10 Strategies for Overcoming Perfectionism

The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “Everything is perfect and there is always room for improvement.” Healthy perfectionism can help us to achieve great things but unhealthy perfectionism can become a painful obstacle to attaining the very things that we want. Psychologist Dr. Jeff Szymanski author of the Perfectionist’s Handbook says, “On the healthy end of the continuum, perfectionism compels people to concentrate on the positive, strive for success, notice what’s going right, and feel motivated by receiving positive feedback from others. On the unhealthy end, the focus is directed more toward the negative: trying to avoid failure, obsessing over what’s going wrong, and directing one’s efforts and energy toward trying to dodge others’ criticism and negative feedback.”