Developing Skills as a Perfectionist

If you are a student and your parents are not that strict, or your parents don’t work in the job that they studied in the university for, you have probably heard sentences like “You don’t have to be the best.” Or “Instead of focusing on getting straight A’s, you should try to find what you like.” If you ask me, I have heard a lot of those sentences. But we can’t really say I agree with them. Even though I’m not a straight-A student, I am obsessed with getting good grades and getting excellent results in tests. I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of someone being better than me about a topic I care about. I enjoy smelling the lamp and drinking an excessive amount of nescafe until I feel comfortable with the topic. When someone tells me I can’t achieve something, I get competitive. If you are a perfectionist and obsessed with proving people wrong, you will probably understand what I mean when I say pressure is essential for success. You are less likely to achieve something if you refuse to get out of your comfort zone. Because your brain will try to avoid all challenges happening outside of your comfort zone. It will do its best to stay there. That is the reason you get sleepy when trying to learn something or finally start a task you have been procrastinating for a while. Your brain tries to avoid work, making you think you don’t have enough energy for the task. As I said before, pressure is great for succeeding. But if you are the person who doesn’t know how to cope with pressure or stress, you may find yourself struggle. Some people like to spread the task and planning their time. And if that works for you, I can’t say anything. Because it is your way of learning and living your life. You may want to be a decent student with a decent success rate. You could be average on everything you do and still enjoy your living. But if you ask me, that is definitely not the only way to develop new skills. You could be out of your routine and still develop new skills. Even though I believe you could be the best at everything you do, you can’t be the best at every subtopic. What I mean by that is you could be a perfect student while being the best guitarist ever existed, but you can’t be the best guitarist and the best drummer at the same time. Your brain has a capacity of power that could be directed at the same topic. But you could use the excess power on other topics. They have to differ from each other. Which allows us to develop different skills.