Have you ever felt that no matter how much external success you achieve, you never fully allow yourself to enjoy it before moving onto the next project?

Landing a job at a prestigious company and becoming successful in your chosen field are rarely isolated incidents.

You likely received top grades throughout your academic life.

You worked hard to get into a renowned academic institution.

Perhaps you worked hard to prove yourself when you didn't have the glitzy names on your resumé.

Now you are in the door, have your business cards, and where you are now has superseded the journey of how you got there.

You can afford to make mistakes. You can relax a little after years of striving and pushing.

Right?

The relentless pursuit of 'perfect'

We know this isn't how it works in reality.

That inner drive, the (perhaps subconscious) need to succeed and to prove our worth, to keep climbing the professional ladder, does not go away once we have reached a certain milestone or accumulated material wealth.

Make no mistake. I am not belittling achievement or success. Healthy ambition is a wonderful thing.

It can drive us to make a hugely positive impact on our organizations and wider communities, not to mention provide us financial security and the lifestyle we desire.

But what happens when we live by relentlessly high standards, when that minimum expectation becomes so ingrained in who we are?

When the energy and commitment required to maintain those standards is slowly pushing us beyond our limits?

Over time, those expectations don’t just come from the outside. We internalize them.

We stop responding to pressure — and start generating it ourselves.

For many of us, that internal pressure takes the form of perfectionism.

Are you a perfectionist?

Perfectionists set impossibly high internal standards and live in a state of fear of failing to meet those standards, procrastinating out of fear of failure, and reverting to self-criticism when mistakes do happen.

At work, perfectionists anxiously proof emails and documents multiple times, and may be reluctant to own mistakes.

This is also a corporate survival strategy — we do not feel safe to show gaps in our knowledge or ask for help.

In many corporate environments, perfectionism is subtly encouraged and rewarded with promotions, money, and prestige — even as it quietly robs us of learning, ease, and wellbeing.

Meanwhile, internally we live in a persistent state of stress and anxiety.

My own journey with perfectionism

My perfectionism was great for my career development and wonderful for my employers.

The standard of work I produced was consistently high because I took pride in my work and enjoyed the praise when I did a good job.

But I was asleep to how much my obsessively high standards were costing me.

Even when I did meet those high standards, when I received recognition, I did not feel satisfied. No amount or scale of achievement or validation could satiate me.

My fear of making a mistake — of falling short of the standards I'd set for myself — kept me in a perpetual state of high alertness.

How I responded to praise was telling in itself.

Sometimes I would disbelieve the praise altogether and belittle my own achievements.

When I did accept that I had done well, I did not fully allow the achievement to sink in.

I would enjoy the congratulations for a brief moment, then quickly move on to the next project.

I noticed how easy it is to see the value in others, yet I found it very challenging to see in myself.

The solution had to come from within.

Perfectionism and its cousin, the need for external validation, are at their root a preoccupation with self-image — which, if I'm honest, is its own form of narcissism

(Narcissism is a pop psychology buzzword at the moment, but not all narcissism is pathological — we all have some flavor of it).

Recognizing that was uncomfortable. It was also the beginning of something.

When I ventured deeper inwards, I started to uncover shame that had lingered for many years.

Over time, you can begin to introspect and understand for yourself where your perfectionism comes from.

You can develop tools of self-inquiry or work with a coach or therapist to identify the parts of you that learned, at some earlier stage in life, that being "perfect" was an appropriate survival strategy that kept you emotionally safe.

It's worth asking yourself whether your current way of working, the toll on your emotional and physical wellbeing of your utter dedication to results, is sustainable in the long run.

Client expectations ≠ your own expectations

You might argue the following:

"But the client demands exceptional quality and dedicated service, that's why they engage us."

Absolutely true.

When clients and customers are paying big money for your time and expertise, they understandably expect the product and delivery to be commensurate with their outlay.

What the client does not demand (or pay for), is you working yourself up into a state of high anxiety at the thought of not meeting those client demands.

That part has nothing to do with the client.

You have consistently proven yourself, again and again, at all stages of your academic and professional life. You are highly competent, or you wouldn't be where you are. The drive to succeed has served you well and got you this far.

But perhaps it's a good time to check in with yourself:

1. Does this task actually demand the quality standards I'm setting?
2. How can I let go of my perfectionism without compromising the work quality?
3. How much of the pressure I'm facing is external? How much am I bringing on myself?

You may not have the answer to all these questions right now. In fact, you are not supposed to.

Shifting our internal patterns

These are patterns that have been part of your programming for many years.

You may be used to quick results and immediate solutions and understandably want that here.

But this work is different.

Intellectual understanding alone won’t undo deeply ingrained patterns. It takes time and repetition to loosen their grip.

But trust me on this one.

Notice when you are in a rabbit hole entirely of your own design and start gently pulling yourself out.

The long term benefits of sticking with it will have a ripple effect on your job satisfaction and mental wellbeing.

Start rewarding yourself not only for your outcomes, but how you responded internally when you didn't achieve what you set out to do.

It will positively impact your personal life, as making changes in the way you relate to work naturally spills over into your intimate and social relationships. I'll write more about that in a future article.

You want to do your best and you have worked hard to get to where you are.

You want others to approve of you, admire you, and you want others to feel proud of you. That's a natural human instinct. 

It becomes problematic when you identify too strongly with your achievements. When you tie your achievements to your self-worth and identity.

Noticing your patterns with kindness and self-compassion is a great first step.

For me, I created a game for myself, where I loosely track my Proofs Per Email rate: How many times did I read and re-read that email?

Some days it's more, some days it's less. Depends how anxious I'm feeling that day.

External pressures may not change, but YOU can

You cannot expect to change the expectations of your employer or clients.

Survival of your business likely depends on quality, reliability, and consistency — that is what you are paid for and there's no point denying that.

The reality though is that most of the pressure to be perfect isn’t coming from your supervisors or your clients. It’s coming from you.

They want you to produce high quality work, and you've proven consistently that you can do that.

The part of us that stresses, agonizes, proofreads multiple times, anxiety spirals after pressing send — that comes from within.

The liberating truth is that you can start to shift the internal dialogue and change this long-held pattern with strong, small, significant steps:

• Consider checking the email or document twice instead of three times.
• Notice if you are ruminating over something you submitted — take a step back and consider the worst case scenario. It’s almost never as catastrophic as your anxious mind leads you to believe.
• When you receive feedback, remind yourself that the comments are about a piece of work you did — they are not an indictment of you as a person.

You don’t have to do all of these. Start with just one.

Take it to another level, and see if perfectionism pops up as you’re trying to move away from perfectionism.

Very meta, I know. Talking from experience, it's amazing how perfect I can try to be while attempting to learn the exact opposite.

Something you need to remind yourself

If you want to perform at a high level for the long term, you cannot live in a permanent state of self-imposed threat.

Life is hard enough without heaping extra pressure on yourself. You do not need to prove yourself to anyone, least of all yourself.

Work hard. Be ambitious. Aim high.

But notice when ambition turns into self-punishment.

You can pursue excellence without tying your worth to the outcome.

Journalling Prompts

If any of this resonates, these questions are worth contemplating. There are no right answers — just honest ones.

• Is there a project or creative task I am excited about but putting off?
• How much of myself am I giving at work? If I am giving 100%, how would it feel to give 90%, and save that 10% for me?
• When I make a mistake, how do I respond? How do I view myself?
• When was the last time I said “I don’t know” when the stakes seemed high?