You can’t be a perfectionist and be happy at the same time.

Photo by Matthew Murphy on Unsplash

Honestly, if I were a perfectionist, I would not have shipped a single blog post, let alone one a day!  Because I would need 10 years to make the first blog post “perfect”.

 

I don’t go for perfectionism. I go for WOW.   When I go into a forest, I go: Wow! Every tree is unique and individual, every tree is so imperfect, full of old and dead branches, bent and crooked parts and full of exceptions and not following any rules……….    There is only one word to describe the imperfection of every tree, beautiful.

 

When I buy a bunch of local wild bananas, they are all full of “faults” and “imperfections” but they all come with their own individual unique features.  When I buy a bunch of imported South American bananas from the supermarket, they are all identically “perfect” without any blemishes, but also without any taste whatsoever. Because they were all grown like industrial products according to specifications.

 

I go for the imperfect ones anytime.

 

When we look at ourselves, whenever we feel bad about ourselves, or dissatisfied about ourselves, or disappointed with ourselves, we are finding faults with ourselves. A polite way of labelling this attitude is “I am a perfectionist”.

 

If we shift from finding fault, and start finding good about ourselves, we start feeling gratitude to ourselves and those who share our journey, and satisfaction, contentment in the way we are, at this very present moment. We feel we have arrived.   How much more joy and fun, and relaxing to feel that we have arrived rather than we are always not quite arrived.

 

When we extend this to how we judge others and the outside world, always finding good about them, and be aware of the “finding fault mind”, we free our heart from the tyranny of perfectionism, and enter the world of infinite beauty.

 

Since we are all great planners and schedulers, I am curious, how many of us will put in our calendar the most fun and joyful appointments we can make, appointments with our “good finding mind”, to finding good about ourselves, finding good about someone else, and see how we can make things “even better” by appreciating all the good that’s already in us and in  front of us………..

 

Have fun!