I clearly remember when I started hearing the response, “Perfect,” to pretty much anything said in a conversational exchange. Could be on the phone with customer service about my computer or the cable company and as they are asking me to try different things to get everything working, I would respond that I’d done whatever they had said to do. “Perfect,” was the response every time. “Well,” I tell a friend, “I’ve got to go to the grocery store tomorrow.” “Perfect.” “Then I thought I’d finally pick up the extension cord I’ve been needing.” “Perfect.” “I want to see if my right big toe will fit in my left nostril.” “Perfect.”

Now “Perfect” used to be reserved and used as a superlative indicating something was exceptional or had surpassed expectations in some way. Now it substitutes for, “OK.” At first, hearing the word more than I was used to was oddly comforting. We all like praise for doing well. But as it became more ubiquitous, it became oddly disconcerting. Things were being referred to as being perfect, but those things didn’t rise to a level where perfection should even have been a consideration.

Now I am reading in the press that the drive for individual perfectionist tendencies has become widespread and problematic since the early 00s. (Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016 – published in the Psychological Bulletin of the American Psychological Association in 2017) The authors, Thomas Curran, University of Bath, and Andrew P. Hill, York St. John University write, “From the 1980s onward, neoliberal governance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has emphasized competitive individualism and people have seemingly responded, in kind, by agitating to perfect themselves and their lifestyles. . . Cross-temporal meta-analysis revealed that levels of self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism have linearly increased. . . the findings indicate that recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves.”

While there are societal pressures eliciting this kind of behavior, let’s take a step back and have a look at how misleading and potentially dangerous this striving ultimately is.

Often, when we feel we have to do something perfectly or everything perfectly, we immediately run into two problems. First, perfect is the enemy of good enough. In truth, good enough is good enough. Why? Because, problem number two, for something to be perfect it must remain unchanging, static. Perfection is a static state. Works of art like a Monet painting are perfect because they hang on a wall and never change. They are perfect just the way they are. Humans are constantly growing, changing, and evolving. We are imperfect. Therefore, it is neither possible nor desirable for us to remain fixed because we learn, we change, we grow.

“I have the perfect solution,” and, therefore, we must do it this way. “I have the perfect idea or perfect concept.” Problem herein is that once something has been deemed perfect, it is given no room to change and evolve. We get so caught up in something being the one true way, that it almost becomes dogma versus a living, breathing process. We block out learning along the way. We can become absolutist rather giving ourselves the space to explore and learn. Why must something be perfect in order to merit taking action? Why isn’t it enough that a solution or idea is practical or workable or even a good interim step?

Are we allowed to make missteps or mistakes? Of course we are. Whose rules are these that we can’t? How else can we learn? Where else would the motivation come from to take risks, try new things? One thing I have learned as truth is that when I make a mistake, I need to be the one to hold my hand up, say, “Yeah, I did it.” And then ask for help or forgiveness or both. People will break their backs to help you. They won’t if you make excuses, try to place blame elsewhere, deny responsibility, or whine about how hard something is. But admit something isn’t working or didn’t work and, “Here, let me help you,” will be the response. And next time and the time after that and the time after that you’ll get better and better and better at problem solving or coming up with better courses of action, personally and professionally.

Very often, when we feel we must do something perfectly, what we are telling ourselves is that we don’t trust ourselves – our judgment, our thought processes, the quality of our work, our ability to honestly communicate in relationships, or our ability to be and do good enough. Think about what has become a stock answer to the interview question, “What is your greatest weakness?” “I tend to be a perfectionist in my work.” Problem here is that not only is it a cop-out answer, it can hide tendencies of being unyielding, intemperate, uncooperative, or unwilling to see other people’s point of view.

Beneath that, what is the fear? If we are not perfect at work, what will happen? Will we be disciplined? Demoted? Ostracized? Fired? In that process we will, in some way, undermine our own judgment and ability to think critically or creatively, and our trust in our own work. And it is us doing it to ourselves. How realistic are those fears? Yeah, the workplace is competitive and, in too many workplaces, the idea is that we are all replaceable in a moment’s notice. “Well, Schmendrick made a mistake or their work was less than perfect so let’s get rid of them.” Is that the kind of place you’d want to work? Are the people you work for really like that? Any great inventor, thinker, writer, etc., will tell you that they failed many times along the way to their greatest successes as it was those mistakes and the places where they fell short that they learned and changed their perspectives, or got new ideas or new inspiration, or found a new direction or solution.

In relationships, how can you or anybody possibly be perfect? What you will most likely do is wind up doing one of two things. One is that you will walk on egg shells around your friends or family or significant other. Heaven forbid you say or do the wrong thing. You could piss them off or make them unhappy and they won’t like/love you anymore. Or they will abandon/betray/humiliate you because you weren’t perfect? Or you accept whatever they throw at you, good and bad, so as to not jeopardize your standing with them and potentially lose the relationship. You wind up diminishing or invalidating your own needs in the relationship so as to not be demanding and, therefore, less than perfect. Or you lose yourself completely in trying to meet all of their needs so that they deem you the perfect friend, partner, relative, parent.

Think about the people who try to be the perfect parent. They often fall into the trap of trying to be their kids’ best friend instead of the person who teaches them how to best make their way through life and what it means to be fully and completely human in the very best sense of what that can mean. Teaching them to love and care and have compassion for themselves and others. Encouraging their dreams. Being there when they fall short. And also teaching them that everything in life comes with consequences – both good and bad - depending on the choices made. Thus, teach them how to make good choices. But nowhere in that is there a demand of doing it perfectly.

