Overcoming Perfectionism- Life as a Perfectionist at U of T (PART II)

In my last blog post, I wrote about what I’ve learned as a perfectionist at U of T. I mentioned how being a perfectionist wasn’t ideal when I’m on a time crunch, since I don’t have time to make everything “perfect”. However, overcoming perfectionism isn’t easy—I knew I had to change my entire mindset. Stop comparing myself to others It’s the worst feeling when I know one of my friends started on an assignment that I have yet to touch. That feeling of being behind on something used to absolutely crush me. I used to compare myself to everyone. When I had class in Convocation Hall, it was hard to not feel bad about myself when all I could hear was people around me talking about their lab report topics, which made mine dull in comparison. I’ve now learned that this does me absolutely no good. Everyone has their own schedules and works at their own pace. While peer pressure can act as motivation for me, it becomes unhealthy when I can’t stop comparing myself to others and begin to look poorly on my work all the time. Everyone, including myself, always wants to be the best. I remind myself that there’s always going to be someone who is better than me, so I should just focus on being the best version of myself! 🙂 Avoid being too hard on myself Self-love is something I try to practice as often as I can. As a perfectionist, I’m often too hard on myself when I fall short of my standards. It’s something I still struggle with, but I’m slowly starting to focus less on what grade I got and more on why I got that grade. This helps me go from “I’m not smart enough, I’ll never make it” to “where did I go wrong and how can I improve on that for next time?”. Even small changes like congratulating myself for making it through midterms (without losing sanity) goes a long way. I also found that rewarding myself after a test or exam is absolutely necessary. Whether it be going out with friends or binge watching a show on Netflix, I like to give myself a break after a period of stress. Overall, I found that exercising after a big test the most relaxing!

Things don’t always go as planned; I’ve learned to accept that some things are out of my control. In a perfect world, I get everything done, study for all my tests ahead of time, and get good grades… but I know that this is (almost) impossible and understanding this has made my life so much closer to *perfect*.