Aiming for the Moon
Aiming for the Moon
114. Escaping the "Perfection Trap": Dr. Thomas Curran (Prof. of Psychology @ London School of Economics and author of "The Perfection Trap")
In our culture, perfectionism is considered a valiant weakness. And, it is worn as a badge of honor. Saying that you are a perfectionist implies that you are constantly working to better yourself and your project. You unrelentingly strive for the best possible result. You work so hard that it might require others to step in and say, “This is good enough.” It’s a valuable vice in the workspace.
Or…so we thought.
According to professor of psychology and leading expert on perfectionism, Dr. Thomas Curran, perfectionism is more a culturally accelerated poison than its shiny exterior lets on. Whether we like it or not, we will all stumble, fall, and fail at some point in our lives. To deal with this reality requires breaking out of the “perfection trap.”
Topics:
- Defining "perfectionism" and its poisonous nature
- How Western cultures amplify perfectionism
- Origins of perfectionism
- Perfectionism as a worldview
- Dealing with questions of worth and identity as a perfectionist
- How to escape the "perfection trap"
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Dr. Thomas Curran is a professor of psychology at the London School of Economics and author of a landmark study that the BBC hailed as “the first to compare perfectionism across generations.” His TED talk on perfectionism has received more than three million views. His research has been featured in media ranging from the Harvard Business Review to New Scientist to CNN and he has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. He is the author of The Perfection Trap.
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In our culture, perfectionism is considered a valiant weakness and it is worn as a badge of honor. Saying that you are a perfectionist implies that you are constantly working to better yourself and your projects. You unrelentingly strive for the best possible results. You work so hard that it might require others to step in and say that's good enough. It's a valuable vice in the workspace, or so we thought. According to psychologist and leading expert on perfectionism, dr Thomas Curran, perfectionism is more a culturally accelerated poison than its shining exterior. Lets on. Whether we like it or not, we will all stumble, fall and fail at some point in our lives. To deal with this reality requires breaking out of the perfection trap.
Speaker 1:This is the Aiming for the Moon podcast and I'm your host, taylor Bledsoe. On this podcast I interview interesting people from a teenage perspective. If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and subscribe. You can follow us at Aiming at the Number 4 Moon on all the social medias to stay up to date on podcast news and episodes. Check out the episode notes for Dr Curran's full bio and links to our website AimingForTheMooncom, as well as the podcast sub-stack Lessons from Interesting People. Alright with that. Sit back, relax and listen in. Thanks again to Paxton Page for this incredible music. Alright, welcome Dr Curran to the interview. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you recently published the book the Perfection Trap and Racing the Power of Good Enough, and it's an exploration of why our culture is obsessed with perfection and then what we should do about it, where we should really be investing our identities in. So, to start off, what is your definition really of perfection? Because I'm sure we all have our ideas of what it means, but when you talk about it, what exactly are you meaning?
Speaker 2:So perfectionism has two core elements. The first is, I guess, what we would associate with perfectionist people, that's high goals, excessive goals, high standards. But it's fused to a second element that we often overlook and that's harsh and unrelenting self-criticism when we haven't met those high standards. And the reason why perfectionists are so self-critical and the reason why self-criticism is such an important component to perfectionism is because, at root, perfectionism comes from a kind of deficit, thinking that I'm not good enough, I'm not perfect enough and I must go about the world trying to conceal those imperfections from other people. And the moment they're revealed, the moment I haven't hit those perfect standards I have for myself, then I'm extremely and harshly punitive about those missed expectations, because they say something about that imperfect self that I'm trying to hide. So, yes, it's high standards, it's self-criticism, but it comes from a sense of deficit.
