What car troubles taught me about perfectionism

Often, when we’re chasing perfection, it can feel like everything goes wrong at once. One thing breaks, then another. A friend seems a bit distant and then an unexpected phone bill arrives. Before long, we start telling ourselves that everything has gone to shit and it’s all our fault.

Here’s a lesson that arrived for me behind the wheel of a car rather than a self help book.

I was late learning to drive. I had just turned thirty, was living more rurally and knew it was time. And oh boy, did my need for perfection play out during that experience.

Every week, I would panic before each lesson, sometimes to the point of cancelling. I even switched teachers after a couple of months because I just couldn’t handle her reaction (or mine, for that matter) when I didn’t get it right. The same anxieties came up with the new teacher, but she was more suitable - a gentler personality and a put-a-perfectionist-at-ease sense of humour.

I watched countless YouTube videos, listened to podcasts and asked my friends and family endless questions about driving. I had to get it right. If I didn’t, I was letting myself down, as well as anyone who was in the car with me.

Notably, one podcast introduced me to a phrase I now love: practice makes permanent. They talked about how “practice makes perfect” is an unrealistic and pressure-filled phrase. I’ll be thanking the show in the upcoming book, Im_perfectly Human, as it is the working title for one of the later chapters.

Wanting to be perfect really makes it harder to learn. It’s tough to absorb new information when you’re focused on doing everything right, instead of just trying. I got there in the end, but looking back, there was so much tension in the process (and in my shoulders) because I couldn’t accept mistakes as part of learning. Instead, I would criticise myself for hours, sometimes days after each lesson.

“I can’t believe I went into first instead of third.”

“How badly did I mess up that roundabout?”

“Why did I forget to check my mirrors again?”

The need for perfectionism made my hands shake, my voice tremble, my feet get confused and the whole experience of learning to drive pretty darn naff.

I eventually passed, three imperfect tries later. And, as with anyone who works and strives for something, once the celebrations faded and I had to start driving on my own, the ‘I passed!’ elation was stalled by a new batch of fear-filled thoughts. I have a driver's licence now, so I MUST drive perfectly, on my own and enjoy it too, right? Believe me, this brought (and sometimes still does) a whole new set of challenges to the driver's seat.

A few months after I’d taken off the L plates, I drove into a parked car. Not ideal for any perfectionist. At the time, my inner critic was at full speed despite the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, it was a very minuscule first incident.

My car had a pretty hefty dent just below the front headlight, but I decided to leave it there. And not just because it was expensive to fix, but because it felt like good practice in accepting that things don’t always have to look and be perfect. Quite a big thing for me, because I like things neat and complete. In a strange way, it was like having L plates without actually having L plates; drivers would often reverse for me down narrow country lanes, perhaps a little wary of the car with the noticeable dent. It didn’t scream competence.

The other car had damage to the headlight and paintwork (a £2,000 insurance claim) and the lady was very appreciative that I’d been honest and left my details. Despite her reassuring words: don’t worry, people make mistakes, I still vowed never to let that happen again. And I think that was because of the emotional turmoil that came with it. (I have failed / I am a bad driver / I can’t park for shit.)

Recently, coming up to my two year pass-iversary, I decided it was time to book the car in for a service. And while I was at it, I asked the local mechanic if he could do anything about the dent. He said he could heat it up and pull it out, no problem. There would still be some damage, but less obvious.

Great, I thought. My car could look less like it was cruising about with a black eye.

He went on to tell me he had a lot on, but could fit me in on Monday. He’d also asked me to ring him on the day to remind him (which felt less like customer service and more like being his receptionist). Imperfect human, yes. And honestly, a great exercise in practising what I preach, because the more aware I am of my own obsession with things being just so, the more generous I seem to become when other people’s systems…wobble slightly.

When I got the car back, the windscreen wipers weren’t working and the dent was still there. I called and asked him about it, and he said I’d mentioned they weren’t working on our call. I gently challenged him as the only mention of the wipers was that they made an unbearable noise that sounded like bees in the bonnet.

He picked the car up again…eventually. When it came back, I noticed the dent had been pulled out - so much so that I didn’t immediately notice the huge crack in the windscreen.

“Thank you so much!!!” I said. “That looks much better!”

