Is It Ok To Be a Perfectionist?

Is it ok to be a perfectionist? - You may want to know once you identified with certain perfectionist traits I shared in my last blog – 7 Signs of a Perfectionist Leader.

My answer is, “let’s explore”.

Let me tell you about someone I worked with recently.

Case of a perfectionist leader

She was a senior leader doing extremely well for herself, but she would get highly anxious before her big presentations and couldn’t sleep the night before. During our inside-out coaching process, we discovered that she, as a child, was always compared to her older sister who would get all the love and attention. So, she grew up with the feeling that she had to keep achieving so that she could get people’s love and attention.

It is important to understand that whether or not this was the truth, but this was the feeling she had. That is key. The feeling of deprivation and constant comparison drove her to be an achiever and a perfectionist, but also left her struggling with anxiety and stress, impacting her mental and physical well-being. Once she understood her own feelings and mindset, we encouraged her to have fun. Perfectionists don’t have fun. Eve