Society rewards so-called perfection and we keep raising the bar. That’s why the college cheating scandal happened. People were trying to uphold that ‘perfect’ image.

When I was in the military, one of our core values was “Excellence In All We Do”. That so-called “excellence” hung over our heads like a black cloud. If you made a mistake then you were no longer excellent. Therefore, you had turned into a dirt bag. That was the culture.

The excellence thing was so ridiculous that everyone started getting perfect performance reports. Anything less than perfect affected your chances of promotion and pretty much earned you the dirt bag title. Now, they are trying to change that inflated system with quotas and a new rating system but the mindset is still the same so I suspect there are still issues with the system.

If we want people to stop stressing out over perfection then we need to stop stomping on them when they fall down.