Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined a belief about the importance of everything that happens around us and how the process of creating peace for ourselves is affected by these events. This week, I would like to examine what ‘perfection’ really means and what happens to life and living beings themselves when they get into the mode of chasing this perfection!
Belief: My life should be absolutely perfect! This is how I should look, this is how I should talk, walk, laugh, this is how my spouse should be, this is how my kids should be, this is what they should do etc.
I just can’t stop smiling as I am writing this post. I am smiling because I am a recovering perfectionist myself 🙂 so I understand exactly why a lot of people feel this overwhelming need to be perfect all the time. You know folks, just a few years back when I only allowed very close people to see the real person that I was and I didn’t have that kind of connection with everyone around me, I used to think that there are not many people who would fall in the category of perfectionists, however, as time went on and as I continued to open up to people (even strangers), I realized boy I was wrong!! I realized that almost everyone is a perfectionist just where they fall on the spectrum differs. And when I had this realization, I started to pay attention to my own thoughts to better understand my own beliefs and the thinking behind these beliefs that contribute towards this need to be perfect and have a perfect life. So, before we go any further, let’s first explore the kind of thinking a human experiences which results in this ‘perfection’ disease.
Did I just say disease? Yes, I absolutely did. You see the word disease can be broken down into dis-ease and that’s exactly what we call it when our physical bodies are sick and are not at ease. But when our thinking is sick as a result of beliefs which are either passed on to us by our parents or society or we create them ourselves in the process of living this life, we call them ‘mental health issues’. But have you ever noticed that these so called ‘mental health issues’ actually come to life because of the fact that your mind is not at ease with you and your life today. Hence I think it’s very appropriate to use the word dis-ease to describe our mental health issues as well. Let me explain further.
Before you go all crazy, I would like you to understand this first – I am in no way suggesting that when a person has mental health issues, they have a disease because if that’s true, then every human on this planet has a disease :). What I am really saying is that because you are not at ease with who you are and how your life is today is why you are a perfectionist. I know what I am saying is counter intuitive. So, let’s try to understand this through an example. If you are one of those women who try to look physically perfect all the time and can go to any length to look that way, there could be variety of thoughts going through your mind. One is you may think that you don’t look beautiful yet and therefore you ‘try’ to look the way you think you ‘should’ based on the image of perfection you have stored in your mind. Another thought may have something to do with other people’s or society’s expectations of how a perfectly beautiful woman should look like and knowingly or un- knowingly you try to fit that image of perfection so that you can be called ‘beautiful’. In this example, I would also like to point out, especially if you have not already realized yet that this kind of thinking is coming directly from a fearful place. Fear of not being called beautiful, fear of not getting that praise, fear of not getting those looks from strangers/friends/family members, fear of people finding out flaws in your physical beauty. This kind of thinking, it’s all rooted it fear. And because you are so fearful about not looking beautiful enough, you try to hide your fears and your imperfections behind the veil of ‘trying to be perfect’ so that people don’t find out exactly what’s going on inside you!
Let’s take another example and now that I am raising a daughter, this one is very close to my heart. Most parents or at least folks from my generation who have been raising kids appear to be a little more conscious than their own parents. And in in being conscious, we try to do the best job possible to raise our kids, however, sometimes or a lot of times, we cross that fine line where we start to obsess about whether what we do for our kids is right or not; if it’s enough or not. As an example, in my daughter’s pre-school, I see that some parents have enrolled their kids in various activities at the end of the school day. And because of these scheduled activities, many times as I wait for my daughter to wrap up what she is doing, I have watched these moms’ frustrated faces as they try to somehow persuade their little ones to hurry up to get to this next class but the kid on the other hand is crying and resisting to go because they are enjoying the activity at school. And the reason we try to fill up our kids schedules with too many activities even though they may not even be 3 years old yet is because we try very hard to create that perfect child so that we can make sure that when we go out in society, our child is not less than any other child out there and we can proudly rave about everything that our kid knows at this very young age and get intense satisfaction in knowing that none of our friends and family members kids can actually do that!! More on this topic next time 🙂
You know folks, the very simple yet very profound truth is that perfectionism or trying to be perfect is really a way for a human being to hide the fact that you are human, that you are far from perfect, that you make mistakes sometimes, that you think negative thoughts sometimes, that you get angry sometimes, that you get hurt in relationships sometimes, that you just want to be left alone sometimes…But what’s wrong with any of this? Isn’t this what being human really is? We have placed such high expectations from humans in this world and when a lot of us are unable to meet them, we fall prey to depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. But can you honestly answer one thing – do you really want to turn into a robot with no negative thoughts and feelings instead of just accepting the fact that you are human and this is what being human means? Really – is that what you want?
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
