Anyone who knows me well will know that generally speaking, patience is not my strong suit. I’m not bad tempered and I like to think I keep level headed in most situations, but I do get frustrated easily. And, the majority of the time, this derives from me not understanding something immediately, or just from general states of confusion. I guess what I’m saying is that I am an impatient perfectionist: I have to understand things immediately and I won’t stop until I do… which sounds like a good attribute but can be quite the opposite. So, I ask, is there a way of learning patience without giving up this perfectionist trait?
Why does patience conflict with perfectionism in the first place?
As a perfectionist, I find that if I leave something incomplete, or not quite at the standard of my vision, it will niggle and niggle away at me until it gets done.
Currently I am revising for my end of semester exams in my first year of University. As I am in first year, these grades don’t really count for anything more than progressing into my second year, but I have always been someone with an intrinsic drive to do well. So, as you can imagine, I was getting very frustrated this morning after spending three hours staring at my accounting notes and not having a clue what any of it meant. I then met my sister for coffee on her lunch break which would usually equate to a fabulous excuse for procrastination- but instead I just couldn’t get my mind off of the mess that was my (lack of) understanding for accounting.
This is where the lack of patience comes from; being a perfectionist means you need things sorted now.
Thus, I present you with the flaw of perfectionism…
You want things to be perfect, but you are going about it in an imperfect way. You build this ideal vision in your head, which means that anything else is essentially a failure. But nothing great is perfect immediately! No-one who runs a marathon could run all 42K of it on their first day of training. No author wrote a book in a day, and it is rare that the book that sits on your shelf was their first draft either. And, on a smaller and more relevant scale, only a genius understands accounting straight off the bat. In fact, when I had a little patience and went on a walk for a break, I came back with a much better understanding of everything than I went away with.
So, ironically enough, perfectionism is flawed. A perfectionist who achieves true perfection would understand the need for time to allow great things to evolve. It took me a while to realise this. About a year ago when I was still in sixth form, I remember being in a psychology lesson where we were all working on our individual essays. Our teacher started talking about an ex-student she had who was a perfectionist, and I immediately raised my head in interest (taking pride in being a perfectionist back then, to the point that if you asked me for my favourite thing about myself this would be it). However, she started saying things like ‘a perfectionist is one of the worst things you could be’ and I was confused. She had my attention. She objectively said that being a perfectionist means you waste time, you spend too long on things, you’re inefficient… and all for something you are unlikely to perceive as perfection at the end anyway. And why? Because nothing is perfect!
I’m not saying mediocre is okay, because everyone can achieve more than this. What I am saying, though, is that we need to learn where to stop and accept that this is the best you can do for now.
So, can patience and perfectionism coexist in a diplomatic way?
If I learnt how to place realistic time scales on things, and still maintained my perfectionist visions, then maybe I could achieve these goals eventually through time and patience. However, for the most part, I think it is difficult for the two to coexist. Instead, I want to work more on patience, because I know that the end result of anything will be closer to perfect if it’s gone about in a perfect way. And to go about something in a perfect way requires patience. It requires you to accept that it might not work straight away, the way you wanted, but that you can move past it with time.
After all, keeping calm instead of getting frustrated always leads to better results.
Positive thinking, positive outcomes!
Ellie-Paige x
ElliePaigeAndre 