The Perfectionist

Take this quiz and see how your Perfectionist rates:

  1. I have real trouble tolerating someone who is careless and keeps making mistakes at work, home.
  2. I spend a great deal of time ensuring that my clothes are appropriate, my hair is perfectly in place, my body is slender and toned and that I look exactly like the models in the magazines that I constantly fixate on.
  3. I am considered a ‘neatnik’ by my friends and co-workers.
  4. I constantly find myself straightening up and putting everything in neat piles in my home as well as at work.
  5. No one can visit my home unless it is clean, neat and in order.
  6. I do and endlessly re-do my writing, letters, projects so that I get it completely right. 'Good enough' is not in my vocabulary.
  7. I am constantly picking up after my spouse, children or roommates who are outright slobs and leave everything in a mess wherever they are … dishes, dinner clean up, laundry…I often get very angry that I must always be the one to take this on –doesn’t anyone else care that everything is right and in its appropriate place?
  8. I get very upset when I make a mistake,  don’t immediately understand a concept or don’t know the answer to a question. It is not OK to ‘not know’.
  9. As a child,  I excelled in my academics and I graduated with top honors throughout my education endeavors...it was always soooo satisfying to be at the top of my class.
  10. I am the one who stacks the dishes at the table in a restaurant, sweeps up the crumbs and generally cleans up leaving the table cleaner than when I arrived.

If you answered a resounding YES or found yourself chuckling in recognition of your behaviors in any of the above, you have just discovered your PERFECTIONIST.  PUSHERS and PERFECTIONISTS love each other and often present a joint force in our lives that cause havoc and won’t let us rest. We have to do everything perfectly, always present ourselves perfectly. There is no margin for error and we often judge others who don’t live up to our high standards. If we can access that disowned IMPERFECTIONIST, we once again find some space to breath and reduce the high velocity ever-vigilant behaviors of our PERFECTIONIST. Sometimes, ‘good enough’ is just that – good enough.