Being a perfectionist skier, or constantly striving for skiing perfection, is a dominant personality trait that can affect our mental health. It is not harmful to devote oneself to developing and improving one’s skiing skills and abilities, but by demanding too much of our body and abilities, we risk psychological troubles.
Studies on the perfectionist personality recognize three dimensions: perfectionism towards oneself stems from the instinct to be perfect; perfectionism towards others as the tendency to expect perfection from them; and social perfectionism in terms of the conviction of being recognized and accepted only if we are perfect. In the latter case, we perceive, unfoundedly, pressure from the expectations of our social environment because we believe that if we do not ski excellently, we will be rejected.
The tendency to functional perfectionism is healthy only if we manage to control it by not fearing mistakes or total failure and enjoying partial successes. On the other hand, in dysfunctional perfectionism, the fear of not achieving the objectives set is in the foreground, causing a paralyzing effect: we decide not to get involved in order not to make mistakes. We think in polarities of right or wrong, or a small mistake is interpreted as a complete failure. Thus, we do not learn from our mistakes because, for us as perfectionist skiers, what counts is whether or not we have achieved the objective; while in the functional perfectionism, there is room to value small achievements, even if we do not reach the pre-set goals.
If we are perfectionist skiers, we are prone to self-repression, i.e., we seem to lead a successful skiing style without showing anxiety, paying attention to details and to our well-groomed and immaculate equipment, but our weakness lies in the fact that we cannot tolerate the uncertainty of skiing and consider alternatives in terms of all-or-nothing.
There is some discussion as to whether perfectionism results in a negative personality trait that promotes self-defeating outcomes and unhealthy behavior patterns, which could produce detrimental performance effects. When competing at the highest level where performance must be optimal or near perfect for the athlete to succeed, the tendency for most to possess this trait is understandable. Having perfectionistic demands of themselves and their own performance, if their resources are less than their demands, then the athlete will be prone to experience stress and anxiety.
If we have a perfectionist tendency, our characteristics are:
- Exercise excessive and repeated control over our skiing.
- Pay attention to whether we or others have made a mistake and be prone to correct ourselves or them.
- Exhibit a behavior to ensure that mistakes do not occur and that everything goes perfectly. For example, we leave well in advance for a meeting place up in the mountain so as not to take any risks, even though we know the slopes perfectly well.
- Plan our tasks excessively.
- Tend to repeat an action until an ideal result is obtained.
- Have difficulty in making decisions for fear of making the wrong choice.
- Tend to procrastinate tasks to avoid situations in which might fail.
- Have difficulty in finishing certain things in order to complete them as perfectly as possible. At other times, we finish them too soon for fear of not being able to finish them on time.
- Show difficulty in delegating tasks because we distrust others, so we prefer to do them on our own.
