You can be a high-achiever without being a perfectionist. People who accomplish plenty and stay emotionally healthy tend to exhibit the following behaviors:
1) Set standards that are high, but achievable.
2) Enjoy the process, not just the outcome.
3) Recover from disappointment quickly.
4) Are not disabled by anxiety and fear of failure.
5) View mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning.
6) React positively to constructive feedback.
(Garett Coan)
The perfectionist on the other hand constantly chases after success and struggles to achieve it. However, there are some exceptions to the rule. Some perfectionists do have success, but no matter what they do, they never feel satisfied with themselves because they never feel “good enough”. One good example is the very famous actress Maryl streep who said at one time that when rehearsing a scene she is mad at herself for not getting the exact emotion she wants to express in that particular scene.
Even someone as accomplished as Maryl Streep admits she has ‘varying degrees’ of confidence and self loathing…‘You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent. It could be about not feeling able to achieve a certain scene or about an emotion you feel you weren’t able to get to…or that you’re boring and they’re going to find out that you don’t know what you’re doing…any one of those things.
(Douglas Eby)
How Does High-Achievement Help Clients Become Empowered?
Striving for high-achievement will help clients have an easier success process. Stress level drops and focus increases towards doing the best you can rather than try to achieve the sky.
High achievement helps clients succeed because they concentrate on the task they have in hand. They learn to develop strategies that help them take small steps to achieve their goals and learn gradually how to shift their perspective of focusing on mistakes and see what really works. These individuals learn that mistakes are really not mistakes, but life lessons, to show them their greatest potential.
Unlike perfectionists, high-achievers accept that making mistakes and risking failure are part of the achievement process and part of being human.
(Garett Coan)
All the great people made mistakes like people who gain weight and then sometimes they can use mistakes to help others prevent them and therefore inspire other people. High achievement focuses clients on concentrating on the process and enjoying it rather than focusing on an end result.
Perfection on the other hand is very stressful and demanding. Client becomes very tough on himself. He sets very high goals that are often very hard to achieve. Client demands more and more of himself until exhaustion. In turn client has extremely high expectations of a certain result and when he can’t achieve those expectations, he feels disappointed, angry and sad. He sees himself as inadequate and even feels like a total loser. The perfectionist is never satisfied with his work even if other people around him might say it is good. In that case he may feel momentarily gratification, but then go back to filling empty and unfulfilled and not “good enough”. The perfectionist constantly beats himself up and wants more and more, hoping desperately to reach a degree of flawlessness.
There are some perfectionists who are very successful and a little bit of perfectionism is needed in high-achievement. The difference is that it is good as long as it isn’t an obsession.
Healthy criticism can help refine our talents and creative projects in the pursuit of excellence. But when it is based on excessive perfectionism or an unrealistic self-concept, criticism can be constructive and self-limiting, ending our creative assurance and vitality.
(Douglas Eby)
What happens with perfectionists is that they use perfectionism as an obsession while high-achievers use it to excel and do an excellent job, but they know where to draw the line.
High-achievers accept the flow of life and follow it. They know how to deal effectively with unplanned circumstances and adapt easily to it while perfectionists panic when something unpredictable comes in and often times they feel lost, not knowing how to adjust.
There are also some perfectionists whom their degree of fear is so high that they constantly fail at everything. These perfectionists struggle hard to succeed and work very hard, but get no where. Why? Because they don’t know how to overcome their fear and what happens is their fear grows and grows until it becomes what the author of this essay calls: “emotional paralysis”. In this situation, the person is so stuck they don’t know how to get out of this painful cycle, and therefore cannot move forward.
How Can the Coach Help Client?
The Coach comes in to help client to gradually get from being a perfectionist to be a high-achiever. He teaches the perfectionist to be softer with himself.
The perfectionist lives with a lot of guilt, stress and overwhelm because the perfectionist wants to achieve as many things as possible. The coach gently helps the perfectionist to make choices and priorities to first reduce the overwhelm. The Coach guides client to take small steps towards making choices and priorities that are aligned with him. The coach does that by helping client set a goal each week and guiding client to make 3 priorities for that specific week.
Next coach asks client to find ways that he is comfortable with to reduce his feeling of guilt for not doing other tasks. Coach asks client to find steps to keep himself accountable and asks client to set specific dates and times to accomplish tasks.
Sometimes clients have fears, so coach will assist and guide client to unveil the fear that stops him from taking an action and moving forward. Coach does that by asking client the following questions:
- What is the worst thing that can happen if you do take this action?
- What opportunities are you losing if you don’t take this action? (Jillian Micheals, 2011)