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Writer's pictureMarya Morozova

Reflections on Perfectionism

Updated: Jul 5, 2022


Photo by K8 on Unsplash


As part of my intention to be as authentic as is professionally reasonable in this blog, I have to admit: I used to be a perfectionist in certain areas of my life. For example, being "bad" at something new - even something that I've never done before - felt unacceptable to me. It filled me with feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. I pushed myself to move forward in my career because that was tremendously important to me, but free time was a different story - for years I had very few hobbies. Until something clicked and I decided that it was time to face my fears and embrace sucking at things as an unavoidable prerequisite to getting better at them. I remember telling myself that I, in fact, intend to be dreadful and that am looking forward to sucking as much as I can because it means that I am growing and finally facing my fears. I also stopped buying into the whole "this defines me as a person" idea.


By now I have tried a wide variety of hobbies. Some of them I am better at than others, but you know what? I realized that being "good" isn't the point - the point for me (at least when it comes to hobbies) is to enjoy the creativity, and sense of freedom and play that came into my life as soon as I loosened up my implacable standards. What an invaluable discovery!


How do you define perfectionism? How has it served you (or not) in your life?

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