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a blisteringly hot public-school room perfecting the colouring in of a carefully
drawn dolphin long after my classmates had hit the playground, and despite
Miss Elvy having already profusely complimented my budding artistic abilities.
“Good enough”, for better or worse, is not in my repertoire.
It’s perfectionism. But not in that coy, secretly proud way that people tend to
mention it in work circles or offer it up as a “flaw” when asked about their
weaknesses in a job interview. More in a “I really need to address this before my
nearest and dearest disown me” kind of way. And I’m not alone. There’s a slew
of articles and self-improvement tomes geared towards the perfectionist to prove
it, many of which offer abstract advice
about perfection being unattainable and
trying to leave work on time (ha!). Which
is why when clinical psychologist Mike
McKinney’s book All Or Nothing came
across my desk I’d mentally relegated it
to the pile, before a quick flick through
piqued my interest like most self-help
books fail to do. While the tagline seemed
optimistic – Bringing Balance To The
Achievement-Oriented Personality –
something that jumped out around chapter
four made me involuntarily shudder: “It
can be helpful to contemplate not being
perfect or achieving the perfect outcome.
Although this may be scary and unsettling,
it can help build resilience. Tolerating
thoughts about ‘good enough’ outcomes
can be empowering and help one keep the
Harsh Internal Critic down to a dull roar.”Good enough. The two words that may
as well read “epic fail” to those unable to
accept anything less than perceived
perfection. Two words that were just as
unacceptable to me as a child making my
big sisters repeatedly braid and unbraid
my hair until there wasn’t a strand out of
place as they are now when the helpful
man at Star Car Wash struggles to see the
smudges I’m pointing out on my freshly
washed windscreen. And that’s before
I even get to the office. So, could near
enough ever really be good enough?
Mike McKinney, please explain.
“The idea of good enough is becoming
a pejorative label,” he tells me. “So,
all-or-nothing people run from it assoon as it’s mentioned because it connotes failure. It’s taught to us
from a very young age, it perhaps comes from our family... if you
get your pocket money, if you get your affection, if you get
your attention from doing a really good job, then that’s what
becomes the standard. Over time, if you’re not sure what the
standard is, and therefore don’t know how to meet it, what do
you do? You raise the bar.”
McKinney suggests this is where the meaning of “good enough”,
which for most of us translates to “just barely passed”, comes into
play. “What I’m trying to suggest, particularly for perfectionists, is
perhaps you have lost your perspective here, because what you are
doing is great in the sense of challenging yourself, but it’s not
necessarily giving you an opportunity to stop and reflect on yourself
and say, ‘Wow, I’m doing okay.’ Instead, most perfectionists say to
themselves, ‘Well, if I could do that it probably wasn’t hard enough.’”
A childhood expectation that you should always do your best,
a deep fear of failure, a desire to please others: it seems inevitable that
perfectionists exist in a constant state of concern that the world is
going to see them for who they
really are. Studies have shown
perfectionism can affect mental
health – anxiety, depression – and
has been cited as a factor in
relationship problems, lack of
confidence or compassion,
workaholism, low productivity,
extreme procrastination and
perfection paralysis. McKinney
says it’s also one of the main
causes of burnout. “There can be a ‘healthy’ perfection driver, where
we challenge ourselves to extend our performance and try to go
further in a desired direction for positive reasons,” his book reads.
“There is also the less positive perfection driver, where we dump on
ourselves immediately and continuously when we do not meet the
targets we set for ourselves. Unfortunately, all-or-nothing people
tend to operate in the realm of the latter.”
While “good enough” may require a radical (read: dread-
inducing) new way of thinking, McKinney says it’s not so much
about having to dumb down expectations, but about not beating
ourselves up when we fail to meet goals that were most likely
unachievable in the first place. “What I want to encourage people to
do is to be able to pause a little bit and be objective with themselves
in terms of, ‘Am I really doing a great job here and, if so, well done.’”
Self-confessed “recovering perfectionist” and founder of Business
Chicks Emma Isaacs is a mother of four under seven running
a global company. She acknowledges the connotation with the ]ELLE.COM.AU / @ELLEAUS 143