The Cost of Chasing Perfect: Why Perfectionism Holds You Back From Success
The Cost of Chasing “Perfect”
Photo Credit: Prostock-Studio via iStockPhoto.com
By: Jamila Gomez
Perfect sounds good in theory. It promises security, approval, and the sense that once you finally achieve it, you’ll be able to breathe easier. But the truth is, chasing “perfect” doesn’t deliver freedom. It delivers exhaustion.
Perfection is a moving target. You think you’ve reached it, but then the bar shifts again. Someone else posts something shinier. You notice one more thing to fix. You tell yourself, If I tweak just this one detail, then I’ll be ready. That cycle never ends. One “fix” becomes ten, and suddenly weeks or even years have passed. The project never gets finished. The relationship never moves forward. The dream stays stuck in rehearsal mode.
And the price isn’t only time. The deeper cost is your energy. The energy you could have used to live, to try, to share, to create without apology. Perfectionism siphons all of it into polishing edges most people won’t even notice. You end up drained, and ironically, you still don’t feel satisfied. What was supposed to bring pride ends up leaving you empty.
The harder truth is this: chasing perfect is almost never about standards. It’s about fear. Fear of being judged. Fear of not measuring up. Fear that if you show up with anything less than flawless, you’ll be exposed. But here’s the trap—the longer you wait for perfect, the more invisible you become. Nothing gets shared. Nothing gets said. Nothing gets lived.
Think about how much of your life has already been swallowed up by “getting ready.” The ideas you never pitched. The words you never published. The conversations you rehearsed in your head but never spoke out loud. The opportunities you let pass because you didn’t feel polished enough yet. That’s the erosion of perfectionism—it steals moments that will never come back.
The alternative isn’t settling for sloppy. It’s choosing momentum over paralysis. It’s admitting that “done” matters more than “perfect,” because done gives you something to stand on and something to build from. Perfection keeps you locked in theory; movement creates proof. And once you have proof, you can refine. You can grow. You can keep moving forward without waiting for permission from flawless.
And here’s the piece we forget: people don’t connect with perfect anyway. They connect with presence. They connect with honesty. They connect with seeing someone risk showing up as they are. The cracks are where the light gets in, and those cracks make you relatable in ways perfection never will.
Perfect will drain you. Honest will sustain you. And every time you choose presence over perfection, you get your energy back—and with it, your freedom to keep moving.
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