6 Ways to Heal Perfectionism

So let me ask you a question. Are you a perfectionist? All right, I'm going to back it up just a little bit from that. Do you have perfectionistic tendencies? You see, many times when I bring this subject up to people and see the patterns of perfectionism and say, "You need to be aware of this," I get a response back often, "I'm not a perfectionist, Mark. I'm not a perfectionist. I just like things to be just right." And that phrase right there really brings out the subtle work of how perfectionism underlies so much thinking in people's lives. Is this thought of, "I gotta have things just right. I gotta make my, I gotta make sure my thoughts are just right. I gotta make sure the way that I relate is just right. I gotta make sure my thinking is just right. Got to make sure my living is just right. I need my relationships to be just right."

Where do you find that kind of thinking flares up the most? If you find that, you'll find the influence of perfectionistic thinking. It comes up in a lot of different ways, and many times people don't allow the term to become a tool of awareness because perfectionism sounds like this very big, heavy term. And people say, "I, I don't, I don't think I want things perfect." But yet, their symptoms reveal perfectionism at work because of the term "just right." Anything's just right.

And so, if you want to notice perfectionism in your life, and today what I want to do is give you five or six things that I want to encourage you in in processing through perfectionism, but first, you gotta be able to be aware of it. You gotta first, number one, you gotta recognize that it's there. And recognition takes time. It took me a very long time to one day stop and go, "Oh my, I'm a perfectionist." And in one way, it was very sobering. And one way, it was like, "Wow, I need, this needs some work." In another way, though, it was empowering because I started, once you realize something's at work in your life, you start to see it. You notice it in your life. You notice the pressure you live under.

Where do you carry that pressure? Pressure to do things right? The pressure to get it done and get it done right? I think that Christians are very vulnerable to perfectionistic tendencies because if you take in the Bible, biblical precepts and understandings outside of love, grace, and relationship, you're going to stumble into, "I got to do everything just right." And I run into masses of people, and I've battled this myself. Retaken things of the kingdom of God, but you've got these thought patterns of, "I got to be good enough. I got to make sure I do it just right." And this pressure comes on you, this yoke that just really binds you and doesn't take the ways of the kingdom and let it land, the ways of Christ and let them land into your life. Because everything was meant to be learned in relationship. And there is this main foundational understanding of the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus where it's based on what He has done for us.

Perfectionism puts all the weight and pressure back on you. You better get it right. You better get it right, or else. And we get pulled into that. We're trying to fix ourselves. We're trying to, trying to serve God, and we're living in performance. And we get under that performance-based thinking. And then the law comes. When you invite just a portion of the law, you don't get just a portion. The whole thing just starts flooding in. Because in our performance and perfectionism, we will never measure up. It's, it's not about trying to achieve some measure of good enough. That's been removed. Now, grace points us to what He has done for us, and our lives are our response to that, living out of that, the beauty of that love, the beauty of that grace, and letting it flow through our lives and relationships. And letting the flood of God's love for us drown out the strongholds and thinking patterns of our life that often resist it. It's about learning to live in His love.

But procrastination won't let you re—I mean, procrastination, that's a whole other subject. Perfectionism won't allow you to be able to receive the love that God has for you. So there's this pressure. There's these unrealistic expectations. They get, they get distorted. Your, your interpretation of life, how you look at things, gets very pressurized. It's very black and white. You can develop an all-or-nothing mindset. Leaves you defeated. You get stuck in one ditch, and, and then you're trying to get free. You, you, you think you're going to go into another ditch. And He just doesn't let you get grounded. You always have this inner critic. It becomes a drill sergeant to your life.

And in my book, "God Loves Me, I Love Myself," I help people to realize that many times when we begin to understand our inner narrative, it's very hostile, very negative, very harsh, very condemning. And we live with that all day long. We tolerate it, but it fuels perfectionism. There can be this inward anger. You may be hard on other people, you may not, but when they're around you, they feel this pressure cooker. You're just under this intensity. If you have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, you have perfectionism, and you must, must recognize how it influences your life. And people who have type A personalities, people have anger issues, people who are high achievers, and they have their identity based on that, there's these performance perfectionism things that want to seek to infiltrate. And the word I said earlier, procrastination, certainly perfectionism will influence procrastination. You know, we're driven by a fear of failure. "I got to get things just right." And many believers and Christians live in a constant torment of, "I'm going to mess things up. I'm going to get it wrong." And they don't give themselves room to learn and to grow and to be able to enjoy the journey of learning that we are all very flawed, broken people in need of a Savior. And just because we accepted Christ into our life doesn't mean the journey's over. It just got started. And we're on this journey of discovering the beauty of this love, the beauty of this majesty and grace, and who God is in His mercy, and the fruit of the Spirit flowing in our life. All that's relational.

