The curse that is 'Perfectionism'

Wikipedia defines perfectionism in two ways - Philosophical and Psychological. The philosophical definition is as follows: 'Perfectionism is the persistence of will in obtaining the optimal quality of spiritual, mental, physical, and material being.' But this is not the one which has provoked me to brand it as a curse. So lets now move to the culprit, which is the psychological definition. It goes something like this: 'Perfectionism, in psychology, is a belief that perfection can and should be attained. In its pathological form, perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable. At such levels, this is considered an unhealthy belief, and psychologists typically refer to such individuals as maladaptive perfectionists.' WOW! So I can add another adjective to my resume - 'Maladaptive Perfectionist'.

Have you ever, just once in your life, done something and thought, ' I could have done it better!'. Well.. If you are a normal human being with two hands, two legs, two eyes and a functioning brain, I am sure you have. Now how about feeling this way for every small thing that you do like, a phone conversation or making a list. Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to my world.

While everyone around me thinks that its great to be a 'perfectionist', like most people, they only look at in the philosophical sense. If only for a day they could live my life, they would realise what an absolute suffering it can be. Thinking about every small thing , not just thinking but it obsessing over it and coming up with thousand versions of how it could have been done is like overloading one's brain with the task of two. But sadly with the output of half.

There was a time when my 'perfectionism' was not OTT the way it is now, but that was a long time ago and if you are thinking that I would now list down the symptoms, then you are wrong pal, as I haven't figured them out themselves as yet. All that I can do for the greater good of humankind is warn the reader that, if you pride yourself on being a 'perfectionist' ..well that's great, but just not let it develop into the psychotic one ..OK!

In the end, I would like to conclude (rather abruptly) that I would rather be a happy imperfectionist than an unhappy perfectionist.

PS: Guess what I was thinking all the time while I was writing this post..' God! My writing is so cliche.. I need to better it.. Are the commas and exclamations at the right places.. Should I re-write this line.. Should I..........'