The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler

I think I found out about this from Austin Kleon’s newsletter and I immediately bought it.

The concept was appealing, and honestly, the cover was gorgeous, which inspired confidence.

The author defines perfectionists like this:

Perfectionists are people who consistently notice the difference between an ideal and a reality, and who strive to maintain a high degree of personal accountability. This results in the perfectionist experiencing, more often than not, a compulsion to bridge the gulf between reality and an ideal themselves.

And her key point is:

Perfectionism is a phenomenon, not a disorder.

She says that because perfectionism is a phenomenon, you can work with your perfectionism in healthy ways, that there is no need to “just chill” or to try to become a “recovering perfectionist.”

What a breath of fresh air!

I felt like I had been given a user guide to myself that I had been missing all of my life.

She writes:

Stop taking your perfectionism for granted. Not everyone gets to experience that impulse you carry, pushing you to explore the bounds of possibility for yourself and the world around you. Perfectionists don’t allow themselves to be constrained by what’s “realistic”; that one mindset advantage alone is invaluable.

And:

Perfectionism invites a deep, unending exploration of who you are and what you most desire from this life.

And:

You begin to appreciate the drive inside you. You see that your drive isn’t there to hurt you, it’s there to usher you towards your potential. You shift from avoiding your drive to honoring it, which requires you to stop misdirecting your energy. Then you get to grow beyond your wildest dreams.

Because the truth is, I have been feeling shame for my perfectionism for a long time. I felt like I was in losing battle with being a recovering perfectionist.

In fact, at times I put up with situations that were untenable because I thought only a perfectionist would object to them. I believed that my perfectionism stood between me and the life I wanted for myself, a life in which (ironically!) everything was perfect and I was always happy or some reasonable, understandable, and addressable amount of unhappy (no one can be happy all the time!)

I felt deep relief reading this book. It introduced me to a new way of thinking about my perfectionism that made other ways of being myself feel possible. More joyful, but no less idealistic, no less driven. More spacious.

What a relief.