Peace in Imperfection

Redefining Perfect

Tara Tulley CPM, MSW

As a midwife and  psychotherapist, I come in contact with women from all walks of life. While each person I connect with comes with a unique story, there are common themes I see and hear from individuals, no matter what their situation or background. The one I would like to address in this handout is what the idea of becoming perfect.

I hope to help you find ways to challenge the idea that a perfect, or ideal self exists. Instead I hope to help you find ways to see that the imperfections or perceived “flaws” within yourself are in fact the very attributes that make you human and remarkable in the world. Here are a few key points of discussion and thought.

1.     Who is your fairytale hero? Inside every human being is a fairytale hero. This hero was designed with the contributions and ideas of society, parents, friends, teachers, and other significant groups and people that we have connected with throughout a lifespan. This fairytale hero begins to be created the moment we are conceived and exposed to our mother’s hormonal responses to stress and stimuli. It becomes an internal measure of how we believe we should be, look, and feel. The fairytale hero is an ideal concept. It only exists in theory and philosophy, not ever in reality. If we become fixated on believing that it is possible to become this nonexistent character, we lose sight of our true identity that is authentic. We are nonfictional characters, but how many of us are trying to compare ourselves to this made up super hero?

2.     What are you ignoring, in order to stay focused on your flaws? Look at the parts of yourself that have come to be seen known as  “flaws”. The parts that do not measure up to the image of the super hero. Ask yourself;  “what positive attributes am I ignoring, in order to fixate on this flaw?” For example: my laundry often piles up in the laundry room. While I dutifully run loads through the washer and drier every day, my fast pace lifestyle often prevents me from getting to folding the loads in the dryer right away. It is not until I am running out of laundry baskets, and room that I finally call on my family to come sort, fold, and put away all of their laundry. My mother always had the laundry caught up, sorted, folded and put away. The superhero in myself has an organized laundry room. I start to feel like I am not good enough, because I cannot measure up to the “Super Laundry Queen”. So what am I missing here? The “flaw” of not keeping up with the Laundry Queen, the authentic me, is actually performing my unique skills that make it difficult to keep up with laundry. I am running back and forth between many tasks that I am good at. I am at my office helping clients work through difficult situations. I am with my children helping and playing with them. I am teaching skills to students. The students, clients, and children are grateful for my unique prospective, knowledge, and help. They didn’t notice Super Laundry Queen. They didn’t notice that I am not as good as her at laundry. In order to focus on my flaw of laundry disorganization, I am ignoring and discounting how that imperfection, in its entire context, is exactly what makes me unique and valued by those I connect with. What “flaws” are you focusing on that prevent you from embracing those attributes that help you function in other tasks? Are you able to value in yourself the contributions valued by others around you?

3.     Who else has a fairytale hero that you cannot become? What complicates the fairytale scene even more, is that you are not the only person who has a fairytale hero. Guess what? So does everyone else! Not only that, but sometimes when they are feeling like they are not enough, they start to panic. If they themselves cannot be the heroes, they may start looking for someone else who can be. They might even start thinking that you could be their hero. When you start to act differently than their fairytale hero, they may even become angry and critical toward you. You let them down by not making their hero real. They may not realize they are doing this, and maybe you don’t either. Because you can’t be another person’s hero, and because you cannot be your own hero, criticism from other’s may add to how much you focus on the flaws that make you different then a super hero. This added pressure from friends and family, who are wanting someone to rescue their hero, makes it even more difficult to see the wonderful attributes that make your imperfections important to your authentic being.

4.     How to I become OK with my authentic self? Put the fairytale in its place. I would bet that if we were to discuss the Disney movie “Aladdin”, and if I were to ask you for a gene or a magic carpet ride, you would laugh and think I was joking. If I became angry, because you could not produce what I had ask, you might wonder if I was trying to play a practical joke, or if maybe I had lost my mind. Yet, if I asked you to be like my superhero, and then became angry because something you were doing, saying, or wearing was not what my superhero was like, you may instead feel angry, defeated, or less than OK. Why is my superhero any more powerful to you than a fantasy request from a Disney movie? You are not a Disney character. You are real, and your life is real. Your flaws have become measures of how you function, and how you are connected to your world. Someday, I would like to be caught up on laundry. Someday I may evaluate my system, and figure out how to accomplish quandary organization in the mists of my unique roles and contributions to the world. But weather I am as good as Super Laundry Queen or not, does not change the unconditional value of my authentic self. My authentic self is valuable regardless of my dirty laundry. My dirty laundry is just dirty laundry. It is not me, and it is not you. 

5.      Two Books that I recommend in order to gain understanding on authentic being and peace: “The Power of Now” Eckhart Tolle and “The Four Agreements” Don Miguel Ruiz.