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Quick Tips #10: Overcoming Perfectionism
Question: I set myself high standards and need to be "perfect" in everything I do. I'm very judgmental about myself and if I fail, I blame myself hard. How can I get out of this?
That’s a great question. The answer is a little bit different for INFJ types and INFP types.
INFJ types:
The judgmental part of you is coming from the 10 year old inner child’s position of accuracy.
The 10 year old inner child inside of you is a perfectionist and has been the predominant decision making process for quite some time. She is not used to having the inner parent, your harmony process, there to calm things down and take the stress away from the ten year old. Your inner parent, your extroverted feeling process, is not used as the most predominant decision making process.
What you need to do is to become better at using your harmony process, which is your extroverted feeling process.
Set boundaries. Not only with other people, but setting a very deep innate boundary, which is: “I am important”.
Learn to ask, how you actually feel about this and what you need to do for yourself. Anytime anybody is asking you to do something or you feel obliged to do things for other people, instead of just jumping into action, which is what the 10 year old usually does trying to please everyone and making sure every base is covered, you’ll use your harmony process to say: “Hang on a second. Before I jump into action, how do I actually feel about this and what do I need to do for myself? Am I tired, do I need to rest? Am I hungry, do I need to eat? Am I thirsty, do I need to drink?”. Tune into yourself first, and then make the decisions to help other people. And that’s how the inner parent’s harmony process starts taking the decision making power over from the 10 year old.
To summarize, you are being a perfectionist because you are letting your 10 year old make the decisions. Learn to use your harmony for decision making process and that should help.
INFP Types:
It’s your 3 year old inner child who is the little perfectionist running the show from a position of efficiency.
When your 3 year old inner child is in charge of your decision making, she is trying to make sure that all the ducks are in the row in the outside world. When things don’t go as planned, you get frustrated. Well, things don’t often go as you planned, because you planned them from a 3 year old’s perspective, which is your inferior process perspective. When making decisions from the 3 year old position, you are effectively asking that little perfectionist type to make decisions about your life.
What you need to do is to tap to your inner parent power, exploration, which is extroverted intuition.
Develop the extroverted intuition. Get your inner parent involved. Get them diving into the decision making process. Tell your inner child that instead of trying to control everything in the outside world, she should make a game out of it. Because for the little perfectionist, it’s all about gamifying whatever you are trying to achieve.
To summarize, you are being a perfectionist because you are letting your 3 year old make the decisions. Learn to get your inner parent involved in the decision making process and that should help.
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