Dear person with high expectations:

There is no bigger critic in this world that could ever be as harsh to me as I am to myself. In a world of high expectations and high competitiveness, it is hard to not develop an extremely high standard for yourself. Perfectionism is not the proper term to describe this. No one word can ever describe living a life with impossibly high expectations for yourself and never being able to be satisfied with your final result.

It is staying up for hours typing a five-page essay, but repeatedly deleting the whole thing because you feel you can do better. You know deep down that you can do better quality work and even with tight deadlines and limited time, you still force yourself to produce better. When all's said and done, and that paper is turned in, you still worry that you did not do your best work and you feel you practically failed the paper. Once you find out you received a 95% on your paper, you still claw at yourself and dig for how could you have done better.

It is taking half an hour to do your make-up then wiping it all off in the end because it was not exactly what you wanted. It is obsessing over every fine detail about yourself. It is thinking about the way your voice inflection was and how could you have said "hello" better. It is putting so much focus into the way you are carrying yourself that you are missing what is happening around you. It is panic about not being good enough for yourself. It is beating yourself up because not even your best is good enough for yourself.

The battle you have with yourself daily is like trying to swim upstream and expecting to make it to the top of the river. You struggle, you fight, and you drown but you still expect to be able make it to the top regardless of what you have to give of yourself to succeed. You know in the back of your head that if you succumb to the current and float down the stream, you will save yourself that battle and still be fine. You know how to swim, you know how to survive, so float down the stream and enjoy the view. There comes a point when you need to accept trying your best. You need to put your expectations and standards into perspective and remember that you are enough and the work you produce is enough. It is great to have expectations for yourself, but don't tear yourself down in the process.

Sincerely,

A girl who has been/is there