{"id":28408,"date":"2025-01-29T08:19:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T14:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aae.org\/specialty\/?p=28408"},"modified":"2025-01-11T12:22:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T18:22:22","slug":"the-curse-of-perfectionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aae.org\/specialty\/the-curse-of-perfectionism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curse of Perfectionism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em>By Joel C. Small, D.D.S., MBA, PCC, FICD<\/em><\/p>\n

Professional athletes train to perfect their skills throughout their lifetime, and yet few of them can attain perfection. Olympic gymnasts, for example, spend hours upon hours in training to perfect their skills yet rarely achieve a perfect 10 score. Ty Cobb, a renowned baseball player, had a .366 batting average over 24 seasons as a professional player. This is the highest career batting average ever recorded in major league baseball.\u00a0 Even Babe Ruth, one of the most revered baseball sluggers of all time, had a career batting average of .342.\u00a0 To put this in a more understandable perspective, two of the very best batters in the history of professional baseball had successful at-bats a little more than one out of every three attempts, and yet they are, to this day, considered to be among the best to ever have played the game.<\/p>\n

What is it that allows professional athletes to continue their rigorous training and all that it entails when they find themselves incapable of achieving consistent perfection? \u00a0Perhaps they have a healthier understanding of their aspirations and goals.\u00a0 Perhaps they have accepted the reality that batting a thousand or consistently receiving a perfect 10 is unattainable and unrealistic.\u00a0 Recognizing and accepting this reality allows them to adopt more reasonable and achievable goals.<\/p>\n

Sure, they would love to be perfect in every aspect of their sport, but holding this unattainable goal of perfection as their standard has negative psychological consequences.\u00a0 Setting a standard of perfection and never being able to achieve it creates a state of cognitive dissonance and brings with it all the accompanying stress, frustration, and loss of self-esteem. \u00a0Rather than setting perfection as their standard, most successful athletes set a more realistic goal of constant improvement.\u00a0 Quite simply, their goal is to be better tomorrow than they were today.<\/p>\n

Dentists and other health care professionals would be much better off adopting a similar mindset.<\/p>\n

We have seen too many of our colleagues suffer the ravages of perfectionism, as they seek validation and self-esteem through perfection. Ultimately, they suffer the severe, and predictable psychological consequences when they fail to achieve the unachievable.\u00a0 This is a no-win scenario with a significant downside.<\/p>\n

Dentistry is a highly skillful and precise profession in which perfection is often the difference of a millimeter or two.\u00a0 Furthermore, factors beyond our control often limit our ability to achieve clinical perfection.\u00a0 How we view this reality is critical.\u00a0 Do we accept our imperfection knowing that we gave our very best effort to achieve an optimal result, or do we demean ourselves and find ourselves unworthy or not enough?<\/p>\n

The truth is that we were trained to be perfectionists, and yet we live in an imperfect world where perfection is seldom attained.\u00a0 Being a perfectionist in an imperfect world creates an incongruous reality in which a gap exists between where we are currently and where we ideally want to be.\u00a0 Closing the gap is only possible if the preferred reality is attainable.\u00a0 Otherwise, our inability to close the gap creates ongoing mental anguish.<\/p>\n

Holding ourselves to an unachievable standard will often result in depression, severe burnout, drug and alcohol abuse, stressed relationships, and loss of self-esteem.\u00a0 It is not uncommon for colleagues to suffer from \u201cimposter syndrome\u201d when they consistently fail to meet an impossible standard, and therefore feel unworthy and diminished.\u00a0 Sadly, some of our colleagues have left our profession because the psychological consequences of perfectionism were more than they could bear.<\/p>\n

Rejecting perfection as our standard does not mean that we submit to imperfection or accept mediocrity as a new standard.\u00a0 In fact, striving for constant improvement is a much healthier and more realistic goal that recognizes our professional development as an ongoing journey.\u00a0 This mindset, often referred to as a \u201cgrowth mindset\u201d, acknowledges that we are constantly in a state of imperfection as we continually seek more knowledge and skill.\u00a0 Scaling our capabilities and capacity to meet the changing technical demands of our profession is a life-long endeavor which requires continual learning and adjustment. In today\u2019s world it is an organizational imperative if we are to remain relevant.\u00a0 Believing that perfection is an end point or achievable destination, however, shuts down future growth because there is no motivation to grow beyond perfection.<\/p>\n

It has been my experience as a professional healthcare coach that the happiest and most successful doctors acknowledge their shortcomings but refuse to be psychologically victimized by them.\u00a0 Instead, they are constantly seeking self-improvement through continuing education and other means of self-enrichment.\u00a0 Like professional athletes, they too would like to be perfect in every aspect of their profession, but they refuse to let imperfection serve as an excuse to quit trying to be better tomorrow than they were today.<\/p>\n

Dr. Joel C. Small is a board certified executive leadership coach for Line of Sight Coaching.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joel C. Small, D.D.S., MBA, PCC, FICD Professional athletes train to perfect their skills throughout their lifetime, and yet few of them can attain perfection. 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