Mind

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded." - The Dhammapada
"If you're not first, you're last." - Ricky Bobby
Perfectionism, like most "isms" causes great harm. There is a difference between taking pleasure in doing well and being attached to doing well and allowing your happiness to be controlled by how others percieve how you perform.

I have a really fast dog. We like to play agility. When we make it through a course, we usually get first place.  I make it through a course more often that not. The rest of the time it's usually a comedy of errors involving getting lost, knocking stuff over, forgetting the rules, getting barked at, not hearing buzzers telling me it's time to finish, etc.

I started playing agility as a way to have fun with my dog and to spend time with friends.  When my dog's potential became clear, it turned into something else: Every run had to be perfect.

Never mind that there is no such thing as a perfect run. Never mind that even the best handlers often have lackluster performances. Never mind that the dog could care less how they do as long as they're spending time doing something they love.

Often I let my happiness be defined by the following criteria:
1. Whether we ran "clean"
2. Whether we got first place or not
3. Whether others noticed how well we did
4. Whether we ran without a single imperfection, even if criteria 1-3 got met

During the times that I held myself to these unrealistic criteria, would lose sight of the joy of running around with my dog and this would actually lead to worse performance.

I thought that there was something wrong with me and actually got a self-help book targeted to canine sports competitors (yes, there is actually that niche) and in reading this, I realized that perfectionism was indeed my problem.

Over time, I changed my way of thinking to focus on having fun with my dog, to using competition as a way to know what to work on when we practice, to appreciate when we do well, and to learn when we don't, and to define success differently. 

We still have a smilar qualification rate as my dog and I still have things to work on together, but I am happier than I have ever been competing, and as a result, so is my dog.

I hope that in sharing this story that you, fair reader, can think of things in your life that perhaps if you changed your perspective, you could bring yourself comfort where now you are feeling pain.