Perfectionist fantasies--we all have them whether we know it or not. These fantasies in which we are perfect. Fantasies in which we paint ourselves in a perfect light in some aspect of our life whether it may be at work, our marriage, our fitness journeys, or whatever it may be. It's believing that if we are perfect in some aspect of our life that we can finally be proud of ourselves because we achieved perfectionism in some form. As we create these perfectionist fantasies, we continue to make justifications in our mind as to how these fantasies are reasonable goals. We make detailed plans as to how we can achieve these fantasies yet we always fail to follow through with them. We continue to push it off.
"I'll start tomorrow."
The infamous last words that make these fantasies fantasies and not realistic goals. We get a dopamine high as we sit and plan ourselves accomplishing these goals and envisioning the end goal. When it comes time to follow through with the plan, however, we either give up at the first sign of hardship or we just never start. This starts becoming a cycle as we create perfectionist fantasies, get a dopamine high from thinking of that life for ourselves, then never following through. This cycle causes us to lose integrity with ourselves. How can you depend on yourself if you don't follow through with any of your plans to achieve your goals? Goal setting starts to be done in our fantasy lives instead of reality. As soon as we make a plan we know we aren't going to follow through with it because we become scared at the slightest sign of difficulty or hardship. We become so addicted with our fantasy lives that we lose sight of reality and living in the present. We would rather plan 20 things that can't be accomplished and get that dopamine rush rather than being realistic with ourselves and setting reasonable, achievable goals.
There's a solution to stopping your perfectionist fantasies. The main concept is being able to tell the difference between a perfectionist fantasy and an actual goal that you have set for yourself. For example, an actual goal may be that you want to be the CEO of a company and you create small goals in your mind of how to achieve that. A perfectionist fantasy may be that you want to own a company but you haven't thought of the process of getting to that point. You only think of the end result, and once you're asked to start making plans to achieve that goal, it's difficult because it's just a fantasy. The first step in solving perfectionist fantasy thinking is by setting small, achievable goals for yourself every day/week/month. If you want to lost weight but the thought of going to the gym 5 times a week scares you, plan to go once a week instead. By creating small goals for yourself and achieving them, you are building up your integrity with yourself. You will be able to depend on yourself more to achieve your bigger goals.
So set a small, achievable goal for yourself TODAY! Achieve it TODAY! There is no better time to achieve your goals than today because tomorrow is just a fantasy while today is reality.
