I can attest to being a perfectionist all my life & that is now 55 years. Don't know where it actually came from as my family wasn't that way very much...it was just that I always felt that I had to be the best at everything I did & had to do everything perfectly as that was the only way to do it. My school work had to be perfect, neat, always the A+ work.......C's (average wasn't good enough for me).

Of course, cleaning my room didn't have any priority, so it was messy.....I had things that my perfectionism applied to & things I didn't bother applying it to. Looking back, I realize that my attitude was that if I strive for perfection, at least if I didn't make it, it was going to be so much better than average that I would be fine with how things ended up. There were times when i would stay up days, finishing off projects including for my job after I graduated with my degree.

I realized over the years that if I really held to the perfect perfectionism, I would never achieve it, so I learned that I would set the standards of expectations at the beginning of a job that I would strive for......if during the time, I realized I was off or there was a better way of doing it, I would adapt........but I always would end up doing the job so much better than if I had only placed average standards on myself.

Things always came hard for me & I had to work twice as hard to accomplish what it seemed others could do with little effort. My husband was one of those people, however, he would approach tasks half-@$$ & it would turn out just that way as he didn't care. Honestly, I would rather work harder at something & have it turn out close to perfection because that is my goal, than to just get by with doing something half way.

Think I'll stick with my perfectionist attitued anyday & enjoy the fruits of my efforts that I am satisfied with rather than do a job & have it turn out that I am not satisfied & have to do it over just to make it ok or be satisfied with something of much lower quality.

The trick is keeping your perfectionism at a safe level so that you don't kill yourself with the drive for perfect, but can still be satisfied & do a much better job that if you didn't have any care about how things turn out.

Debbie