I recently made a shift in my mindset that has served me immensely.
I am a recovering perfectionist. I have sought impeccable performance and based my idea of success on these standards. The thing about perfectionism, as you may well know, is there is never an ending because the goal post signaling success will always be a moving target.
My personal brand of perfectionistic thought has historically been rooted in insecurity, the false core belief being, “If I execute this thing perfectly, no one will unearth my flaws and I can remain safe.” Of course this idea is bonkers when I break it down into logic, but it is rooted in survival. Our brain has this tendency to link expectation with response. In fact your body doesn’t really distinguish between an imaginary or real threat in the environment, it just responds on the defense out of safety. Thank you to my beautiful, strange, inner surveillance system.
Perfectionism at one time served me well and I have great compassion for it. There is a little child part within me that at one time thought she had to be perfect to remain safe and accepted. Our survival strategies don’t necessarily update with our aging and evolving. They keep us stuck within the same programming that served us in the past out of protection. As we update our external world, we have to intentionally update the programming of our inner world.
For me the core of this update resides in vulnerability. My perfectionistic programming has not and will never leave me. It is an old system that I cannot delete, even if I wanted to due to the crucial years of development it was formed in. As I age, I become wiser. My wisdom is teaching me that vulnerability is the source I want to draw on when expressing myself and connecting with others. I still find myself feeling twinges of perfectionism, like an achy phantom limb. I have to remind myself to soften, to allow, to breathe into an experience.
I heard this wise statement in a yoga class recently. A teacher said, “Notice your experience. What could you do to make yourself 10% more comfortable?” Even when I am holding postures I find myself venturing into perfectionism territory; so I softened, and I allowed, and I let myself fall apart a little more on my mat. This is what helped me start noticing the duality between perfectionism and vulnerability in my life.
Now I ask myself, “how can I make myself 10% more vulnerable in this experience?”
You may find yourself drowning in the vast waters of perfectionism. I can’t promise you rescue, but I can promise you a life raft so you can stay afloat. Soften, allow, experience. Through vulnerability is where you will find the source of all that will strengthen you.
From my open heart to yours,
KAT