Think about the stress we place on ourselves when we hold ourselves to the standard of perfection. “I must succeed in doing the impossible.” Stress eventually wears us down and affects our physical, emotional, and mental health. Anxious, fearful, undermining our strengths and abilities, and what we know as our own sound judgment. We begin to question and doubt ourselves and self-doubt – whether you are doubting yourself or making someone else doubt themselves – is very damaging. Yes, be skeptical so that you can re-examine the way you approach your life and its problems. Yes, learn from that re-examination and that willingness to see things differently. But swan diving into self-doubt because you can’t be perfect is a no win proposition.

The demand of being perfect has been shown to lead to things like eating disorders and PTSD. It has also been linked to such issues as bulimia, anorexia, depression, anxiety, and more. It is not a healthy behavior and yet, I can hear someone thinking – “Well, at least we know what can happen. Perfect.”

Certainly in life, strive to do your best. Putting your best foot forward, in that sense, at work or with friends or family and, most importantly, with yourself, is a good thing. It means that you are open to doing better with everything you do, learning along the way, but also enjoying the journey in a way that demanding perfection never will allow. Some days you will be glorious in your achievements and other days – meh. Welcome to the human experience. Winston Churchill put it best, “"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." Change is really the only constant in life, as much as we may tell ourselves we hate change. But when we learn that we can improve almost anything in our lives, just a little bit every day, then we have opened the door to the potential of ongoing happiness and continued success.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

It seems to me that in great part, what we see happening currently in our society is but symptom of a much larger crisis - a crisis of responsibility on both the Right and on the Left.

On the Right, there is the idea that they have the right to do what they want, without consequence, without accountability, without any responsibility - steal elections, gerrymander, run up deficits, lie to the American people about pretty much everything, make up "facts" out of nothing substantive, you get my drift. It heads in the direction of tyranny in that you hear now in the press that a minority of the country is imposing its will, due to gerrymandered districts, due to voter suppression, due to the stoking of fear and resentment, due to feeling it is OK to buy elections and politicians, due to its leaders feeling entitled to steal, is imposing its will (or trying) on the majority of the citizens of this country.

Our leaders on the Right avoid responsibility like the plague. Nobody - no Senator, no Representative, no Cabinet member, and through many state and local governments, through corporate business leadership, through the undermining of the rule of law, through the levels of corruption that no one even bothers to hide any more, ain't nobody responsible for nothing. They feel entitled to do what want, to take what they want, to bend the rules and the laws to what they want. And it becomes a form of tyranny over the rest of us that we are all at sufferance of.

The free press and, luckily, some federal and state law enforcement agencies are trying to hold people accountable and responsible but, as we are seeing, it is a long hard fight. Freedom indulged in without the balance and tempering of responsibility becomes tyranny and it becomes a sense of entitlement.

On the Left the freedom with no sense of responsibility manifests differently but it is no less tyrannical and no less entitled, though we tend to stay well within the confines of the law. We are at sufferance of the Identity Politics purists and the tyranny they impose. Here I am entitled because I am a member of whatever disadvantaged group with whom I identify. And as a member of that group, I need not hear or countenance that that offends me. And I am egregiously aggrieved and offended by pretty much everything everyone who is not politically correct to the purest and highest form says. I get to demand safe spaces and the vetting and potential censorship of any speech I decide I might not like.

Here is an example and it is a true story. In a discussion in a recent class that a friend attended, a discussion of people running for office came up for whatever reason. One of the attendees made it known that they found the term "running" for office offensive as it was potentially offensive and unjust to disabled people who are not able to run. Now, let's be clear, I am in now way suggesting that social wrongs should not be righted and people made whole. Don't even. Right? But in regard to this kind of example - seriously?

I have the freedom to demand political correctness; I have the right not to hear anything I don't like or want to hear; I have the right to impose the threat of my being offended on everyone so they must walk on eggshells around me for fear of my wrath. And because of my membership in whatever identity group, I am also entitled to feel this way and insist that everybody else feel this way as well. That is a form of tyranny and entitlement.

Further, with the exception of the recent elections and maybe what had become the rule is now broken – please God, please God, please God – is that the Left sabotages itself with these demands of purity. If someone wasn’t progressively pure enough, if we didn’t agree with everything thing they did or said, if their views or voting record did not conform to a strict party line – not unlike that same demand made by the Right on its peeps – then they were no good. Either you were perfect or you were the goat and there was no in between. This led to a rigging of the primary process in the 2016 primaries – something we are not going to litigate here. But the people responsible felt free and entitled to impose their will on the rest of the party and look at where that got us.

Now. Both sides are guilty and we are in the process of leaving a financial and environmental mess for the Millennials to fix and leaving Millennials in a financial mess due to student load debt, exorbitant health and housing costs, stagnant wages because God forbid we raise wages and decrease shareholder value. It is a damned disgrace.

We aren’t being responsible for the environment, health care reform, fully funding education that will prepare people for the new and emerging economy, infrastructure, etc. Instead, we continue to fight the culture wars, trying to impose our will, our values, our understanding, our sense of what matters, our sense of morality, etc., on the other side who we view as ignant troglodyte morons upon whom we are entitled to impose our world view.

Point is that in our world, in our country, in our society we see a lot of tyranny – corporate, political, personal – and a lot of entitlement and lots of hand-wringing over it but very little in the way of responsibility – responsibly responding to the things that really matter most. Where is the seeking middle ground so we can come to some practical solutions? Freedom without responsibility becomes tyranny and freedom without responsibility becomes entitlement and that freedom to dictate to others and to be entitled has now becoming our prison. Time to respond and free ourselves before it becomes too late.

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling and life coaching services in Atlanta for the LGBT community. Also available by Skype. If you have questions, comments or want to find out about our services, please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com