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[TobiasK]

BY Ozzie | March 9th, 2011 at 11:55 PM
Practicing Perfectionism
Tags: Self Actualization
Nobody is grading you! But still you are grading yourself. And hard!

Do you go out to practice meeting women or to practice perfectionism when meeting women?

As high as 60 percent of my Boot camp students are perfectionist types. So, there is a fat chance if you are reading this, you are one!

What does it mean to be a perfectionist? The number one fallacy of a perfectionist is believing, all the way down to his core, there is a “right” way to do things. He is convinced that if he can tap into that “righteousness” he would always succeed. As you can see there is no room for “trying and failing.” That’s why perfectionists have a short fuse.

They become frustrated quicker than the average guy when things are not going his way.

How can I make it better? Or how can I make it perfect so I can succeed every time and not waste my precious energy?

A perfectionist lives by the latter. They spend entire lives looking for the magic formula that would bring mistrials to zero. It reveals their anxiety about performance. They can’t tolerate bad performances. At an emotional level, they have decided mistakes are bad and a waste of time.

Really? Are mistakes all that bad?

A perfectionist has developed a fear, or rather a phobia of failure. Mistakes equal failure to perform. He must improve. Rigidity subs flexibility. The bow breaks because it is too hard and can’t bend. Rigidity can lead to further and more painful failure. It can lead to cracking. When you crack in this game you stop approaching girls.

You don’t see the point of trying to meet a girl when you will never achieve the perfect approach.

High or insane standards for performance and paralysis

With a perfectionist, standards for a good performance are so high that a perfectionist can never win. The game is rigged so you are always in misery. Even when you get the girl, you start questioning your very success by using self-critical statements like “she is not that hot,” “I got lucky because her friends left me alone with her”, “She is desperate for a boyfriend” and so on.

No success can quench the thirst of the black hole of inner negativity. Self-rejection becomes the norm rather than the exception.

One thing I have learned coaching perfectionist types is that you can’t win with them. No such a thing as happy ending with them. There is always a “but.” So I gave up trying to live up to their high standards and started negotiating standards with them. As a result, fearing failure every time, they paralyse and stop trying.

An idea

On Boot camp, one thing I came up with to solve the perfectionist issue with guys was to negotiate goals outside performance. Remember that immaculate performance was their primary focus. So instead I started to give them goals outside performance. And voala! Performance started to improve. One thing about performance is that the more you focus on it, the worst it becomes. So by steering a perfectionist’s attention outside performance they start to relax which in turn helps performance! Kind of like a catch 22 in a roundabout way. This is why advanced guys in the art of meeting women refuse to discuss “game” when they are in a club or in the process of approaching women. You hear them say things like, “The less I think about it, the better.” This is another reason why they resent newbies trying to get “dating secrets” out of them because deep inside they know there are no shortcuts. That there is growth process that needs to happen first prior to success.

Goals

Perfectionists are goal/results driven. The problem is always the same: they want their goals reached yesterday.

So I started to negotiate goals with them. I force them to delay evaluation and put it off until a certain deadline was agreed upon. That seemed to work.



I teach them to defer evaluation of their performance until deadline time comes. So, that way, they don’t have to focus on performance for the duration, which would kill performance to start with. So I guarantee a worry-free head and zero anxiety during the accomplishment of the goals themselves.

Some simple solutions work for the perfectionists because I found that their perfectionism has such silver linings like driven, super-focused, hard working and so on. So being a perfectionist, it is not that bad after all. Most over achievers in the world are perfectionist types. James Cameron, a quasi-successful Hollywood director for one is a perfectionist type, drives everybody crazy around him with his obsessive attention to detail – on occasions during filming Alien II, frustrated with the “under- performance” of special effects puppeteers and to the astonishment of his filming crew he did the job of the puppeteers himself. But you wouldn’t mind having the success of a James Cameron. Being a perfectionist is not a curse, but it is all about not letting your perfectionism interfere with your performance and your motivation.

Christmas metaphor

Achieving goals is a lot like Christmas. It is a joyful and exciting day that goes by all too fast. We rarely have time to taste it because it is just one day. However, it is all about the preparation, the buying of the gifts, the family expectations of being together, all the anticipation that makes it special. Not the day itself.

Achieving goals feels like a letdown once you get them. Because it is all about the preparation, research, ups and downs, self-corrections that lead to the successful completion of goals. It is about the journey. It is up to you, as a perfectionist, to miss all the fun of getting your goals, all the growth process that awaits you and the positive personal rewards you get out of it. The more you grow, the easier it becomes to go after goals and the bigger they get! Having known all the fun involved in meeting goals, you set up more challenging goals for yourself so you can duplicate the enjoyment of the ride.

Transient emotions

Both happiness and sadness come and go so it is wise not to exacerbate the meaning of one or the other. Keep them in check. Those moments of perfect adaptation to the environment of the club or full on fulfilment of your needs, be them sexual or performance wise with women, are only briefly experienced. When people find the missing piece in their lives or jump with joy because they found the cure for cancer, they feel blissfully and one with the universe, but such experiences don’t last. Your brain would explode if you were on blissful state for long periods of time. Everything must pass. It is the journey that counts. If you look at professional football, the championship teams struggle all season to stay on top to conquer their trophy –their goal- at the last day of the season. Celebrations go on for a day or so and they are back to work after a couple of days. Business as usual. We spend more time on “business as usual” than on blissful states. So why put so much stock on them?