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Is Perfectionism Killing your Progress?
September 16, 2022
Is Perfectionism Killing your Progress?
Hi My name is Coach Matt and I’m a recovering perfectionist”
*crowd* HIIII Coach Matt
Don’t laugh. I might not go to meetings but this is a real thing
Take a quick look at the gym’s social media channels and you’ll see accounts peppered with the words “winning” “excellence” “high standards” etc etc
And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I have my beliefs on training, helping people reach their goals and unlocking their potential
It’s also a lot to live up to.
And that’s where the monster known as perfectionism starts to rear its ugly head. This might seem like an abnormal thing for a coach to admit online but there have been (and sometimes still are) nights where I leave practice thinking
“ I didn’t explain that well enough”
“I should have done better with _________”
“I hope i didn’t let those guys down”
None of those things are true, btw, but this is the “disease” of perfectionism. It makes you doubt yourself, it brings on anxiety, and it makes you feel like a 1000 different people are better at doing something than you
It also impedes any progress you can be making because you become so hung up, so focused on doing thing perfectly that its all you can think about and you replay events and thoughts over and over, until you start to feel depressed about your progress and you think “I’m never going to get where i want to be, maybe i should just quit” and then your once promising grappling career is over.
So.What can we do about it?
First, understand that perfectionism is NOT a bad thing. extreme perfectionism is.
You should want to do your technique as well as possible. You should have high standards for yourself, you should want to be the best grappler you can be
It’s just not always going to happen.
You’re going to have bad reps of technique sometimes, you’re going to have an off day here and there, and some days, someone who you usually get the best of, is going to get the best of you
And.. that’s OK… you are never going to make it through grappling or life for that matter, unscathed. The best thing to do is realize it, accept it, and try to do better the practice or the next day.
You should view your perfectionism and the high standards that you set for yourself as the North star. The North star can guide you, it can show you the way, but it would be foolish to think you could ever actually reach out and physically touch it. That is exactly what extreme perfectionism is not just reaching for stars but setting the unrealistic expectation that one day you’ll be able to grab one and wrangle it in.
Instead, be an Optimalist.
Optimalist have the same big goals, the same high standards, and the same expectations as extreme perfectionist, but with ONE big exception; they EMBRACE the fact that on the road to their high achievement, there will be hard times, there will be losses, there will be bumps in the road and their will be failures, A perfectionist would just REJECT that those things could ever happen and then when they do it sends them into a tailspin.
Training in grappling is rewarding, its fun, its empowering but it can also be challenging and difficult just on its own. It becomes 10, 20, 50x, more difficult when you approach it from the perspective of perfection, thinking that you CAN’T make a mistake, that you can’t get tapped out, or end up in a bad position.
Not only CAN they happen they WILL happen,
But you can’t use that as an indictment, you need to see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to either see where you need to improve OR an opportunity to say “it was just an off day, i’ll be better tomorrow”
If you are able to keep your high standards, but mix in a healthy dose of reality, we can almost guarantee your training experience will be close to..
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