Thomas Curran

And so we go about our whole life trying to disguise, hide.

And all of that ego and all of that high standards and all of that striving is really a cloak.

um, of sort of, you know, hyper-functioning competence or whatever you might be for, which disguises a, um, you know, a fragile, um, and insecure, uh, person underneath.

And so when, and that's the problem with perfection, because whenever things, whenever cracks are revealed, whenever we show some weakness, limitation, shortcoming, or we, we just fail, um, then that exposes those inner, inner deficiencies that we are so intently trying to disguise.

So, you know, that self-criticism,

That self-loathing, the perfectionism that people feel a lot comes from chastising yourself because you've shown that vulnerability, you've shown that weakness to the world.

Now everybody's watching, now they're judging you and they're going to criticise.

And so that's really like, if you want to really get another perfectionism, it's that deficit thinking around that I'm not perfect enough, I'm not good enough and I have to prove to everyone and all around me that I'm perfect.

That's where it comes from.

yeah i mean that's basically my whole research career really just thinking oh everything i thought everything i thought was helping me is actually what's creating a lot of the um uncertainties and insecurities which are ultimately um not making me happy right like and there is there is an argument like to a certain extent that you know this kind of thinking can carry you forward the problem is it's not sustainable

So, you know, you can get a few quick wins, but perfectionism pushes you to the nth degree and then further.

Right.

So you're sacrificing areas of your life, which are really important.

Time offends family in your communities and all the rest of it.

Good diet, good exercise and all the rest of it.

um whilst at the same time harboring all these doubts and all these worries about you know what people are thinking and you know this is by the way this is this this is everybody right now it's not just people in the you know the creative industries the arts uh people writing books or doing before uh um uh producing shows or comedy sketches or the rest of it because you know we know this you know we put work out into the world it is fed we get feedback instantly

know somebody in the guardian or the times is having is having their say and we got no control over that but we got it you know we just got to take it and if it's good if it's bad if it's mixed we you know we've got to listen to it um now that used to be quite unique to our industries but actually you're starting to see that now for all industries you know if you're a builder for instance you do a job someone's on my builder

writing up whether they thought they were happy with it or not the next day.

So you can't escape this kind of sense that no matter how well you do, someone's always there waiting to let you know.

And if you do something good, that's great.