Ditching Perfect: 7 Experiments with Imperfection
🌱🌷 The Bloom Sessions: With 10 therapeutic journaling questions
Welcome to The Bloom Sessions! Gently explore your inner world with therapeutic journaling and self discovery exercises. Let’s release unhelpful patterns, challenge limiting beliefs and foster healing and personal growth! The Bloom Sessions are out on Fridays, 10am UK time. They are evergreen, and stand-alone, not sequential, so start where you are! See all here.
Hi friends
I am embracing the imperfection of sending two letters out in two days…!
I have a strange relationship with the traumas of my past many years on. My losses (two baby girls) led to me giving up all hope of any possibility of a perfect life by age thirty. My devastation at least gave me a clean slate, and a strange kind of liberation in knowing that I would never be able to live like others, or compare my life in any way. I had no chance to keep up with social norms, those Joneses, or be at all perfect.
This surprising freedom enabled me to do this therapeutic work, accepting others in the same way I had to accept myself, so they could move forwards in their own lives.
What is your experience of perfectionism? Have you had to let go too?
The Problem With Perfectionism
Perfectionism can lead to chronic stress, burnout, and a constant sense of never being "good enough," no matter how much we achieve. It stifles creativity, relationships, and self-worth. The gripping fear of failure or judgment gets in the way of authentic connection, or the risk-taking that leads to our growth.
Perfectionism keeps us stuck.
The Origins of Perfectionism
It sometimes comes from our early experiences, where love or acceptance were conditional on achievement, or acting in a certain way. This might be attempts to shape you by your parents or school. Maybe it’s a reaction to rejection by friends or bullies.
If mistakes are made to feel like personal failures rather than a normal part of life and learning, we may develop perfectionism, severely limiting our experience of life.
I also feel social media, and the echo chambers they create has a lot to answer for, and how we use it. We tend to only share the perfect parts of our lives and home and not the mess and the meltdowns, promoting unrealistic goals or lifestyles that we can never attain.
Embracing an Imperfect Life
Life itself is imperfect. Growth, creativity, and connection thrive in the messy, unpredictable spaces. Healthy life is about being able to respond to the ever-changing picture both inside and outside of us.
By rejecting perfection, we make room for authenticity, resilience, and acceptance.
We are not trying to lower your standards, but to develop a more balanced, self-compassionate approach to your efforts and outcomes. Regular practice can help build tolerance for imperfection over time.
Today, I invite you to experiment with imperfection. We will loosen the grip of perfection, and learn to tolerate imperfection and the difficult feelings that can go with it. This will build your capacity for imperfection so you can relax a little and free yourself from its clutches.
There is no such thing as perfection, so let’s unhook ourselves from this idea. Imperfection is being fully alive. It’s not failure, it’s freedom!
Exercises to Tolerate Imperfection
These exercises are for paid members - and you are welcome to join us to let go of perfectionism! You also get to join in all the Bloom Sessions, get the Intentional Living Workbook free this month for annual subscribers (20% off for monthly), and all the Heal Your Past Series. By upgrading, you also support my mission to helping people flourish in lives they love.