Perfectionistic thinking looks at the rules. "Give me the schematic. Give me the five things. Give me the three things. Give me the two things. Let's get this moving. Get this going." No. To heal perfectionism, we got to recognize how it's working against our life. Many of you have a scrupulosity or a religious kind of obsession that steals the joy of walking with God because perfectionism is the rule. And how does it develop? Well, it develops early on in our childhood and how we relate. Perfectionism became a survival mechanism by how I lived. It invited anxiety because I'm like, "I gotta get this right." And that, that value system then invites pressure. And with pressure comes fear. And I can't walk in relationship and grace. And very difficult to look at my flaws and mistakes. It's followed me a great deal of my life. The good news is, the more I recognize, and to this day, the more I learn to get free from it, the more cleared up I am. There's more peace. There's more joy because the pressure is taken off.

So I want to encourage you to recognize where perfectionism is in operation. I think self-awareness is important. To use a biblical term, discernment, where you're weighed down with this heavy yoke of burden. And Jesus would say, "Take my yoke upon you." And He's called His yoke easy. Why? Because your journey is looking to Him and learning. I'm learning at each stage. There's no pressure on me. He's leading the way. I'm with Him, and I get to learn. Perfectionism makes no room for that. Perfectionism is fueled by self-hatred. It's fueled by unworthiness. "I cannot be unconditionally loved unless I obey God, unless I get these things right, unless I make sure that my thoughts are correct." Many of you that struggle with intrusive thoughts or thoughts that spin and cause you to spin, perfectionism grabs onto it and says, "I must solve this. I must solve this." When you get free from perfectionism, it allows you to go, "No, I don't. Because I'm loved right now, and I can nurture myself, and I can begin to be kind to myself, and let go of this anger, and let go of this self-hate, and let go of this inner critic."

So I think first, you got to recognize that it's there. Secondly, I think what's important is that you have to get honest about your healing in this area. And I think what I mean by that is, what's the cost of living according to perfectionism? Because I find many perfectionists, they just stay in it and don't really, don't really recognize it as something that God needs to be involved in in healing. It's kind of, "Well, I'm a perfectionist, and just, well, that's, that's the way I'm going to be for the rest of my life." And so I find many times we don't, we don't move into the change that's needed until we soberly come to terms with what it's going to cost us emotionally, relationally, in our health and wholeness, in our journey. Like, what does it cost you in your relationships with this pressure? Does it make you a better friend? Does it make you more angry? Make you more irritable? More moody? Does it make you more stressed? Does it make you less of a gracious spouse, husband, wife, parent, mother, father, sister, brother? Does it make you a, a boss that's wonderful to work with, or does it make it challenging for people? They got to tiptoe around you because there's this pressurized thing in you. They don't know what's going to be happening or where you're spiraling in. And so I, I realized, you know what, this is taking from my, my peace. I feel tense all the time. I feel angry internally. Anxiety keeps hitting me. I feel obsessed about subjects. I can't get off of them. It's costing me. It's costing me these trails I'm going into. Those of you that have religious, you know, scruples and, and, and obsessive-compulsive patterns, people could tell you until they're blue in the face, "You don't have to keep going down this road." But you'll keep going down it because you're like, "No, this is a spiritual issue that I must." And sometimes we have to go, "Wait a second. This is costing me when I keep diving into these things and living in these compulsions and not allowing myself to carve a new pathway." So I think secondly is to really recognize, get honest about, what's this going to cost me? Fun. I don't address this.

Number three is, I want to give you this thought is to surround the way that this starts is not by trying to fix yourself. Because many people would try to get free from perfectionism by perfectionistic tendencies. "I gotta study. I gotta learn. I gotta get better. I don't wanna be a perfectionist. I gotta learn to go, Mark, which spoke, what book should I read? Mark, book, what video? Come on, 'cause I gotta figure, I gotta fix." Relax. What you need to learn is actually loving kindness, unconditional love, patience. That's what you need. And this can feel so weird and odd at first because you're used to living under pressure. No, nothing's ever good enough. Got to keep going. Got to keep doing. Got to fix those thoughts. I realized one of the greatest focus of healing for my life and journey was learning to surround my thought life with kindness. I needed to slow down, take the pressure off, and start learning to be kind, patient, because love is patient, love is kind. And I had to start learning to cultivate more loving acceptance to where I'm at, what I'm going through, rather than jumping to judgment, jumping to condemnation, jumping to the guilt, jumping to the shame. I had to learn a new narrative. I talk about total unconditional loving acceptance. T-U-L-A. Tula. Total unconditional loving acceptance. I totally and unconditionally lovingly accept myself right where I'm at. Because what I need more than anything else is love. Love will lead me into relationship, and I am changed in the journey of relationship development. You see, perfectionism says, "Step number one, you got to get all the rules. You got to get it right." And it keeps you in this loop and loop and loop and loop and bondage. God says, "Come into relationship and be loved. Walk with me. You can't help but experience change as you encounter His goodness and His love for your life." So the, the, the place of, of shifting is inviting love right where you're at. And for a perfectionist, it's very difficult because perfectionists do not know what it means to experience true unconditional love. They are always in go mode, always in performance, always trying to get things right.