Speaker 1:It's almost like this form of works-righteousness that I kind of got the element of and it's also you talk about. It's very much accelerated and multiplied by the culture in which we live, the overworking and the overconsumption and just the always advertising of the perfect people on the billboards. Could you talk a bit about that?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So perfection really is all around us and I think these days we radiate perfectionism as a collective, and we know that because my research has shown that perfectionism is on the rise. Because the world radiate perfectionism, we expect it to be perfect. All the time, advertising tells us that we're just one product away from having the perfect life and lifestyle. It's the same in school and college that we just need to apply ourselves, work, really have excellence, and that will gain us access to the perfect job and life and lifestyle. It's the same when we enter into the workforce and we had to grind and hustle in order to reach the top. And also our parents, too, understand this. They've internalised these same standards and they project them down to us as well by expecting us to do more, excel and achieve, because those are important prerequisites of a good college education and, obviously, a good job. So everything and all around us really is applying excessively high standards and we're internalising those excessively high standards as perfectionism.
Speaker 1:And why is that a problem, exactly? Of course you have all of the people who have ever been successful. They seem to say perfectionism is one of my fatal flaws, but it got me into where I am. I might have my bad self image propelled me to now be seen as a great person by you. So of course you have all the innovators. You have celebrities, and then anyone you name has probably some line about that out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's definitely a conventional wisdom, which is propagated by celebrity culture, that amplifies the unicorn achievers to 0.01%, who tell us that they got there because of their perfectionism. But what's really interesting is, if you look at the data, we find a very weak relationship between perfectionism and performance. So, even though we're told that perfectionism is what has lifted people above others to reach the very top, when we go into the lab and we do our experiments, those relationships don't hold any water. Now, why is that? There's two reasons. The first is that perfectionists work hard, but they work too hard and so they burn out, and that's not conducive to performance. But also, importantly, perfectionists are world-class self-sabotages. So the moment things start to get tough and they encounter some setback or challenge, what they tend to do is withhold their efforts, because you can't fail at something you didn't try, and failure is so intently emotional for the perfectionist. They feel self-conscious and a lot of shame when they encounter failure, and so they're going to do all they can to avoid those emotions, because they have a massive drag on our sense of self and our well-being. So perfectionists procrastinate. They also burn out, which is why they don't perform to a higher standard as we might expect.
Speaker 2:So why do we then still think that perfectionism is this kind of lionized quality? Well, it goes back to that idea that we see it in these high achievers and we think that's what takes to be successful. But the reason we think that is something called survivor bias. So the reason we think perfectionism is linked to high achievers is because you're seeing high achievers but what we're not seeing is what's going on underneath those high achievers, that's to say, the rest of us who are doing exactly what those high achievers are doing and still not finding ourselves on that winners podium. And when we look at those individuals, when we look at what happens to perfectionists, the people when they encounter failure, we see something that's very different. You get a lot of mental stress and you also don't see them performing to the standard that you might expect. So I guess it's this idea if you have a lot of all this pain but for the no real gain, yeah.
Speaker 1:So a very bad reversal of the common saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So what would you say to young, ambitious people who are kind of looking out the world and it seems to favor a perfectionist, or at least the system seems to say, okay, be a perfectionist, something like that. Do you have words of advice to people who are looking at the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, try not to get sucked into that. And it's difficult because, as I said, perfectionism and perfectionistic thinking is all around us. We see perfection all around us. We think that's going to be the secret to success. Try not to slip into that type of thinking. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious. There's nothing wanting to do well.
Speaker 2:Conscientiousness, particular diligence, perseverance all these things are really really healthy ways to strive. They come from a very active and optimistic sense of I want to do better, I want to improve and I want to grow. However, they don't come with that emotional baggage that perfectionism comes with. But when things don't go well, when we encounter setbacks, when we failed, that we don't instantly turn in on ourselves and feel miserable about those experiences, that we can use them in a positive way to help us move forward, and that is the key difference. So try not to fall into the trap of perfectionism and trying to be perfect, even though it's very live at the moment. Try to find healthy ways to strive and where you can embrace the jagged path of life. Setbacks, failures, things not going quite to plan these are natural, inevitable parts of your life journey. They're going to happen. Embrace them and try to keep moving forward, and I think that's the most important lesson.
