I am fortunate to be a part of a study group listening to and talking about podcasts by Dr. Brené Brown. Dr. Brown is a researcher, writer, and teacher whose focus is on letting go of shame and living authentically, being wholly yourself. One of her well-known books is “Daring Greatly“. In our most recent meeting, we reflected on freeing ourselves from perfectionism to cultivate self-compassion.
According to Dr. Brown, perfectionism, not striving to do one’s best, (nothing wrong with that), but endeavoring to do, look, perform as perfectly as possible. And always judging whether you have been ‘perfect’ or not. Clothing and appearance perfectly put together, report or presentation polished, perfectly organized, and complete. Just thinking and writing about this makes me feel tired.
Dr. Brown contends that the purpose underlying our striving to be perfect is to avoid any shame, blame or judgment from others, and ourselves. Put another way, we are afraid of being seen. We fear being seen as inadequate, incomplete, or flawed. I can think of many times when I fell into this trap and either tortured myself during an endeavor or decided not to even attempt to do something.
Of course, the irony is there is no possibility of being perfect at anything, ever. How do we move beyond the trap of perfectionism? The first step is obvious, we need to recognize and acknowledge that we do strive to be perfect in some circumstance, at work, house-cleaning, cooking, or our appearance, for example. In recognizing this, we are then able to admit to the corollary, we are fearful of others seeing our incompleteness. This is not easily done, but so worth it! Next comes the step of self-compassion. We accept ourselves as imperfect and okay as we are. After all, this is equally true of everyone!
It is wonderful to find out how freeing it is to affirm this. If we practice these steps, another magical thing happens. Not only are we free, we are authentically visible to ourselves and to others. This opens up not only self-compassion, and also the capacity to offer compassion to others and most importantly, to be in true connection with others. It also opens up the world for us to freely try to do anything. So what if we aren’t ‘perfect’!
Dr. Brown explains that it is a conscious choice to see ourselves and others this way. We are offered opportunities to practice this choice every day. As we make this choice, we get better at doing it. I learned a new aphorism that captures this, ‘practice makes better’.