He looked embarrassed as he explained that he’d fallen into the windscreen with a screwdriver. He had someone lined up to replace it, but not until the following week. Imperfections are universal, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel the frustration they can bring.

The next day, my mind was off and running. First, the wipers, then the delay, now a cracked windscreen. I googled whether I’d be arrested for driving about with it, another perfectionist trait: looking up ways to avoid getting into trouble. But, in this life, no matter how much we try and control and pre-prepare...things won’t always go the way we hold preference for.

Flashback to before my new neighbours moved in, I practised reverse parking over and over. I wanted to get it right. I wanted to be the kind of person who could park smoothly and without embarrassment. You see where I’m going here.

But that morning, cause I was all up in my own head...I reversed too quickly. And yes. Straight into the neighbour’s car. Though the damage was minimal (the sound always worse), the voice in my head was panicking as though I’d run over their cat.

Oh, the cycle of it all. The ebbs and flows of life’s imperfect and perfect moments. My car dent had been fixed, but I’d put another in someone else’s (a nice car too, fancy, electric, perfect, shiny red).

I stood there shaking, trying not to cry over two lumps of metal and alloy. I felt like I’d lost all control and broken the unrealistic promise I made to myself, never to bump into another car again. What a rigid and unfair standard to set myself as a relatively new driver.

I knocked on the neighbours’ door, hands shaking. They were miffed too, as though I really had run over the cat. Still, they were grateful for the honesty and when the adrenaline settled, the words came back around again, “we all make mistakes.’’

It all got me thinking (as it all tends to do). The collective need for perfectionism in this situation had a knock-on effect. It was like dominoes for mishaps. Me trying to get the car perfect before a big drive, the mechanic unable to say no because people-pleasing is its own brand of perfectionism, everyone a tad overwhelmed, and then, of course, the neighbour’s car sitting there all shiny and immaculate, waiting to be dented by the whole bloody mess of it.

People who try the hardest to be perfect, often end up exhausted or overwhelmed. I see it in myself regularly. Trying to control every outcome creates tension and that’s usually when mistakes happen. That’s exactly why I reversed into the neighbour’s car and very likely why the mechanic broke the wipers and then, later, the windscreen.

It also got me thinking about car bumpers. When did we decide we didn’t want them anymore? Somewhere along the line, they were deemed ugly, bulky, unnecessary and replaced with smooth, glossy panels that look beautiful until something knocks them. We want everything streamlined now. Shiny and perfect with no room for bumps or bruises or evidence of having been driven at all.

It’s the same story we’re sold in car adverts. You know the ones: the pristine vehicle gliding down empty country roads, golden sunlight in the distance, not another vehicle or anxious driver in sight. Traffic? None. Potholes? Zilch. And certainly no flustered woman in an old Nissan Micra, heart racing, dealing with an overtired mechanic and the cringing crunch of a neighbour’s bumperless car. Nope, that version never quite makes the cut.

Yet that’s real life isn’t it? The messy, human, dented at the edges, how-is-this-mechanic-still-in-business, real life. We’re continuously sold perfectionism as the goal and it does us a total disservice because it isn’t reality. Bumpers existed for a reason; they acknowledged that things sometimes knock into each other and it doesn’t mean everything is ruined.

The more we accept that life is filled with imperfections and all-part-of-the-process mishaps, the more we can let go of perfection and find humour and acceptance when things go a little less smoothly. Because they inevitably will, over and over again.

But they will also go right. And if you think about it. Most of the time, things tick along just fine. I think that’s why we get so shocked when something dents the rhythm or a steel box with wheels.

A few weeks on, the mechanic’s bills are paid, the neighbour still says good morning when we pass each other on the drive. And the emotional storm that once felt so bloody enormous has dissipated.

And that phrase, “people make mistakes” is universal for a reason. Usually, when we say it, we’re remembering a moment of our own:

You’re not the only one who’s reversed too quickly. Or the only one who feels the bigness when something small and car related happens. You’re not the only one who’s promised never again, only to do it again.

Im_perfectly Human is about learning to treat ourselves the same way: presence over perfection and curiosity over criticism.

With imperfect parking and steady encouragement,

Chelsea x