Perfection? Or fun!

How do you handle making mistakes? How do you handle other people making mistakes? Do you have unrealistic expectations of yourself or others? These may seem like silly questions, but your attitude toward your own and others’ imperfections can really get in the way of your enjoyment of your life!

Where did you get those expectations?

You may think you were born with your expectations, but you were no more born with these than Athena sprang fully formed and in battle armor from the head of Zeus in Greek mythology.

Your expectations are shaped by the important adults in your childhood, a phenomenon that is true for all of us. Think of it: how did you learn to speak your native language? Did your parents tell you where to place your tongue in order to form certain sounds and words, or did they just speak to you and others and you mimicked their sounds?

Some parents are very direct with their children about their  agendas: you need to marry by age 30, or become a doctor, or have a large family, or learn multiple languages, or earn straight As, or run marathons, or be more financially successful than me, or not outshine me, or have a body that’s a certain size, etc.

Other parents don’t voice these agendas, but the child still gets the message through the parents’ attitudes and other nonverbal communications. These expectations can take myriad forms, none of which are truly about the child.

You may adopt your parents’ expectations as your own and live your life accordingly, or rebel against their expectations and tell yourself that you’re not knuckling under to them. But both paths are still more about your parents than about you, whether you’re defining yourself through conforming to your parents’ ideals or in opposition to your parents. 

So about those mistakes…

Everyone with a pulse makes mistakes, which is another way to say that’s how you know you’re alive: you make mistakes. It’s part of being human.

But if your parents withdrew their love or froze you out when you made mistakes, you may beat yourself up when you make mistakes, thereby killing your buzz, rather than just accepting your mistake and learning from it. And you may be intolerant of others’ mistakes, withdrawing your love, freezing them out, or beating them up emotionally as your parents may have done to you.

                                              …we all make them!

But does making a mistake mean you can’t still enjoy your life? Will you let yourself have a good time despite being a human being like the rest of us, or will you obsess over your mistake and shut down your good time?

When tennis star Serena Williams was at the top of her game, no one could beat her—except herself. When she made a mistake, she couldn’t let it go and move on to the next serve, game, or set.

“Needing” to be exceptional

On a bad day you could watch her destroy herself from the inside, an effect of being raised by her demanding abusive father. His words were still in her head, it seems, telling her she wasn’t living up to her potential—or his demands!—that she wasn’t good enough.

A classical pianist I know who played in international competitions and aspired to be a concert pianist was the oldest of three musical sons. They were raised by a musician father who was verbally and physically abusive.

The pianist I was friends with played beautifully—when there was nothing at stake but the love of music. In recitals and competitions, he would have memory lapses and, like Serena Williams, would obsess and berate himself.

I remember hearing him mess up a competition performance, thereby not advancing to the finals. The next afternoon, the pianists who weren’t finalists were invited to each perform one piece. My friend played beautifully and had no memory lapses. His father wasn’t in his head for the low-stakes performance.

How expectations play out for the rest of us

You don’t have to be exceptionally talented like Serena and my friend to kill your buzz. At any skill level you can take away your pleasure in life by unconsciously parroting your demanding parents’ disappointment in your failure to measure up to the standards they taught you to expect of yourself.

The punitive stance creates anxiety and kills fun

That punitive stance toward yourself is something that destroys your pleasure, and, when turned on others, can be quite damaging. If you’re worried you won’t measure up, you probably feel very anxious. And remember, you can’t be an anxious happy person anymore than you can be a depressed happy person. They don’t go together!

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