Sometimes, when something goes wrong after you tried so hard to sustain perfection in life, you would feel really terrible about yourself. My time in Manchester had been really great since I arrived for the new academic year in Sept 2006. I have been really active engaging with things that I enjoyed and I had a very wonderful time studying the neuroscience and psychiatry stuff in this semester. My family have been constantly sending warm letters and emails giving me moral support. Everything seem to be going so well, too well that my mind was flooded with nice memories that I swear I slept with a smile every night.
I felt so happy with myself that I don't even need any close friends. I just feel so secure with myself. I can't believe this as I had quite a low self esteem while being in prestigious schools in KL. I remember that in standard six, I bullied mummy into buying a sticker album (which was about RM20!) for me because my friend said I can't join their club if I don't have an album. In form two, my friends said Moffats and Backstreetsboys were cool, so eventhough I didn't find much point in doing it, I hanged posters of the groups on my room door. I even spent extra time and effort to look for lyrics and memorised pop songs so I could sing along when my friends sing and not look stupid. How stupid was I? Now all these are totally washed out of my life now. If I can go back in time, it is quite likely that I won't recognize the teenager version me myself. I have come a long way. I don't need make up or cool mates or expensive taste to make me feel secure. I have great ambitions now. I have to admit that I always imagine myself being a top consultant or UN public health spokeswoman or world class researcher or something like that. I actually believe that I have the substance to achieve great feats.
Yet, when something in life goes wrong, however tiny it is, I feel absolutely rubbish about myself. My self-confidence and self-worth become completely shattered. Last week I was about an hour late for something I was pledge to attend to, causing someone to be late for another meeting. Note my shame here as I try to hide the details. I'm not going to defend myself. It was completely my fault, no question about it. I woke up late, and yet still took my time having breakfast and taking my own sweet time preparing myself, totally aware of the fact that I was actually running quite late. I am seldom a late person. Usually I am early rather than on time. I was just feeling too laid back on that particular morning. So there has been quite a fair amount of self blame going on for this week.
'Come on, give yourself a break!'. People sometimes say I am too hard on myself. Yes, I am always hard on myself. How else would you produce results if you don't push yourself to the limits? Something tells me that these struggles with disciplining myself would serve me well one day. I owe many many big and small achievements of my life to my perfectionist and strive-best attitude. Yet, I have to say that maybe it's because of these constant positive things that I always try to bring about that make the pitfalls in life so difficult to cope with. When something doesn't go as well as I expect, always, my first question would be: Is it my fault? Well, of course it would almost always be partly my fault. But instead of asking 'how would I do it differently next time' and get it over with, I would be haunted by flashbacks of my lack of perfection and dwelling about it day after day. It's not something that I have control over. I have tried minding blocking but that doesn't seem to work. And right now I'm so stressed out because I cannot concentrate studying as the flashback of being late keeps coming over and over. I went to the counsellor last year around this time for the same problem. She said I have a problem with too much of a self-critique. I had one session and I was given a few leaflets. Looks like my condition have not improved.
To be or not to be - Is that the question? Does perfection need to come hand in hand with with being a hardcore self-critique? Can there not be a compromise? Up till this moment, my life experience tells me that, at least for me, there can be no compromise. Unfortunately for me I am born with an ultra-sensitive conscience, so I would always be hard on myself whether or not I am striving my best to make sure my objectives are met. I can only hope that with time, I will learn to cope better with my mistakes and failures as much as I enjoy my moments of success.
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1 comment:
perfection is not necessary. good enough is more economical, and hence more desired.
the germans in ww2 emphasized perfection in their war machine, producing very few but very good weapons. the allies just wanted what was good enough to beat back the germans, so that they could produce in large numbers. when it came to battles, the allies could swarm them and that was how ww2 was won.
good enough is enough. no more than necessary.
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