Whether you’re dealing with ADHD perfectionism, autism perfectionism, or perfection procrastination, this piece of advice from The Inner Game of Music can help shatter the perfectionism chains:
Permission to fail leads to success… There is a custom in golf called ‘taking a Mulligan’… If you miss your first drive at the first hole, you can take a ‘Mulligan’ and do the shot over again…
Since you know you are going to have a second chance at that first drive, you are likely to be pretty relaxed about it… Golfers who are playing the ‘Mulligan’ convention often let go, and drive their first ball better than they might have done otherwise. (Green and Gallwey 33)
Tell your students that it’s okay to make mistakes, that they’re part of the process of learning.
- Tell them that if they make a mistake, you’ll work on it together.
- Explain that it’s your job to help them work through any mistakes.
- If you can get the students to accept that it’s okay to make mistakes, you can then work to get past the obsessive perfectionism tendencies.