Someone just call you a perfectionist? Did you smile and shoulder-shrug pseudo-humbly, maybe even fist-pump, thinking, yes! while savoring the accolade as your reward for all the hours, days, maybe months of extra daily effort it took to pull that project over the finish line? Feels pretty good, right?
The Challenges
Though it may stroke your ego to be called a perfectionist at work, is being a perfectionist really all that great?
Perfectionists are driven people. They have a need to be precise and prepared. They consider themselves highly motivated and responsible closers with a need to “do it right or don’t bother” when focused on work outcomes.
Is all that need healthy?
Well, that depends. When we need something badly, we generally try to control an outcome and shape it in our favor. Too much controlling behavior, e.g., early morning arrivals, late nights a work, irregular eating habits, broken sleep, and no social downtime, creates high levels of emotional anxiety and physical stress.
Is all that stress healthy?
Well, that depends. Just like there are two kinds of perfectionists, namely, excellence-seeking and failure-avoiding (ref. 1) there are two kinds of stress, namely good stress and bad stress (ref 2).
What’s significant is not the obvious answers to the two questions of “What kind of perfectionist am I?” and “How can I align with the good stress?” What’s important to realize as it relates to perfectionism, need, and stress is . . . balance.
The excellence-seeking perfectionist understands the need for balance in all things, engaging with stress in a way that is good for the emotions and the body. The failure-avoiding perfectionist is not driven towards balance at all, but is driven by the need to secure personal safety and sense of self, engaging with stress in a way that is unhealthy for the emotions and the body.
Ultimately, whether you are excellence-seeking or failure-avoiding is indicated by your biofield.
‘Biofield’, you say?
Yes. Your biofield. Coined in 1994, the term biofield describes the electromagnetic (EM) and subtle energy field that surrounds and interpenetrates your physical body. It’s somewhat like the electromagnetic field that surrounds the Earth, but human-sized and caused by the negative charges from our own electrons, jumping from one cell to another to communicate with each other. We humans are bio-batteries in a Matrix-energetic way-of-thinking. At the quantum level where everything is energy, the biofield encodes information that describes you and your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual state of being at any given moment.
To function at your optimum, your biofield needs to be balanced, so assessing how balanced it is may indicate where you are at, too.
The Opportunities
As a mind-body and energy medicine practitioner, I understand that striving for a balanced biofield suggests that we want harmony on all levels of our awareness: physical health, emotional and mental control, perhaps spiritual guidance if appropriate. It also suggests that we are becoming more self-aware of our affect on the greater (e.g., world) and lesser (e.g. home, work) environment, and that we are self-responsible for that affect.
Given that, I’m suggesting that perfectionism, whether excellence-seeking or failure-avoiding is not compatible with maintaining and improving biofield balance.
Perfectionists are very self-critical!
Excellence-seeking employees fixate on achieving high standards. Failure-avoiding employees fixate on not losing face. When we become over controlling in the pursuit of career perfection, our emotional and mental states suffers; frustration, irritation, anger, anxiety, worry, and self-doubt creep in and grow. Instead of bouncing back from disappointment, both types of perfectionists ruminate over the negative feelings, beat themselves up so much that biofield balance is affected when expectations remain underachieved and there is no allowance for failure. Self-confidence and self-value are both negatively affected.
‘Whatever’, you say, ‘who cares about being emotionally, mentally, and spiritually balanced? I’ll fix it later.’
‘Success requires sacrifice’
Does it? Maybe there’s another way. When we seek to control too much of our working hours, we sacrifice our ability to act on intuition.
Intuition? I can hear you already: ‘Never use it, can’t count on it. Can’t plan for it’ you say.
And that’s exactly why intuition is so significant in our work (and personal lives, by the way).
In 2007, the mega-entertainer Prince spent months perfecting his Super Bowl halftime show at Dolphin Stadium. Yet before taking the field, he listened to his intuition, changed his music lineup and removed the horn players from the band. He trusted his intuition over his perfected planning. Many super bowl fans say his half-time show was the greatest ever.
“I want to make heart decisions in business. If you can’t do that, you’re not free.” —Prince
A comprehensive review of intuition literature defines intuition as, “Affectively charged judgments that arise through rapid, nonconscious and holistic associations” (ref.3) As an intuitive practitioners, I can tell you that being able to access moment-to-moment intuitive perceptions helps me make better business decisions (ref.4). It involves developing what the HeartMath® Institute calls heart intelligence, i.e., the connection between our soul’s higher information field and our psychophysiological system (ref.5).
That’s what Prince was talking about. Heart intelligence. Perfectionism, on-the-other-hand, and its over-control of self or others definitely lacks the openness and creative freedom Prince described as essential to his success.
There’s good news. Social researchers recognize that perfectionism is a learned behavior; that means with effort, it can be transformed.
Be a High Achiever instead.
I suggest that perfectionists consider the benefits of becoming high achievers instead. High achievers may access their heart intelligence to “know” when “good enough” means done.
There is freedom in choosing; freedom to go high and achieve or freedom to start new and explore.
We should always strive to do our best. That’s about self-awareness and self-responsibility. Why would you strive to be mediocre? Doing a good job requires the wisdom gained from past failures, not just the knowledge and certainty gained from excessive planning. The cliché, there is no failure, only experience, rings true for high achievers; not so much for perfectionists.
Who do you want to be?
When was the last time you took responsibility for your less-than-positive affect on the people you work with? If you’re a perfectionist, your answer might be “What affect? I do my job to the nth degree and everyone benefits!”
Well, if we are honest with ourselves, we’d face the truth that we’re all good at some things and not-so-good at others. And therein lies the beauty of working in community with people all focused on a similar goal: we can contribute high when our skills help the community soar and let others contribute high where their skills take the community to new heights.
That’s freedom. Win-win! And our biofield becomes more balanced as we become more self-aware and responsible human beings.
Who do you choose to be?
I’d vote for change. Our egos, neurological programming, emotions, and inculcated belief systems all together act to tether our forward progress. Success does not have to require sacrifice. Use your heart intelligence. Intuition is a gift; that out-of-nowhere spiritual guidance that can help us change our direction, open up to new opportunities, and experience perspectives we couldn’t even fathom if only we had the courage to listen and nurture our inner awareness. Your heart knows what’s true if you train yourself to sense it. High achievers know how to listen to their hearts.
Ref 1: Assessing Performance: The Pros and Cons of Perfectionism, According to Research. Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/
Ref 2: McGonigal, K. (2015). The upside of stress: Why stress is good for you, and how to get good at it. New York, NY: Avery, Penguin Random House.
Ref 3: Dane, E. & Pratt, M.G. (2007). Exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making. Academy of Management Review. 32, 33–54.
Ref 4: Myers, D.G., (2002). Intuition: Its Powers and Perils. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ref 5: McCraty, R., M. Atkinson & Bradley, R. T. (2004). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, (10, 2). 325-336.