Number four is, you're gonna have to start starving your motive of being pressurized to perform. And you're going to have to realize where you live in avenues of fixing. And you're going to have to start starving them and inviting love where you feel that need. "Not good enough. Got to make it just right. Got to make it just right." In starving it, you invite love. "I'm, I'm actually loved right where I'm at right now. I don't have to live under pressure, under this thing." Now, we live and move and have our being, right? We have stressful days. We have stuff that goes on, right? But day by day, we can learn to heal from the pressure. Jesus is not putting a weight of pressure on us. We come into agreement with pressure. Our ways of thinking lead us into pressure. You don't see Jesus living a life of pressure. And He invites you to do the same with Him. So you have to starve some of those patterns. What are those patterns that you live out of where it's not good enough? It's got to be just right? Because as you starve them, you say, "What do I do? I feel like I'm squirming." Right? In that squirming, you're uncomfortable with being unconditionally loved. And that's where we have to learn to practice, "I am loved right now, not because of what I'm doing or getting it just right."

The fifth thing I want to share with you is where this really, the rubber really hit the road in a whole new way. Is instead of running away from your weaknesses, trying to fix your weaknesses and all your flaws, I want you to learn how to embrace all of you. And when God looks at you and He loves you, does He love just the good parts of you that do well? Such a myth, right? Because we look at those parts and we, we can go, "That's, that's." And even perfectionists, in those areas, those areas are still not good enough, right? But does God just love those areas, or does He love all of you? See, sometimes in Christianity, we skip over things that are eternally important, so important for our journey. Does God love all of you? I can't hear you. Yes, He loves all of you. Can you take that mindset? Look in the mirror and give that to yourself? Because what I want to encourage you to do, instead of running from your weaknesses, hiding from your weaknesses, hiding from your past, hiding from your sins and mistakes and strongholds, give yourself a big hug and embrace all of it. Mark, how do I do this? How do I do this? Just practice. Just practice. When the disturbance and the anxiety comes up, and you feel this like need to run, instead, just embrace it. Give yourself a hug. Take this. Gonna sound so weird, yeah, I know. Hands here. Put your arms around you. Give yourself an embrace. When somebody hugs you and loves you and says, "Hey, you're wonderful. I appreciate you." Don't put your head down. Don't go, "If you, if you write something, somebody says, 'Hey, that writing was great.' If you sing something, somebody says, 'You're singing was great.' If somebody, uh, you put a video together and somebody says, 'It was great.' Or if you're at work and somebody said, 'Great job.' Or you cleaned a room and somebody said, 'Hey, great job.'" Don't dismiss it. Don't push it away. Accept it as a moment of gracious love being shown your way. Today's the day where we need to learn that God loves all of us, and He embraces all of you. Are you able to receive that hug from Him? Are you able to receive that embrace? For a perfectionist, that's so perf, that's so foreign, so distant. I didn't know what it was like to be loved just in who I am. And so being thrust into pastoral ministry at such a young age, my only way to relate to people was, "Make sure in ministry, I get everything right. My sermons just right. My presentation's just right. My meeting's just right. Activities got to be planned. Just, everything's got to be just right." And underlying all of that, "I'm not going to be accepted. I will be rejected." Because the only way I can relate to people, and how that followed my life, just invited so much torment. And my journey of healing was learning how to be loved by my Father in heaven right now, where I'm at. Learning to love myself with that love. And learning to love people out of the flow of what I'm receiving. Because I'm just learning. I'm flowing out of what I'm learning. Let's stop this performance thing. We're just constantly pouring out, pouring out, and ignoring ourselves and not knowing how to receive love from God. We've taught people that so much. I learned to love God by learning to receive His love. Learn to see myself the way that He sees me. I'm going to love you through that. And perfectionism won't let me. And it keeps bringing up flaws and bringing up weaknesses and bringing up things to accuse me. And instead of fighting back and arguing with them, oh, you know, sometimes we do that. Will you might fight with scriptures or things. And I understand. But sometimes I'll take the approach that Paul, the apostle, took when he was dealing with this thing he called the thorn, a thorn in the flesh, right? And Satan, the evil spirit, is just doing a number on him, and he can't shake it. You know what he said? "I'll start boasting in my weaknesses, infirmities." I'm just, he, you know what he did? He embraced the humanity and the weakness and the areas of struggle. You see, perfectionists, when they have a battle in their life, I want to figure out, "Where did this come from? How does it happen? Where to get here? I got to figure them out. I got to figure out the equation and the metrics. What's the technology to help me to get free?" And perfectionist, man, it's really difficult when you have something in your life, maybe it's an infirmity or a battle or a struggle, some kind of suffering that comes into your life, and it flips your equations. And now you're like, "I don't deserve this." And you're mad, and you're angry. It's causing you to just bend the knee and go, "All right, humble myself." And I, I'm gonna embrace all of me, not just some of me. God doesn't love just some of who I am. He loves all of who I am. He paid a price for everything in my life. And now I just need to learn to receive that. And I need to learn how to be loved and walk with Him in that. I need to learn who He is as a Father, not a taskmaster. And He's walking with me day in and day out. Where do you need to just embrace the weakness? Embrace the frailty. Embrace that you don't have it all together. Embrace it instead of fighting and arguing with it. And just embrace it. Yeah. As perfectionists, and people accuse you, you get really like bent out of shape, right? You want to defend yourself. Let's go. "Yeah, I hear you. I got flaws. It's all right. God's working on me." Oh, you see that? What that brings is grace. And we all have issues. We all have struggles. We all have battles.

