Perfectonism / Lack of Self Esteem Eating Away at my Life.

Ultimately, of all the issues that concern me at the moment, my aforementioned mental issue needs to be rectified first before it fully consumes my mind. Hopefully someone here can help me out, as I am out of options. Let me start off with a bit of background information about myself. At present I am a professional photographer, which is not exactly easy to attain as a teenager. In both personal and professional contexts my photography has been very well received, and I have been able to generate a large following on nearly any platform I engage with. Consequently, upward growth is limited, however there is absolutely no way my mind can accept that. Despite the fact that I have millions of views on my photos on my personal account, and am already employed in the industry, I hate nearly everything I create; I want to somehow do better. I don't even care to look at my pictures anymore for enjoyment, as I think they all stink. I chew everything apart, and hate every single problem, despite that fact that nobody including my paying customers seem to care. At one point my perfectionist tendencies helped, as they forced me to improve from taking genuinely bad photos to good work, but now it has been become more of a nuisance than anything. Unfortunately as you might guess, my way of thinking didn't stop at photography, and now it is starting to impact other facets of my life.

Concurrently, I seem to suffer from low self esteem. When combined with my perfectionism, everything crashes to a halt to my disdain. To illustrate the point, here is another personal example, though now in the context of my dating life. Approximately five months ago I found one of the most physically attractive women I have ever seen, who I immediately approached. Evidently all went well, as I got her number which subsequently led to several dates. For some time I was happy, as she literally was perfect to me in every way both mentally and physically, but then it occurred to me that i'm not. Instead of making a move and turning her into more than an acquaintance, I began doubting myself. She was a total 10/10 babe, and I? I am an average guy... Instead of thinking logically and realizing that she clearly was interested in me as evidenced by the fact that we went on several dates, all I could process was how I don't have huge arms, and other superficial things she never would have even given a darn about. As you can guess, she is rightfully gone now, nobody is going to wait around forever for nothing.

My question then as alluded to before, is how in the **** do I stop??? The logical part of me knows I am great at what I do, people don't pay and view garbage. Likewise I realize I am never going to be perfect in any context, but yet at the same time I falter when there is no reason to. I am sick of being alone and single, and not being able to realize what I am good at as just two of plenty more of examples. This is really ruining my life, and my limited time on earth means I need to enjoy every second of it, not be pissed and annoyed all day.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. Perfection is simply unattainable for any of us. Let it go. You’re never going to be perfect. You’re never going to have the perfect body, the perfect life, the perfect relationship, the perfect children, or the perfect home. We revel in the idea of perfection, because we see so much of it in the media. But that is simply an artificial creation of society. It doesn’t exist.