More on perfectionism

You know I'm always interested in the difference between perfection and striving towards excellence. I came across this passage in a book I'm reading by an author and creative writing teacher which I thought was profound. 

     "Nothing perfect is interesting. Sometimes a student who is struggling to get work to me will say, 'My problem is that I'm a perfectionist.' I always answer, 'Oh, you don't like to fail in public, unlike the rest of my us?' 

     'No, no,' they say. 'The problem is I'm my own harshest critic.'

     'If that were really true,' I will say, 'then you should have no trouble at all showing me your work.'

     I'm a perfectionist. They say it apologetically and boastfully, a character flaw that speaks of high standards. Not I'm better than you, but I need to be better than you. Nobody ever modestly said they were a perfectionist." from A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken (pp. 177-178)

What stopped me in my tracks was the idea that perfectionism isn't the need to do something perfectly, but really is the need to do something better than anyone else around. I don't know why I've never put those things together, but it makes so much sense. It also explains why I had negative feelings whenever someone humble brags about being a perfectionist. I knew it made me uncomfortable, but I could never put into words why that was. 

Here is another major difference between perfectionism and striving for excellence. If perfectionism is really a way of saying you need to be better than anyone else, exposing a very brittle sense of self, then working to excell, you are trying to become better at what you are doing.  This process involves critique, learning new things, asking for help, getting things wrong. Someone with this frame of mind isn't worried about others; more than one person can be excellent at something. Excellence isn't a limited commodity, perfectionism is.