I'm gonna add a sixth one here. And this is one of the top things that gets lost in perfectionism is joyous laughter. You and I need to learn how to laugh at ourselves. Not take yourself so seriously. When was the last time you looked at what you're battling and you chuckled? "Look at this crazy thought I got. Another one that came through today. Oh, silly thought. Oh, that was so fake. It was like a Santa Claus, right?" Maybe that's what you need to do. "Crazy thought comes through." Give it a big Santa Claus laugh. "No, Mark, this is about my salvation." Yeah, all the weight's on you. The way you're processing, all the weight on you, isn't it? Look at the fruit of it. Loss of joy. Like, "I don't, I need to solve this. I need to repent." Mark, Mark, Mark, you don't know the thought I just had. [Laughter] Just grab that belly, everybody in the video right now. Just stop what you're doing. Put your hand over your belly and just go [Laughter]. See what that does. See the, see, sometimes what you need in your spinning is you need to break your current physical chemistry state. Because when you're in these pressurized thought patterns, what do you do? You get in tunnel vision. You get serious. You get serious. You get serious. What you need, you know what you need? I'm gonna give you a spiritual, spiritual lesson right now. Are you ready? You need a joke. I mean, laughter. You need joy in your life. When you first bring laughter to a perfectionist, why do I know this so well? 'Cause that's, that's me. And my wife and I are both committed to each other. When the super seriousness takes over, we're going to exhort one another in laughter because we're gonna lighten this. Jesus Christ did not die on the cross and resurrect so that you and I would sit in these serious, "I gotta get all my life and my thoughts together." It's like, let's just go back to Old Testament living. Because at least then it was like, "All the rules." Where this is there wasn't going to fulfill it, but I got all the rules there, you know. And for many of you Christians, you got a list of all your rules that you're not qualifying, yeah, right? You can't. So quit trying and let grace enter into your life and be transformed in experience of His goodness and His love for you. But you gotta laugh. I think your homework assignment for this, if this at home for you, hands on your belly. Oh, and just laugh. Where's laughter in your life? Where does laughter need to return?

Well, if this hit home for you today, I'll share with you what changed my trajectory was this book, "God Loves Me and I Love Myself." This is where I began to confront perfectionistic tendencies, and it took me on a powerful journey. I'm never turning back because I've experienced tremendous freedom to be myself, to be loved, and let God's amazing power work in and through my life. If this video has been a blessing to your life, consider a one-time donation. Become a regular supporter. There's even two pathways in our transformational tribe where if you join the partnership, you get access to some videos and materials in my training course site. And it's a great way to support the ministry work. You can also go to the topic section where there are various topics and specific subjects. We have many, many videos and books and articles and materials that can help you in your healing and freedom journey. Anyways, ladies and gentlemen, it's been wonderful to share with your life and share what God has done in and through my life. Go live healed and free. Be loved. Go laugh a little bit. It's your brother from another mother. I'm out. [Music]