Perfectionism

People can be described as a "perfectionist" if they think and behave in particular ways.

1. We can have very high expectations of ourselves and become self critical when we do not meet these expectations.
2. We can have very high standards for other people and become critical of them when we feel that they do not meet them.
3. We can believe that other people have high expectations of us and feel rejected or ashamed if we think that we have not achieved what is expected of us. 

We get less enjoyment from things that we do because we are too busy worrying if they are good enough.

Often we decide the things we do are not good enough because we set an impossibly high standard in the first place.  

So, having decided these things are not good enough we get mad at ourselves.  

We can then end up feeling down and even more negative about ourselves.  

It is common to think that if we do not do things "perfectly" then we will not be successful. However, one aspect of success in life is about being able to fail. After all if we are able to cope with failure then we are more likely to try again.  

Accepting that failure is part of being human allows us to enjoy our life more.  We are also more likely to achieve what we want without damaging our relationships.