Perfectly average

“You’re perfectly average.”

If you were told that, would it be an insult? For most Americans, being called average is the same as being called mediocre, ordinary, tolerable, or boring, and in today’s world, those are a disgrace. For instance, consider these statistics: A study of college students that ran from 1989—2017 revealed during that time there was a 30 percent increase in students’ belief that they must appear perfect for others to approve of them, and in the 1950’s, 12 percent of teens considered themselves to be “an important person.” By the late 1980s, 80 percent held that opinion.

So, we must be important, and we must be perfect.

These beliefs create an internal equation that can’t possibly add up. Every person makes mistakes, and most of us will never reach the “big leagues” in anything that we do. This misalignment between beliefs and reality leads to some interesting questions:

• Is perfection a reasonable goal for a specific endeavor?

• What does it mean about us and the tasks we take on, if we try our best but aren’t the best?

• Is it reasonable to believe that all that stands between us and a quick slide down the slippery slope of laziness and apathy is the pressure applied by endless expectations of excellence?

As a species, our progress from the savannah to the stars was only made possible by individuals and groups striving to be and do “more.” This curiosity, this yearning for growth, is to be celebrated and supported, but there is a tipping point when drive becomes destruction. It’s not necessarily the degree of a person’s ambition, however, that creates problems, it’s the way they react if they fall short of achieving their goals.

If personal perfection is the only acceptable outcome, that means:

• We have to limit ourselves to only doing things that are guaranteed to succeed.

• We must never be satisfied with “good enough” in any aspect of our lives.

These are both hallmarks of perfectionism, when someone sets unrealistically high standards and then feels worthless if those standards aren’t reached or unsatisfied if they are. Perfectionists are harmed by their pursuit of the unattainable because ultimately, there is no such thing as perfect.

It is possible to split progress apart from perfection.

By shifting our focus to include not just “Results” but also “Process.” On one hand, it’s important to keep an end result in mind, because it offers us a landmark to move toward. We can only plan effectively if we know what we’re planning for. We can only navigate accurately if we know where we want to go. On the other hand, paying attention to the process by which we choose to get there offers us opportunities to learn more about ourselves and our world. It’s even possible that what we learn will end up helping us to refine, or even change, our end goals.

Being curious about our objectives and the choices that will move us closer to or farther away from them is a very different experience from the unrelenting pursuit of an unreachable goal. Perfection demands everything all the time. Accepting averageness allows us to be kinder to ourselves and others. It’s possible to strive for improvement while we learn from mistakes. It allows us the opportunity to put forth great effort, in the face of knowing that we might fail, because we are confident that what we will learn from our failure will be worthwhile.

Being perfectly average isn’t an insult. Embracing “average” can allow us the freedom and the energy to grow in new and surprising ways!

Read the rest of January’s Topic of the Month newsletter to learn about the “Imposter Syndrome” and how consciously craving criticism is a good thing. Visit our website: www.sawtoothmountainclinic.org, and just put “topic of the month” in the search bar. That’s where you’ll find this issue, as well as our entire library of newsletters.