Speaker 1:So it's basically everyone's going to have these failures, but instead of just kind of dogging on yourself and accepting the shame or whatever that comes with, maybe failure that's kind of self-inflicted shame, going with it more, and is it letting those failures inform your future decisions, or is that a good way of thinking about it, I think?
Speaker 2:it's just letting it in to our lives as a very important and joyous reminder of what it means to be a human being.
Speaker 2:We're told in modern society that we've got to push past those humanistic imperfections and frailties and shortcomings for some kind of perfect outcome.
Speaker 2:But actually that's disconnecting us from who we really are, like the imperfect, flawed person that each and every one of us is, and I think it's trying to almost reconnect ourselves to ourselves by saying okay, you know we're gonna fail, we're gonna hit shortcomings. Nobody is perfect or could ever be made perfect and that's okay. You know, I can sit with failure comfortably. I can sit with anxiety and, yes, the discomfort that that failure is gonna engender, but nevertheless I can sit there with it, reflect on it, not need to change it, recycle it, turn it into something else, but actually just embrace it as an important part of my common humanity. That, I think, for me, is the most powerful switch up in the way that we approach setbacks and failures is just being able to embrace them as part and parcel of life, rather than the perfectionistic way of dealing with them, which is to turn in ourselves, blame ourselves, castigate ourselves and feel even more miserable about those inner imperfections that, deep down, we despise.
Speaker 1:I'm curious because, like part of this thing, it's great, definitely feels good as you're, as you're experiencing failure, as you're going after goals and stuff, like that Part of the idea of always being valuable as a human in general. Of course you have all the accepting that and then allows you to strive on longer. But of course you have the overthinkers like me who are like, well, if I can never achieve the perfection or whatever, what's the point of even trying? Like, what's your answer to some of those overthinkers in the audience?
Speaker 2:Overthinking is a classic tell-tale sign of somebody's perfectionistic. I myself am perfectionistic and I also overthink all sorts of things. You know from whether a paper or a write is good enough, or whether a presentation I give was, you know, smart enough or erudite enough or whatever. I think for me the biggest way to combat those kinds of feelings is to reframe self-castigation to self-kindness, self-criticism into self-compassion. Make sure that whenever things don't go well and you're going to have these moments in your life all the time, and I remember, like you know, setbacks, values, these are kind of very normal going to fail way more than we're going to succeed. It's just regression to the mean. And so when we encounter them on the many occasions we're going to counter those instances. The first thing we need to do is just take a moment, reflect and don't impulsively react by how could you be so stupid? What were you thinking? But actually just try and sit with it and be kind to yourself and say, actually you know what. Just screwed up had a bad night's sleep, didn't work out at that time. Maybe you know there was a question that wasn't something that you had spent loads and loads of time revising, that came up in the exam or whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:We just have to try as hard as we possibly can to rationalise and be compassionate and take a step back and look at how far we've come. In this moment we do matter and we are worth something because we've come so far. Each and every one of us has a litany of achievements alongside those setbacks. And if we can just take a step back and see that, you know, this is how far we've come and this one little failure is not an indictment on me, it doesn't impact on my future life chances, it doesn't say anything about how loved or valuable I am, but actually, you know, it's one form of, it's one outcome among many different types of outcomes and types of tests and types of assessments. So you're going to experience all through our lives, you know, that reflection, that self-compassion and that really, you know, putting our achievements in the bigger picture of our life is so, so important.
Speaker 1:Where does perfectionism kind of begin, like? Where did we get this idea that we should be perfect all the time, or something like that? What's the origin of it?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, yeah, this is a big question to unpack, look, if you really want to get at the root of it. Perfectionism is a response to societal pressure. Now, look, that's not to say that it's a total response to societal pressure. There is about 30-40 percent of this genetics, so we just inherited those perfectionist tendencies and there's nothing we can do about that. But nevertheless, 30-40 percent leaves a lot for the environment to explain.
