Perfectionism is often a compliment and insult rolled into one. The positive side recognizes grit, focus, and determination. The negative context insinuates being rigid, anal, and overbearing. Aiming high is awesome, truly a great motivator and trait. However, demanding and, expecting, and only accepting perfection can hinder results, deflate joy, and lead to negative self talk.
Often perfectionists are driven by fear of failure as opposed to desire to succeed. A resounding fear of failure creates an unhealthy mindset. Take for example quarterbacks in football who are excessively fearful of throwing an interception. Their minds repeat, “Don’t throw an interception!” The human mind can disregard the first part of a message and overlook important early words in the sentence, like “don’t” and will only hear the second part, “throw an interception” in this case or even just “interception”. These don’ts are basic negative thoughts, and are very common for perfectionists fearful of failure.
Mistakes and problems will occur in races, training, and life, accept it, adapt, and just crush. For someone who is expecting perfection, these issues can have a huge influence and lead to a pessimistic view of self, performance, and abilities. Those who can cope with a “failure” or misstep are the ones most likely to succeed.
This attitude leads to negative self talk, which is hugely detrimental, particularly for perfectionists. Striving for an impossible goal, sets a person up for failure with the unattainable being what is desired, perfection. Subsequently, this will facilitate internal negativity and self doubt.
I saw a friend of mine who we’ll call “Heather” had just won a 100 miler. The conversation went like this:
“I heard you had a great race!”
“Yes, it went ok, I could have done better.”
“I hear you won it!”
“Oh yeah, well, yes, I did. And I guess it was a course record.”
“SUPER AWESOME SAUCE HEATHER!”
“Well, the record will only stand until someone breaks it.”
“Yes, like all records.”
She smiled and we high fived. She demonstrated the drive and mindset of many perfectionists. She is a wonderful human being, obviously talented runner, and is super healthy, yet this mindset can have negative consequences.
Negative self talk can derail performance, decrease results, and significantly hinder enjoyment. When the standard of success is the “perfect race”, and not just individual goals, results or feelings of accomplishment there is a lot to find wrong, which allows for negativity to creep in. Negative self talk is a leak in a foundation that needs to be avoided at all costs.
“Perfectionistic thinking has been assumed to play a powerful and debilitating role in sport competition. It has been suggested that perfectionistic athletes fear failure and mistakes to such an extent that their enjoyment of sports is greatly diminished and their performance is impeded” -Frost and Henderson, 1991
Even if you are an elite, competing for podiums and titles, you should still be enjoying yourself while participating. If that joy doesn’t matter to you, first, check yourself, second do it for your results!
When perfectionism starts to lead to negative self talk coming on try these tips:
- Say positive words out loud, replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, even if you don’t genuinely mean it at the time! Say three positive things about yourself.
- Replace negative thought words with positive thought words. Avoid saying, “Don’t trip, don’t burnout, don’t get distracted, don’t cramp.” Use the positive affirmatives, focus on the things you actually want to do. “Be cognizant of footing, maintain your pace, stay focused, hydrate to dominate!”
- Be realistic, not perfect. In every race something is not going to go as planned. A fall, lost trail, gross stomach stuff, all can happen. Prepare for these potential roadblocks, and don’t view them as failures, merely events in your journey. Realists will adapt and adjust better than perfectionists and this can be the difference between first and last or completion and DNF.
- You are the same (bad a**) person that started the race, the one that believed and knew you could do it. Get back to that mindset.
- Stop for a moment. Get your breath, oxygen can help us get back to the positive.
- Set multiple goals for an event. Don’t just set results goals, but qualitative goals as well.
- Practice gratitude, it will help to stay positive and shift focus to what you have and not what is lacking
You can be the most prepared athlete in the entire field, but spoiler alert: You are not perfect. Aim high, set huge goals, be super awesome, but remember we are all imperfect, and that is ok. Imperfect people have built the pyramids, hold every world record, and are our biggest heroes. It’s cool, just accept it and be the best version of yourself you can be!
Reference and Recommended Reading:
Frost, R. & Henderson, K. (1991). Perfectionism and Reactions to Athletic Competition. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 13(4), 323-335.
Going back to his days in High School as the mascot (Thor the Explorer) and co-founder of the “super fans”, supporting people has been in Drew Mikita’s blood. He loves to encourage people to strive for goals, push limits, and grow, challenging themselves to be better by focusing on the next right decision, whatever that may be.
