Perfectionism is a slippery topic. When does a healthy desire to strive for excellence slip over into an unhealthy self-centeredness where no one else quite measures up? At what point does a highly organized person become controlling? When do high standards become unrealistic, so that life takes on a frantic, driven quality? How do we determine whether we value ourselves primarily for what we accomplish rather than for who we are?
People who find themselves in the strangle-hold of unhealthy perfectionism didn’t intentionally adopt that as a goal for their lives. Rather, through the myriad influences of societal views of success, genetic tendencies, parental modeling, false values, and so much more, we find ourselves subtly shoved into a mold that is unrealistic, but which feels natural. It’s usually far easier for us to see the perfectionism in other people than in ourselves. So, we get impatient with them, and dismissive, or expect they will see their problem clearly the first time we point it out.
Perhaps a place to begin is to recognize how easily our perspective can be unrealistic, even dishonorable.The perfection we should strive for is not found in appearance or performance. We should resist allowing ourselves to be sqeezed into the mindset of the world around us. If we are pursuing excellence out of fear of rejection, self-centerdness or pride, then we are not moving toward maturity and perfection. we can seek to be the best we can be, with all our intellectual and artistic abilities, but the motive is all-important.
"Happiness depends on ourselves." More than anybody else, Aristotle (Greek philosopher and polymath) enshrines happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself. That is, happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue, though his virtues are somewhat more individualistic than the essentially social virtues of the confucians. A method of achieving virtue, but for Buddha the Middle Path referred to a peaceful way of life which negotiated the extremes of harsh asceticism and sensual pleasure seeking. Was a minimal requirement for the meditative life and not the source of virtue in itself.
Dn't try to be like someone else, you are unique. Don't attend to everyone else's needs, your needs are just as important. Turn any failures into life experiences, learn from them.Allow successes to be the motivation for more success.
The function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.
Enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters.
