Perfectionism

So my friend Emilie shared this quote on Goodreads and it really resonated with me and inspired me to share it with y'all.

"We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very, seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving . . . We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins . . . We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers . . . We are the daughters of the feminists who said, "You can be anything," and we heard, "You have to be everything." Courtney Martin

I know this is a long one but I feel it applies to the lives of most young women today. We always feel like we have to do everything, we can't say no, we must be absolutely perfect in every aspect of our lives and we beat ourselves up when we don't achieve that perfection. Pretty screwy isn't it. 

Why are we the only one to get upset when we get a B on a test or don't make that sports team. Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to be and do everything and then convince ourselves that this is what society wants from us, this is what everyone expects. None of it makes sense but we still do it. The question is why?

Obviously, not all of Martin's quote applied to my life but the general gist of it really resonated with me on a personal level. Just Friday I was beating myself up because I have a B in my AP Government Class. Never mind the fact that it was still a really good grade, nor the fact that it is a AP course: it was a B, and I was better than that. I was freaking out and I was trying to figure out everything that I could do to bring my grade up because the fact that I had just B.S.ed my way through a pop quiz was not going to help that grade at all. I began to put a BUNCH of unnecessary pressure on myself because I was striving to reach perfection, something I subconsciously knew I was never going to reach. Why did I do this? Because I am a perfectionist. I must stay up as late as possible to get all of my work done - flawlessly - excel at every activity that I participate in and maintain an active, busy social life. No time for myself and definitely no time for imperfection.

I know I am not the only woman who does this. I know plenty of young women who deal with kind of self-inflicted pressure everyday only to gain nothing but additional, unneeded stress. We all strive to be perfect, we are all perfectionists.