"I am broken"

I interview a lot of people. And in almost every interview, the answer to the question "what would you say are the areas you need to improve?" they would say "I need to stop being such a perfectionist". This happens so often I've stopped asking the question.

What they mean is "you must employ me because I strive for perfection in everything I do. However, in this pursuit of perfection I sometimes miss the mark as I get tired and burned out and so even if I don't reach perfection I will do everything really really well. I just need to be kinder to myself and allow myself to not be so perfect". It's utter shite and shows a complete lack of self awareness.

There are two reasons for views on this. Firstly, I have had many high performers in my team and none of them even attempt to do everything perfectly as it's impossible and they are just very good at picking the right things to focus on and not getting bogged down in things that don't matter.

Secondly, if you are a perfectionist, you won't think you are close to perfection in anything. If you are like me, you will think you do everything very badly and that you are a fundamentally broken person. So you would never give this answer.

This is how I have thought of myself for the past 49 years (this is approximate, I am 51 and I have only just realised that I may not be broken and I was probably ok until I was about 2 years old).

I was in a therapy session about 3 weeks ago when I realised that I even had this view of myself. My therapist asked me a question (I can't remember what it was) and I responded quite calmly "I think I am a fundamentally wrong and broken person". She look really sad and said "does that not make you sad) . I replied "no, it just feels like I have stated a fact".

She tried to get me to feel some emotion about what I had just said and when I didn't she tried a different tack. She asked me what I would feel if my daughter said that about herself. I started to cry as it would break my heart if she felt anything like that.

On the way home, I thought about what I had said. I had never said or even thought this before but I realised I truly believed it and it had been running my life. I had been living life based on me being a broken person and so I had spent all my time trying to fix myself.

Saying it out loud made me start to question the belief. Hang on a minute, was I really broken? Let's look at the facts.

I have a beautiful daughter (surely I must have done some parenting right) I have a good job that I've been in for 12 years (and my boss is not shy about sacking poor performers), I own a house (almost), I have some very good friends that I've had for years (presumably they aren't all secretly hating me), I am fit and healthy (I hope).....hmm...maybe I'm not broken. I'm not perfect by any stretch but I'm not doing that badly.

As it slowly started to unravel I felt a bit of a sense of relief. I felt I could maybe stop trying so hard to control and fix everything and in the process miss life as I tried to get to this perfect place (that would never exist) when I could start to enjoy it.

I have started this blog to help me explore my perfectionism and if it can help one person find some relief then that would be amazing.

Thank you for reading and I'll see you back here soon.