOT OF TIME TO THE
PURSUIT OF PERFECTION, BUT A NEW
BOOK SAYS WE SHOULD INSTEAD BE
EMBRACING THE CONCEPT OF ‘ISH’.
ERIN FISHER EXPLAINS
S
o often, the simple question of
asking a friend or family member
how they are doing is met with the
same response: busy. Living on hyper-
drive in an effort to keep everything
together has become the new normal,
but is it really worth it? Or are we just
left feeling burnt out? As a “reformed
perfectionist” herself, Lynne Cazaly has
been there. Her career experience
as a board director and
mentoring high-
performing executives,
as well as going
through some
personal health
scares, all contributed
to a stark realisation:
life is simply far too
short for perfection.
The sixth book she has
written, ish, explores the
problems with our pursuit of
perfection, and the life-changing
practice of good-enough. Lynne draws
on the work of researchers Thomas
Curran and Andrew Hill, who define
perfectionism broadly as a combination
of excessively high standards and overly
critical self-evaluations. In their study of
more than 40,000 people from the late
1980s to 2016, Thomas and Andrewlooked at the changes across three
different dimensions of perfectionism.
The first is ‘self-oriented
perfectionism’, where individuals
have unrealistic expectations of
themselves, are highly self-critical
and attach irrational importance to
being perfect. The second is ‘other-
oriented perfectionism’, where you
evaluate others critically and hold
them to unrealistic standards.
The third dimension,
‘socially prescribed
perfectionism’, is
where you believe
that your social
context is excessively
demanding, that you
are judged harshly, and
that you must display
perfection for approval.Too much time
While all three dimensions increased
over time, the rise of socially prescribed
perfectionism was double that of the
other two. “This is the one that is the
worry,” Lynne says. According to the
study, socially prescribed perfectionism
is the most debilitating in terms of
neurotic and depressive symptoms over
time, meaning that it is likely to be themost important in terms of explaining
increases in mental health issues.
From her years of working with
individuals and businesses, Lynne has
seen perfectionism manifest itself in
a myriad of ways, even from the very
beginning of the day when people are
wondering what to wear. “I was talking
to someone who worked out she spends
several hours a week on her eyebrows- it’s just about getting them perfect.
I said to her, you could run a whole
start-up in that time!” Lynne laughs.
The phrase “it’s not good enough yet,”
is something that she hears time and
time again. “If you’re working on a
report at work, or even setting the dining
table because some friends are coming
over, when you keep on tinkering with
something, thinking it’s not yet good
enough, that’s a sure red flag that you’re
going for perfection. It doesn’t exist and
you’ll never be finished,” she says.
Health effects
The increasingly individualistic,
competitive nature of the world means
that rising standards and the pressure
to achieve are both huge drivers of
perfectionism, and although social
media can be a tool for inspiration,
it can easily become a way to make »‘when
you keep
tinkering,
that’s a red
flag that you’re
going for
perfection’