Perfectionism VS. Self-Acceptance: How To Find A Balance?

In 2025, the world is more competitive than ever. No matter what field you wanna work in, there are hundreds or thousands of other applicants, meaning you need to put in more work than ever to stand out. At your job, you can’t afford to make mistakes if you want that promotion. Even in personal relationships, you don’t want to date someone with no ambition! While these are understandable, a mental outlook on life centered around perfectionism and being the best of the best can take its toll. 

Before perfectionism is able to burn you out, it’s vital that you understand and practice self-acceptance. We’ll explore in this article why this is so essential.

Is Perfectionism a Bad Thing?

Perfectionism is the pursuit for flawlessness. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, when you make an attempt at something, you should give it your all, and you should want the end result to be as good as it can be. This is the key phrase you want to focus on- ‘As good as it can be’. Perfectionism is often considered a negative thing because it’s accompanied by critical, often unjustified self-evaluations as well as being obsessively concerned about others’ evaluations of you. Let’s explore how perfectionism can negatively impact you:

• Perfection paralysis: Perfectionists try to avoid criticism and failure wherever they can, which leads to a mentality where if they think something can’t be done perfectly, it isn’t worth doing. This leads to them putting off tasks and procrastinating, costing them valuable opportunities for growth and improvement.
• Anorexia nervosa: Perfectionism has been linked to anorexia nervosa in research for decades. The level of perfectionism was found to have an influence on an individual’s long-term recovery of anorexia. Perfectionism is usually present before the onset of the eating disorder, generally in childhood, during the illness, and after remission. The relentless striving for thinness among anorexics is a manifestation of this personality style, which is an insistence on meeting unattainably high standards of performance.
• Relationship strain: Perfectionism in relationships can often manifest as unrealistic expectations of your partner. This could be in their behavior, the way they dress and present themselves, being overly critical, and even being controlling and micromanaging. Over time, this will erode the relationship.
• Rigid mindset: It becomes difficult to have different perspectives once you’re stuck in the mindset of perfectionism. You’ll find it difficult to adapt to change or learn from experiences, which will limit your personal growth and reduce your overall life satisfaction.
• Burnout: By constantly setting high expectations of yourself, coupled with the stress and anxiety of not meeting the expectations you’ve set, you’ll become mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. You’ll feel less of a drive to take on new projects or complete new tasks.

Why is Self-Acceptance Vital?

Self-acceptance doesn’t mean to give up and just settle for what you are right now. Self-acceptance is to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and having realistic expectations of yourself. Achieving self-acceptance can be quite difficult if you’ve spent most of your life being a perfectionist, which is why TheLiven app has courses on self-acceptance which will help you overcome your perfectionism bit by bit with each day. By not putting too much on you at once, you’re far more likely to make steady progress. Now, let’s take a look at the many forms in which self-acceptance can arise:

• Assess what your talents and capabilities are, and understand that they intrinsically have value regardless of how proficient you are.
• Accept yourself for the good and the bad, and be happy with who you are as a person.
• Understand that you cannot change your past actions so there’s no point in dwelling over it, but you must learn from it going forward.
• Acknowledge your shortcomings so that you can work on them, but don’t become overly critical of yourself because of them.
• Not allowing your opinion of yourself to depend on the approval of others.
• Not defining yourself based on just one aspect of yourself or an incident you went through.

Now that we know what self-acceptance looks like, why is it so important? Self-acceptance is vital for your mental and emotional well-being. By not accepting yourself for who you are and the capabilities you have, you risk experiencing low self-esteem, which can then lead to a negative self-image and even anxiety.

Finding a Balance

As we mentioned before, it is important to strive for perfection. You should want to be good at the things you do, and if you aren’t, you should be trying to better yourself. The problem starts when you set unrealistic expectations for yourself and become overly critical of yourself. Let’s take a look at a few ways where you can mix healthy ambition with self-acceptance:

• Set healthy boundaries, but don’t fall into a rut: It can be tempting to accept responsibility for things within your family and work, but it’s important to recognize how much you can do without burning yourself out, and saying ‘no’ to the rest. Saying ‘no’ can feel difficult, especially if you grew up being a people-pleaser, but it’ll stop you from being mistreated and being taken advantage of.
• Forgive yourself, but take accountability: Mistakes happen. Dwelling over them serves no one, so accept that it happened, forgive yourself for it, and try to do better in the future. It’s important that you don’t act like it didn’t matter, however.
• Compare yourself to your past, not others: As the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing yourself to other people who have had entirely different circumstances isn’t fair to you. As long as you’re a better version of yourself than you were in the past, you’re making positive progress.
• Focus on the good: Even in projects that end in failure, there’s always a silver lining. If you took on a new endeavor that you had no experience in for the first time and it didn’t end well, try to focus on how far you came and what you learned. The next time you attempt it, you’ll go even further.

Conclusion

Perfectionism is unavoidable in this day and age, but learning to restrict it to a healthy ambition is the only way you’ll be able to stay mentally and emotionally healthy. Practicing self-acceptance is how you’ll achieve this outlook on life. Thanks to platforms like TheLiven app, you’ll be able to practice self-acceptance on a daily basis through unobtrusive tasks and courses, allowing you to improve your wellbeing a little bit more with every passing day!