The Dance of Perfection, People Pleasing, and Control

“I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.”

– R. Buckminster Fuller

I used to refer to myself as a “recovering perfectionist.” Seeing that phrase now makes me laugh at my own naiveté. As if I thought I had overcome perfectionism; that it was in the rearview mirror, or a phase I had outgrown.

At the time I first started tossing around those words I had two small kids, so it was not so much that I had “recovered” from my hard-charging, type-A, perfectionist tendencies, it was simply that two tiny humans had wrestled much of my control over my life from me and now dictated most of my existence. The perfectionist in me who needed to be five minutes early for everything decided that getting somewhere fewer than 15 minutes late was a win. Keeping things tidy at home went by the wayside and we settled for messy (just not dirty).

A few years later I really embraced the identity of overcoming perfection. I had transcended limitations that were the hallmarks of my life until that point: wound tight, anxious, and in need of control. I was in a constant dance with expectations that were swirling about…pressure to lose baby weight, dress to impress, cover the grey, climb the career ladder, 5am gym trips, have it all, pretzel myself to fit in. Every day another turn of the hamster wheel.

It became too much, and I realized the only way things were going to change was by changing myself, and I went the hell in to do the deep work. Forget getting off the hamster wheel; I journaled and dreamed of breaking the hamster wheel. Five-mile runs were supplanted with time on a meditation pillow; counting breaths and mantras fed me more than counting squats. I stopped praying at an altar of accumulation and achievement and instead invited ease and flow into my life.

As I turned that corner, I stopped worrying about what everyone else thought and gave up the game of impressing others because I could no longer put my finger on who I really was. I let my hair be the color that grew out of my head (a surprising mix of grey and brown, that turns honey-gold in the summer sun. Who knew?!). I completed a yoga teacher training course. I pivoted into a new career and found myself in the uncomfortable place of being a learner. Never an easy place for me (I’m a quick study and like to figure things out – fast) but it was all a lesson in progress over perfection, and I was there for it.

Sometime in 2021 I read Brené Brown’s 10^th Anniversary of the Gifts of Imperfection. It was a good book but much of it didn’t feel new to me. I found myself reflecting that I’d figured a lot of it out already and I wondered if perhaps I was a little further along than the average reader. (As she pats herself on the back). Later that year I started reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Feeling like perfection was in the rearview mirror, I had picked up the book for different reasons…until I read these words:

“You may call it something else…getting it right, you may call it, fixing it before I go further. You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism. Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop…a debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details…and to lose sight of the whole… Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will be good enough –that we should try again.”

This hit me like a ton of bricks and stopped me in my tracks. There it was. The exact way that – despite all my growth and transformation – perfection persisted within me. I could word-smith with the best of them. Tweak, edit, pick apart, again, and again and again. I saw lifelong dreams of being a writer stuck in that loop on the text of the page. Ideas and outlines for essays of self-revelation and personal growth (like this one) were stuck in that closed system of details that never went anywhere. Focused on the worst, stuck in the details, never good enough or new or novel enough. It was a personal reckoning, and a challenge to transcend. It catapulted me forward. I wrote more, I took risks in facilitation and the experiences I designed with teams, and I am forever grateful for the wisdom she offered that helped me peel another layer of perfection back from my core. With a deep exhale, I was again feeling like another piece of perfection was behind me.

In the words of the famous John Kabat-Zinn, wherever you go, there you are.

Fast-forward to summer 2023 when my family got a puppy. I was reticent about the changes a puppy would bring into our lives and unsure if my heart had recovered from losing our 15-year-old black lab a few years earlier. Despite my misgivings, we said yes to Mochi, a 12-week old pup from the Cincinnati Lab Rescue.

The snuggly and soft little puppy with soulful eyes soon turned into a whirling dervish of razor-sharp teeth, oversized paws, and boundless energy. Things were not going well. She sensed my reservation, and we were not friends. Puppy classes, in-home training sessions, prayers to the universe, a (somewhat) joking request to a priest friend for an exorcism, stitches at urgent care, and literal blood, sweat, and tears went into the puppy.

A couple weeks later, I was preparing to send our newsletter, announcing that playful puppies were part of our summer. (Meghan had also adopted a puppy.) As I queued it to send, with a single keystroke I deleted Mochi’s photo. With a laugh I told Meghan the puppy was on probation. But I was hiding, unwilling to share because of a fear of judgment, the possibility of failure – of not getting it right. No way was I going to announce and share her photo, because what if it didn’t work out? I felt a pang of guilt. Perfection had found me. Again.

We always say we never stop becoming. It didn’t end there.

Not long after that, Mochi refused to go for her evening walk. Not far from our house, she planted herself on the sidewalk, refusing to move. We stared each other down. Countless treats, sing-song praises, and pleading (begging) did not get her to budge. It was rush-hour on our suburban street and I watched cars at the intersection smirk at seeing our battle of wills. Passersby made jokes and giggled over her cuteness. My cheeks flushed, my solar plexus pulsated, jaw clenched, and I dug-in my heels, half-dragging her down the street, needing to regain control. Oblivious to her mood, developmental stage, the hot and muggy air, or anything but my ego and the desire for perfection – for it to look like everything was perfect with the adorable pup.

Wherever you go, there you are. 

I knew from the moment I reluctantly said yes that this puppy would teach me many lessons. I didn’t anticipate one of them would be mirroring the persistence of my perfectionism. But it is. And will be again and again and again. I am obviously perfectly imperfect and Mochi is here to help me excavate the layers.

In what ways have you peeled back the onion of your own perfection? How does it still show up for you?