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Accepting imperfection

Seeking perfection in people, places and experiences is doomed to fail and may be a neurotic way of coping that came from childhood insecurity or abandonment. And the way we criticize or judge others as well as our experiences affects our mood and general level of happiness and serenity. Once we can watch the way we react out of this perfectionism life can become more spacious and less rigid.

Today I was guided to this meditation by Tian Dayton on accepting imperfection, finding peace and learning about why we or others act in rigid, controlling ways. Seeking to find ways to solidify our experience as well as justifications for the way we react in order to feel less uncomfortable may help us to grow and change some of those patterns. I hope you get something from this reading.

Leaving Perfectionism.

Today, I know that I need not like everyting about someone to enjoy them in my life. As a child, I may have felt defective in some fundamental way. No matter what I did to improve myself and love those around me, the situation only got worse. This made my self esteem drop and my drive toward perfectionism increase, I could not relax and let myself be who I was and other be who they were. I was worried that it would not be good enough. This has made me picky and judgmental, both with myself and with those close to me. I have trouble tolerating small infractions – I want things to be perfect. Today I recognize that perfectionism is an illusion, that learning to accept people as they are, myself as I am and life one day at a time brings the safety that used to think control would bring.

I let go of my need for perfection

Striving to be better, we oft mar what’s well.

William Shakespeare .
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Published by: emergingfromthedarknight

"The religious naturalist is provisioned with tales of natural emergence that are, to my mind, far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent in everything that is alive, allowing our yearning for supernatural miracles to be subsumed by our joy in the countless miracles that surround us." Ursula Goodenough How to describe oneself? People are a mystery and there is so much more to us than just our particular experiences or occupations. I could write down a list of attributes and they still might not paint a complete picture pf Deborah Louise and in any case it would not be the full truth of me. I would say that my purpose here on Wordpress is to express some of my random experiences, thoughts and feelings, to share about my particular journey and explore some subjects dear to my heart, such as emotional recovery, healing and astrology while posting up some of the prose/poems which are an outgrowth of my labours with life, love and relationships. If anything I write touches you I would be so pleased to hear for the purpose of reaching out and expressung ourselves is hopefully to connect with each other and find where our souls meet.

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11 thoughts on “Accepting imperfection”

  1. There are many questions one might want to ask themselves. One, where did this ideal of perfectionism comes from. Is it truly our own value or something that was passed onto to us? To me perfectionism is linked to expectations and in my case I found life a lot easier once I dropped my expectations and rather allowed myself to be surprised. It eliminated disappointment and perhaps even the strive for perfection. In myself and others. Kind of like live and let live. And judgement becomes softer as well. 😉🙏🏼

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  3. I relate so well to that line about we find the peace we were searching for once we LET GO of that perfectionist striving.

    My own perfectionism seems driven by anxiety. My brain seems to think if I don’t do my very very best to be perfect then I will FAIL or something horrible will happen and I will be responsible.

    I’ve tested that more recently and found it’s not true. Like you shared here, a lot of my own struggling internally and externally were linked to my perfectionism trait not due to a lack of perfection!

    Take a lot of practice to retrain the brain though. And I do enjoy putting my heart and effort into thing, but then that feels good not anxiety driven. 🙂

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    1. Im.the same. I get myself un such a state when things are messy or I’m.just human. Yes, it good to bit our positive energy to use to make things beautiful or to expend valuable creative energy. but only as you say when that doesn’t lead to anxiety
      .

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