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The Pressure Of Perfection And The Reality Of Expectations.

Understanding the Hidden Costs of Striving for Perfection.

Ahmed Hassan
3 min readAug 29, 2024
Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

Why do we like perfection? As human beings, we are naturally drawn to it — it is human nature. Making our outfits perfect, receiving only good feedback, taking perfect pictures, and ensuring our daily lives go perfectly are common aspirations.

What drives us towards perfection is our aversion to criticism. People typically dislike receiving negative comments about their work. Consequently, we strive for perfection to avoid these situations. While expectations are pretty much the same as they pressure us to seek perfection in a world that searching for perfection will make you unhappy and unsatisfied.

In the upcoming sections, I will discuss how expectations and perfection are interconnected, how they can be harmful, and why perfection itself may be an unattainable goal.

Always expect less.

I started developing this skill over the past two years, and I saw a massive transformation in how I expect things. I realized one of the main reasons why this generation is full of unhappy people is because they have expectations. So the more they expect, the more likely they are to be upset. Expectations are often imaginary, and that’s why people end up not getting them.

Therefore, the real question is, how can we overcome it? The answer is really simple: ‘expect less.’ If you advance that skill, you will be much happier because you are not expecting something special. Thus, when it happens, you will accept it as it is. Let me give a simple daily life example: you come home from work, and you are very exhausted, expecting your family or wife to have already made everything ready for you. Then, if you don’t find those things when you go back home, you will be upset and even angry.

But if you don’t expect those things when you go back to your house, you will not be bothered by the fact that nothing is ready for you, and if it is ready, then you will be more grateful.

Perfection does not exist.

Perfection is a common thing in our lives, but it needs to be avoided in order to face the reality of life. The…

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Ahmed Hassan
Ahmed Hassan

Written by Ahmed Hassan

Seeking calmness in a noisy world. I often write about human behavior, generational change and personal experiences.

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