#544 The Perfection Trap: Why "Everything's Perfect" Isn't Happiness
Happiness Podcast
Dr. Robert Puff, Ph.D.
4.4 • 920 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Perfection Trap: Why "Everything's Perfect" Isn't Happiness
Do you ever feel like true happiness is just out of reach, perhaps because everything isn't perfectly aligned all the time? We're diving into the secret belief many of us hold: that happiness equals constant perfection, and why that idea might actually be holding us back. Join us as we explore how to redefine happiness beyond the flawless facade.
New Happiness Podcast episode with Dr. Robert Puff, Newport Beach Psychologist
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Did you know that there's a perfection |
| 0:13.5 | trap lurking behind so many of us that keeps us from being happy? Well, what is a perfection trap? It's to believe that happiness |
| 0:24.4 | is contingent on the flawlessness in all areas of our lives. That means career, relationships, |
| 0:33.2 | appearance, home, kids, etc. Let me use a couple examples to illustrate what I mean. I think many of us, |
| 0:41.8 | if not most of us, enjoy going on vacation. It's relaxing. It can be adventurous. It can just be fun. |
| 0:50.7 | But as we're going through that perfect vacation where everything is just wonderful, |
| 0:56.0 | and we love sharing our adventure with our friends and family on social media. |
| 1:01.0 | But then we get to the airport, and at first, it says our flight is delayed, |
| 1:07.0 | and the longer we wait, we find out our flight is canceled and that perfect vacation is ruined |
| 1:16.0 | and we're so upset so angry or how about this one we work really hard we save our money |
| 1:25.3 | we put so much off so that someday we can live the good life. And then we get |
| 1:32.3 | there. We're able to retire. All seems well. We're headed out in the afternoon to get the mail |
| 1:40.1 | and we trip and we fall and we break our hip and we're in so much pain and all our vacations |
| 1:51.6 | all our dreams seemed ruined at that moment because now we can't enjoy what we put off for so |
| 2:00.3 | many decades if I wanted, I could probably come up |
| 2:04.9 | with 10,000 examples of how when things go awry in our lives, our happiness goes out the window. |
| 2:15.2 | Sadly, many of us struggle with an unconscious expectation that life should be |
| 2:21.6 | free of discomfort, mistakes, and challenges. And when they're all gone, then we'll be happy, |
| 2:29.7 | but not before then. And the truth is, we do get pockets of time, however brief, where life does |
| 2:38.8 | seem perfect. And these can be the best times of our life. But they don't last. And if we seek |
| 2:48.4 | that perfection in an imperfect world, sadly, we're going to suffer throughout our lives. |
| 2:57.2 | How do we fall into this trap? Because it's keeping us from being happy, because our world in which we live will never be perfect. |
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