What’s driving my need for perfection?

Moving from a perfection focus to a growth mindset in Christ is the theme for the Embracing Imperfection series. This post examining what’s driving my need for perfection is the latest in the series.

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The sigh coming from the kitchen table was laced with tears, frustration, and the exaggeration that usually accompanies a complete lack of understanding between two people.

My sweet girl was spread out over her summer math workbook – yes, we are those people with a workbook to turn back in at school when summer break is over – and she was telling me with lots of animation how I was not helping her. “Like at all, Mom.”

I asked again what her question was and got this: “I need to know what they are asking me here so I can get this question right.”

The question involved responding with the appropriate greater than or less than (“>” “<“) symbols and clearly my non-math teacher explanation was not cutting it. No matter how many times I resorted to the old “the alligator eats the larger number” routine, my girl wasn’t connecting the dots.

The reality that the symbol is the same, just turned different ways depending on the problem itself, did not clear things up with this oh so literal child. And her desperate need to get all the questions right didn’t help either.

“The whole point of me doing this workbook, Mom, is that I’m supposed to get them all right,” came the response to the alligator analogy -with extra drama added to the word “Mom.” The tears flowed even more as the child for whom math is rarely confusing experienced what the rest of us feel like more often than she does in math exercises.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a moment like this with a diligent-student-type-A-kind of kid, then you’ll see the absolute folly of what I said next.

“Sis, the point of this workbook is for you to practice. And when you practice, sometimes you’ll get something wrong,” I attempted to explain. “That just lets the teacher know what you still need some work on. THAT’S the point of the workbook.”

Cue the absolute waterworks and cry-speak that no one could possibly understand.

Inevitable Frustration

Now, I don’t know about you, but from time to time I find myself in a similar emotional state. Mine isn’t typically about my math workbook, but I, too, can get caught up in the aim for perfection and the inevitable frustration that comes when life hits and things don’t go like I hoped.

You know, those times when we put in the effort and things still go off the hinges? The dinner you prepped, cooked, and somehow still burned. The budget you planned, tried to stick to, but still couldn’t make the ends meet. The meeting you’re ready for, but get caught in a side conversation making you late, flustered, and feeling ill-equipped. The laundry…don’t even get me started on everyone’s need for clean clothes all. the. time.

It is frustrating and discouraging when we try to set ourselves up for doing things well – and by that my personality type actually means perfectly (I am where the female child gets it from, after all) – just to feel like the rug was pulled out from underneath us removing success as an option.

There’s the rub for me. I am wired in such a way that if I’m not careful, I can fall into the trap of believing that if I can’t succeed there’s no point in trying. And that is a dead end for any hope of a growth mindset.

What’s driving my need for perfection?

If I’m honest, there are two main struggles I face when I only want to be involved in things that are destined for success.

Pride

First, my pride drives me to be a part of things that will make me look good. I am a solid 3 on the Enneagram and, much more than I care to admit, I care about what people think of me. Achieving success is just as much accomplishing the task as it is people seeing that I did something well and receiving the kudos that usually come with success.

So, my default when deciding on which tasks to tackle, projects to initiate, or even a dinner to prepare is to gauge how this is going to make me look when it is all done.

Because I’m wired to care what other think, the thought of someone else seeing my failure is more than I can bear. So, I tend to mentally weed out options that don’t seem poised to end well.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Steering clear of disaster is a good life – and survival – skill. But, when my pride gets in the way, my motivation isn’t in line with where it needs to be.

The tasks I’ve been given in life – Mom, employee, daughter, friend – are ones that God has given me. He has placed work in my hands and when pride runs amuck in my day to day, I tend to flip that around. I place work in God’s hands and I self-select out of anything that doesn’t look like it has a 99.9% chance to ending well.

When I start filtering out things when I don’t believe will succeed, I am at risk of removing from my own shoulders the tasks that God has given me. It puts me in the role of doing the calling and deciding in life which doesn’t align with a life surrendered to God.

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.

1 Corinthians 7:17

And when I’m in that pattern of selecting only the best prospects for looking good in the eyes of others, I am at risk of ignoring what God is directing me to do, my pride is given room to run, and we know what Proverbs says about the order of pride and failure in the form of falling.

So, first, in order to grow in my desire to embrace imperfection by cultivating a God-centered growth mindset, I’ve got a pride problem to deal with. But, my potential hurdles don’t end there.

Self-Sufficiency

Perhaps due to my pride, I often fall into the trap of a perfection mindset because I place a lot of weight on my own self-sufficiency. My pride fools me into thinking that I’m capable, strong, smart (hey, God made me that way, right?) and I can handle this….ALL of this.

And when this really has room to run in me and takes off, it is my self-sufficiency that drives me to the edges of my own bandwidth. I keep adding to my plate those things I know I can master – because by now my pride is telling me to keep adding those tasks, relationships, and projects that I have mastered, after all – and loading my plate with second and third helpings of those things seems only logical.

Very quickly, I am spinning trying to keep plates in the air that where never put in my hands to begin with. Ironically, all the overloading of tasks I can do well and manage on my own usually leads to none of those things getting my best.

The spinning, scrambling, and relying on myself is exhausting. In that exhausting the temptation to quit – quit all the things and quit showing up in the relationships the Lord has placed me in – is real. Weariness of my own creation is a special kind of tired and an easy place in which I can lose sight of everything I was originally called to focus on.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Galatians 6:9

We can only not grow weary when we have surrendered ourselves, our lives, and our to do lists to the Lord. When I am humble enough to realize I have no business creating my to do list and when I am humble enough to know I do not do anything in own strength, then – and only then – am I able to work and live in the way the Lord calls me to.

Pride is a great distortion of our own actual gifts. Self-sufficiency is a great deceiver. And both of them fuel the pointless, exhausting mirage of perfection. My prayer today is that I can be humble enough to surrender myself to tasks the Lord has called me to – whatever my prospects of success may actually be – knowing that when I rely on Him – and not myself – I will have the energy, focus, and ability to accomplish precisely what He intends.