How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism

The Poison of Perfectionism

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.”

~ Harriet Braiker

Perfectionists do not accept a small amount of value or progress; they only want big, smooth, perfect wins.

General and Specific Expectations

Okay, it’s not quite that simple. People have two kinds of expectations—general and specific. If you’re looking for the key takeaway now, I’ll tell you: it’s best to have high general expectations (for confidence) and low specific expectations (for resilience and confidence).

General expectations are what you expect from yourself in general. They’re your ceiling in life. If you’re depressed, so are your general expectations; if you’re optimistic and thriving, your general expectations will be high. In the simplest terms, having high general expectations means you’re optimistic, but this doesn’t apply to any specific scenario or event. Having lower general expectations is a problem not because it forms a ceiling you can’t surpass but because you won’t try to surpass it.

In general, the idea behind imperfectionism is to not care so much about conditions or results, and care more about what you can do right now to move forward with your identity and your life.

Pivot point: perfectionism and imperfectionism are determined by what you care about.

Imperfect thoughts and ideas
Imperfect decision
Imperfect action
Imperfect adaptation
Imperfect but successful result

The main point here is that action itself is the best starting point for more action, while trying to think your way into more motivation is an unreliable and ineffective way to create forward momentum.

Thinking is the standard way people try to change their feelings in the “get motivated” strategy. They won’t try action until they’re in a mental and emotional state in which action is attractive to them.

Think about some of the important areas in your life right now—school, business, career, fitness, romance, social life, and so on. Do you self-handicap in these areas? If so, you value them. We only self-handicap when we care. For example, we have no need to seriously self-handicap when ordering a meal: “I would have gotten the fish tacos, but my, uh, glasses were foggy.” If you order the wrong thing, it doesn’t matter, because it’s just one meal. (Note: some people may still take a long time to order or may comment about getting the wrong dish, but it won’t be because of self-handicapping.)

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