How to Tell If You Are a Perfectionist in 10 Ways

Many people in our world today are perfectionists or have been perfectionists before. You can typically recognize a perfectionist easily because of the polarizing behavior displayed. Below are 10 signs:

1. A perfectionist is highly conscious and hyper-critical of any signs of mistakes. He/she has an extremely sharp eye towards details

2. A perfectionist targets to be the best in everything he or she does, even if it is something that he or she is not interested in.

3. A perfectionist often spends a lot of time to perfect something.

4. A perfectionist sets absolute ideals on things in life.

5. A perfectionist is the harshest critic of himself/herself.

6. A perfectionist mulls over outcomes if they did not turn out as envisioned

7. A perfectionist is not receptive when it comes to criticism and feels adverse towards failure because it suggests something he/she did was not perfect.

8. A perfectionist only has the end goal in mind. If he/she does not achieve the goal, it really does not matter what happens in the process

9. A perfectionist has an all-or-nothing approach.

10. A perfectionist is very sensitive about any situation which might give others the perception he/she is not perfect.

Does any of the above describe you?

I used to be quite a neurotic perfectionist when I was younger. All of the 10 factors above rang true for me. Whenever there was any little mistake that came in my sight, I would flinch.

When I was in university, I usually took over everything in project work because I wanted everything to match up to my visioned state. I spent a lot of time perfecting tasks, right down to the little nitty gritty. If it was a presentation, everything had to be matched to a same theme. If it was a report, all the material had to be seamless. There was never a chance to stop doing work because everything could always be better.

Whenever things did not go the way I wanted, I would overcompensate it by targetting a higher bar the next time. Whenever I hear people making statements like 'humans are not perfect', I would frown. I felt that was just trying to find an excuse to make mistakes. My philosophy was that perfection was possible and as long as we put in all our effort and energy, we would achieve it. If we did not, it simply meant we did not try hard enough.

It was later on in life that I found that perfectionism was crippling me and not helping me as you will find in part-2 of the series.

Hi! I'm Celes, life coach to live your best life. You just read an abridged version of an article I wrote about perfectionism. For the full article, read here: Are You A Perfectionist? at CelestineChua.com, my personal development blog to live your best life. For free, premium articles on how to live your best life, please check out my blog.

1) Part 1: 10 Ways To Tell If You Are A Perfectionist
2) Part 2: 6 Downsides of Perfectionism
3) Part 3: Overcoming Perfectionism in 8 Steps