Speaker 2:Look, there's so much going on in modern society right now that pushes on people's perfectionism. You can think of social media, for instance. It's kind of limitless images and moving pictures of perfection and perfect lives and lifestyles that everybody else seems to be living, school and work. It's become way more competitive now to get into the best colleges, and the best colleges are really the only fail-safe method or fail-self route into the best jobs. So we know it's really important and young people know that. So they are expected to work exceptionally hard to achieve excessive standards in school all the time to get into the highest colleges.
Speaker 2:But that is also parents too. Parents know that, they see that and they're aware of that, and they will also push young people to excel because they are also aware that they need to excel in order to get into the best colleges which give access to the best jobs and the modern workplace too, like as soon as you graduate from college. The pressure doesn't stop. You've got to hustle, you've got to grind. In this economy, the concept of a career has become an alien concept for young people, where they kind of move from gig to gig and really their working identity is bound up in this kind of idea of the grind set. All of these pressures that are coming from all sorts of different directions really weigh on a sense that we need to be perfect in order to get by, and I think that's why we're seeing rising levels of perfection.
Speaker 1:You talk about it and you call it a worldview. Can you explain that a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So perfectionism is really a lens, I suppose, which we review the world and interact with other people, and it's a lens that says I'm not good enough, that I'm imperfect and deep down, I know this, but I don't want other people to see this. So we'll go around the world with this kind of worldview that says I need to be perfect and the other people in my social environment expect me to be perfect and they're watching me and anytime I slip up or make a mistake that they're waiting to pounce, they're waiting with judgment and criticism. And so this worldview because it doesn't matter whether it's real or not that's how we perceive the world. However, what I'm arguing in the book is actually it is real that these perceptions are not just perceptions. They're actually kind of rational and logical ways of interpreting a world that expects us to be perfect all the time. So, yes, perfectionism is a worldview, but it's in response to very real forces that are weighing on us.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I'm sure people are wondering isn't the feeling of inadequacy and feeling that you should always be better? Isn't that a motivating factor in many ambitious people Like, isn't that something that makes them excel more? And maybe if you hadn't felt, like I guess, writing, for example, I want to be a writer. So if you don't feel the inadequacy of not I'm measuring up to I don't know, name Malcolm Gladwell, for example. If you want to name nonfiction writers, okay, my writing compared to Malcolm Gladwell is not Malcolm Gladwell-esque. Therefore, I should improve my writing, something like that. I feel like a lot of people in the audience are probably wondering well, isn't that measuring yourself and always wanting to be excel? Isn't that part of being great at something that you want to do when you grow up?
Speaker 2:course. Look, you know, wanting to be being aspirational, wanting to do well, wanting to improve, these are all absolutely very natural impulses. I guess, like everybody you know wants to master things. You know, competence is a is an intrinsic need for people and you see it in young infants all the time they're trying to master their surroundings and that never really leaves us. However, the difference between that kind of approach to striving like to master something, to grow, to develop, to learn, and perfectionism is really in our ability to let go when things don't go well.
Speaker 2:It goes back to this idea that perfectionists just don't deal with challenges, setbacks.
Speaker 2:And, yes, we could argue, of course, that the anxiety is engendered by perfectionism pushes us forward, but it's to a certain point, right like, and it's to a point at which you know we're burning out would be coming overwhelmed, and it's having a heavy impact not just on our lives but the people around us.
Speaker 2:We know that perfectionism has very negative implications for social relationships to. So there's, there's a sense that you know, that kind of obsessive, rigid nature of perfectionism to some extent, yes, which helps us, but it's not sustainable way to strive is, you know, it's something that's going to burn us out very quickly and ultimately is going to create weaker performance rather than stronger performance. And so I would encourage people, you know, don't don't lose that fire, but don't lose that ambition and don't lose that desire to improve. Those are really really important things. But it's about placing those types of striving in the context of a world and a life that's not not going to be perfect, where things are going to go wrong, and that we allow those, those setbacks and periods of stagnation and periods of regression into our lives, this kind of normal and natural parts of a process of learning and development. And I think that's if we can, if we're able to do that, we can have just as much performance, if not more performance, but without the, without the harsh and critical features of being a professional.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because it seems to be almost. You talk about it as a worldview. It's almost like an identity issue. So everything about if you're a perfectionist, for example, your world and your value is measured in doing everything that you do right. So, as you said, if you have a failure, it completely disrupts your identity of yourself. You're not a good person because you didn't do everything right, oh no, and then it's like an existential crisis at that point. That's part of the problem of not trying things. So what's your? You talk about this in your book changing kind of your identity. What should we root our identities?
