Healing Perfectionism

How will we spend our precious and limited heartbeats?

How will we spend our precious and limited breaths?

The Inner Critic Shadow

When I walk into yoga or my workout with the intention of making my body look a certain way, when I walk into work ready to just ‘put my head down’ and push through, when I walk into my home and immediately start straightening pillows, when I look in the mirror and all I can see is wrinkles and faults… I know something is off - I’m stressed, too much in my head, I’m not giving this precious life nor myself the respect we deserve.

When our view is zoomed in and myopic, we get stressed out and see only through the grey-tint of our limited ego, a view crafted by past frustrations, challenges, conscious and unconscious wounding and grief.

It can be easy to forget that the whole web of life is nourishing us in every moment, that we are made of stardust and that the seeming imperfection of this game of life is actually a precious and fleeting miracle.

When we’re hitting a brick wall and feeling frustrated, the patriarchal approach is to keep sledgehammering against it until it gives. This wastes our precious resources and causes us and others suffering. 

“We can’t solve a problem from the level of consciousness that created the problem.” - Einstein

Whether on a conscious level or an unconscious level, we might wish things were a little or a lot different, even if we don’t know what else we’d want. We might subtly wish that our job was different, our partner was different, our body was different.

We might wish that we were different, that we felt differently, that we had better ______ (fill in the blank). We might, consciously or unconsciously, think things would be better if _____ (fill in the blank).

Fighting the reality of the moment, as imperfect as it might seem and as much as we might want to change it, is not a war we can win.

Because no one ever wins in war.

Regardless of external conditions, we have all that we need to be happy and free. In the words of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,

“People who learn to regulate their inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

Perfection is a Tool of Oppression

The illusion of perfection is a construction of our ego that is desperate to control life. Life is, however, uncontrollable by nature.

This illusion is the foundation of the patriarchy and white supremacy that keeps all genders scared of expressing our true selves, that maintains a consumer society and hierarchy, that can endlessly sell unnecessary products to us by implying that we aren’t pretty enough, white enough, young enough, good enough or ___ (fill in the blank) enough.

The process of shedding perfection is a process of healing deep cultural wounding and ancestral trauma from the illusion of the “protestant work ethic,” so prevalent in Western culture - the idea that we are only as valuable, as worthy, as valid as how much money we make, how much we accomplish, how efficient we are, how much our lives look a certain way.

It is part of the complex structure of the human ego that it is generally extremely difficult to see when we are actually fighting or resisting the present moment. Yet all of us do it sometimes and some of us are do it almost constantly.

The only passage way back to the fullness of the sacred present is to recognize then shed the stories about how things should be so that we can experience this moment, our bodies and ourselves as we actually are. It is in this reunion and remembering that we begin to reclaim our inherent power, magic sauce and joie de vivre.

When we return back into intimacy with this precious body, exactly as it is, we discover our greatest superpowers - the heart opens, compassion for self and other arises, the body becomes healthier and more beautiful with less effort, we have deeper, more meaningful relationships with our soul and others.

The Hidden SUPERPOWER of (Healing) Perfectionism

Though I was proud of my perfectionist nature as a child, I believe part of becoming a true adult in the 21st century is coming to know the true cost of keeping the inner critic on our inner guidence council. While the inner critic thinks it’s going to save us and make everything good, its generous gifts actually lie elsewhere!

I’ve been consciously practicing the transition from stress to relative relaxation for the last fifteen years and, although my life has vastly improved, sometimes I still feel like a novice. This is lifelong work.

But I’ve picked up an invaluable superpower along the way… When the inner critic shuts up long enough, the voice of the soul can speak. It’s not complicated…

When something feels like relaxation in my body -

It’s a yes

When something feels like contraction and tension in my body -

It’s a no.

I now have a much deeper connection to my body and therefore to my intuition and inner guidance. This inner voice available to us no matter what the situation. When I lose connection to its guidance in a moment in which I could use support, I return to the simple practices below.

In seeing the inner critic’s true nature as a wound and consciously, s..l..o..w..l..y healing over the years by practicing traveling on our breath to the sanctuary of the present moment, as imperfect as it may seem, we come to experience life as it actually is - full of infinite support, healing, abundance, love and potential even in the darkest of moments.

With this connection to hope and wellbeing, we are unstoppable.

Practices for Healing Perfectionism

The medicine for the inner critic within each of us is to anchor into the feminine - stop!, slow down, take between one and five deep, slow breath, reclaim gratitude for the simple elements that make up this strange, sometimes uncomfortable but always beautiful miracle of life.

We all need to be regularly reminded to not ‘should’ on ourselves. When my inner critic or perfectionist shows up I reach into my yogic toolkit and pull out the mantras “I accept this moment exactly as it is,” “I accept myself exactly as I am,” or even “I accept my body exactly as it is.”

I’ve repeated these mantras for several years. At first I had them written on my mirrors and I’d consciously bring them into meditation. For the last couple years they simply appear spontaneously throughout my day - every single day.

When I notice I’m stressed, my shoulders or back feels tense, I’m rushing or berating myself for making a mistake, for not getting enough done, for not teaching a perfect class - for whatever! (the ego-mind has an infinite palate upon which it paints our unconscious patterns for our witnessing self to realize or not realize). These words arise… naturally. And I believe them because the immediately soften my tissues, I breathe more easefully and I feel better.

A regular practice of presence, which we practice in yoga and meditation, are regular, daily reminders of this… a small, contained experiment in a closed setting so we can practice these same things in the boardroom, the living room or even in quarantine! While the yoga room or meditation hall may be too hot or too cold for our liking, or we like or don’t like having music, incense, or that person to the left of us, we get practice getting a little more okay with things as they are. Not liking. Not loving. But a little more okay with how things are. While we probably won’t shift from sad, irritable or depressed to happy and ecstatic overnight, we at least practice getting a little closer to a happiness which is always there and always available to us, if it is in our view.

If you're less of the touchy-feely type you might even write a short love letter to hang on your fridge,

Dear Perfection, External Conditioning around Beauty

and Capitalist Models of Self Worth, 

Fuck off.

Love,

Me

As I continue to heal the capitalist and patriarchal wound of the perfectionist archetype within myself and my family and within the women I support as a coach, in the women’s circles I host, I am bolstered, encouraged and sometimes overjoyed to know that I'm healing this not just for myself, so I’m happier and so I contribute to the quality of the lives around me instead of detracting from them.

As Within, So Without.

As Above, So Below.

We do it for ourselves.

We do it for each other.

We do it for our future grandchildren.

Are you a woman healing perfectionism,?

Join us in the Earth-Body Wisdom Collective where we’re reclaiming the inner and outer strength of nature’s harmonious cycles - together. Learn more here.

Share below how your life has improved since you’ve begun the processs of naming and taming your inner critic?