Something always felt off when labeling my internal benchmark as perfectionism, and seeing as a remedy doing away with ideal imagined end states and outcomes as such a benchmark. Last year summer I realised how those imagined ideal end states are to me also the key source of creative energy and of agency.

In my work to recover from burn-out and reorient myself on things that provide energy rather than drain me, I have identified three things to help me align my activities better with the way my mind functions.
Those are:

• Substance and exploration come first
• Peers for quality of work and being challenged
• Ideal end states as source of creativity (this post)

This post looks at the last of those three, affirming and repurposing my internal imagery of ideal situations as a source of energy, rather than as always failing an internal benchmark and energy draining perfectionism.

The internal benchmark

Yes, I’ve always had a harsh internal benchmark by which I measure the quality and value of an outcome. Outcomes are either as they should be, and therefore neutral, or below that. As the ‘should be’ is in comparison to an ideal imagined end state, that is never attained.
As a kid this had utility, my internal dialogue was always in ‘strict parent’ mode, and it ensured that whatever feedback or criticism I received on anything from others was always milder than I had already worked through internally and thus easier to deal with. It was a ‘solution’ to receiving criticism.
It also meant it kept me from starting things however, self-limiting my agency. If it is a given nothing would live up to the ideal of it, why even begin? The internal benchmark also kept me from finishing something I did start, both because as long as it didn’t reach the internal benchmark it wasn’t finished, and because as long as it wasn’t finished there would be no external criticism.
The ‘fix’ for that over time was postponing the starting point until something was urgent, and then do the best possible within that remaining restricted time. The social expectation of delivering when promised trumped the perfectionism. Then, of course any output is a far cry from the ideal, but is it the best possible due to the force majeure of the time constraint. When the results are then accepted by others, I ‘got away with it’.
It also made it hard to accept or even hear compliments, as others apparently had no clue as to what it could have been. Had they known they wouldn’t be glad with the results. QED.

The general advice for counteracting such perfectionism and strict internal yardsticks has been to ignore or do away with the ideal imagined end state.
That always sounded off to me.

Imagination isn’t fantasy, it’s tangible

Because those ideal imagined end states aren’t fantasy, they’re tangible even if unattainable from here and now. That’s why they can function as yard sticks. Imagining, projecting things forward, is not just a fancy. It’s how to plan things and probe into the unknown, it’s how to spot what is missing and where connections are lacking, what open questions exist. In short imagining ideal end states is a source of creativity, of agency and of seeing opportunities, and thus of curiosity, sense of wonder, and motivation. An internal source of energy that is independent and autonomous w.r.t. the rest of the world.

And one point my therapist last year asked if I could position that imagined ideal as an attractor in its own right, as opposed to try and throw it out because of me using it as the harshest of yard sticks. That clicked immediately.
That imagined ideal world is something I see as an actual overlay when I look around me. Layers of meaning, webs of connections and holes in them, hills and shallows of potential. An overlay that is tangible to me, and which I automatically start extending, projecting, and weaving into the future when someone asks a question, phrases something in a way that allows for new associations, or makes a suggestion. An overlay that makes me formulate my own questions, makes me take an interest in topics. Layered meanings, complexity, are key in my sense of beauty and wonder.

Use imagination, just not as yardstick

Certainly not something to throw away. But something to disconnect as yardstick from any specific deliverable or outcome, and let it stand as the energy source it is.
My imagined ideal world can serve as my macroscope, something that shows the small and the holistic simultaneously in a a way that you can feel. And because it is built out of real blocks and tangible to me, systems convening can serve as a language to describe it. Systems convening (PDF by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner) is a way to work towards change and social learning, in which a social landscape depicting the world as you see it, including your own position and role, is a tool to spot where fruitful interventions may be possible.

Any project I take on still has an internal benchmark, seperate from what others involved think of it, but it’s not the entirety of an imagined ideal end state, it’s whether projects have produced some change in the wider landscape towards it. What role in terms of systems convening was a project meant for? Did it fulfill that role at least somewhat?
I’ve long been working this way already: projects I took on were generally of interest to me because of its wider context, less because of the immediate required results by a client, although it also always needed to do that, as they do go hand in hand. But the above makes it less a sensed connection to a wider context and more a thing to reflect on more purposefully and make explicit before taking on a project.

So that my imagined ideal end states can serve as source of energy, creativity and agency, so that I can let exploration come first because it plays an important role in my own understanding of the imagined ideal world I see around me, and so that I can seek out professional peers to nerd out with because they too have a role to play in that landscape, even if not in any specific current project.

My burn-out was largely caused by external stressors that weren’t very explicitly visible until recently, but made worse by some longstanding behaviour and patterns on my end. The three elements listed above I think point to better mental health, and aren’t based on keeping some patterns I’ve been well aware of for decades merely at bay until they become problematic again, but on putting these newer patterns into the spotlight more, in competition with them.

I wanted to work on them ever since last year summer, when I was able to describe them to myself clearly. However dealing with the external sources of my stresses took center stage since then. With those behind me, I want to explore these three patterns more concretely after the summer break.