Speaker 2:and if it is an identity issue, Well, it's about I suppose the first thing is really about self, except at its broadest level. Combating perfectionism is about accepting ourselves and our common humanity as imperfect human beings who slip up, who make mistakes, who, yes, fell, hit setbacks and have lives that don't always turn out the way we hoped. And that is that kind of self acceptance, that embracing of our fallible humanity. Is really like taking a sledgehammer to that kind of perfectionistic thinking. Because when we accept ourselves and all of ourselves and all of our feelings, what we experience in more and more regularities are kind of spontaneous joy. You know, that spontaneous joy, just being alive, that's robbed from us in this culture that teaches us we should always be more. You know, you see it. So you feel it like.
Speaker 2:If you've ever, like, felt that kind of in just passionate love for somebody for the first time, that's when you know that you're in a very contented place and nothing else matters. And we've all experienced that. You see in young children all the time, that kind of just spontaneous joy of being alive, of all of themselves and all of their feelings. You know these are accessible feelings. We, you know, we can. We, you know, we can experience more and more of them if we're able to just accept ourselves, and it's so hard to do that in modern culture. But if we can do that, we we can take a sledgehammer, as I said, to our perfectionism. We can turn down those self critical features and we can experience more and more joy in our lives. And I think that's our challenge. And, as I say, I write about many different, more specific techniques in the book, but this idea of accepting ourselves and our fallible humanity is a real linchpin of my thoughts on how we overcome perfectionism.
Speaker 1:So unfortunately you guys are going to have to read about those techniques in the actual book as the interviews draw into the clothes. But before we end I want to ask you the last two questions that we ask all of our guests. The first one is what books have had an impact on you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's a few books that have had a real profound impact on me. The first is the Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Horne, who features heavily in my book. This was her first popular press book and it really talked about how personality is socially constructed and how neuroses come from forces in the outside world things like competition and individualism that really put a lot of pressure on people to be perfect. So she's had a massive impact on my thinking and that was a breakthrough book and it's a wonderful book. The second book is Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, a fascinating book that talks really persuasively about those pressures in the modern world and those feelings of never enough that come from those pressures, and that's had a massive impact on my own thinking.
Speaker 2:And the third one is the Big Short by Michael Lewis. That was the book that radicalized me in some ways, reading about how the global economy in 2008 was taken down by greed, by this kind of excessive and unregulated desire for more and more and more at the expense of everything, and how that desire and greed had a crushing impact on so many lives. So the Big Short by Michael Lewis I'm sure many people have watched the film, but the book is exceptional. So those are the three I'd recommend.
Speaker 1:Our last question is what advice do you have for teenagers?
Speaker 2:Okay, I think the biggest thing that I see in young people because I'm a professor is a sense that they're not enough and that actually the world is very indifferent and that they're trying to find their place in the world, and a sense that they don't matter. And I think for me there's two things that I'd say to young people that you do matter, and you matter way more than you think you do. And the second thing is that you are enough. The matter what you're told, no matter how much this culture and this economy and this society will tell you that you need to do more, you need to be more, you need to have more, you need to work more, that actually, in this moment, you are enough. That you live, you exist, you're breathing right now. That means you're enough. Just that knowledge of being alive means you're enough. So that's my biggest message and I think it's a really valuable one for young people right now.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Dr Curran, for coming on the podcast. I enjoyed our conversation about perfectionism, how it's embedded throughout culture and how that affects us and our relationships and just our mental health in general. Thank you so much for coming on, thanks.
Speaker 2:Taylor for having me. It was great to chat.
