THE PARALYSIS OF PERFECTIONISM

 

We know that the glamorous and glossy, computer-enhanced and air-brushed images in ads, movies and magazines are not real, but often we are lulled into a stupor as the seductive sirens manipulate our senses, emotions and ability to reason – Richard Winter

We accept unspoken messages such as:

- I am how I look

- I behave perfectly therefore I am

- I am perfectly in control therefore I am

- I achieve therefore I am

If these are your mantras, it is obvious you have set yourself up for a fall. There is no one perfect and I am so much more.

Those who strive for perfectionism are often burdened with extreme worries and fears that they will never quite make the grade:

• I feel that what I accomplish is never quite good enough?
• Is it not a good thing to get things right, to be the best?
• Am I craving the approval of others?
• I will never be good enough.

In ‘The Artist’s Way’, author Julia Cameron writes:“Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop -   an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.”

Perfectionism sucks all creativity from us leaving a dry husk; a needy, craving and unfulfilled human being. We forget so often that we are a ‘human being’ and not a ‘human doing’!

There is a call to show our weaknesses and celebrate our mistakes in order to feel fully human. It is only with the comfort that we have received at times of weakness that we share healing and comfort with others.

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in.

-Leonard Cohen

Take a Reality Check!

There is just so much more to life than endless striving.

May we all once more catch a glimpse of what “LIFE” is.........?

Somewhere deep in our hearts we already know that success, fame, influence, power, and money do not give us the inner joy and peace we crave. Somewhere we can even sense a certain envy of those who have shed all false ambitions and found a deeper fulfilment in their relationship with God. Yes, somewhere we can even get a taste of that mysterious joy in the smile of those who have nothing to lose.

 – Henry Nouwen

AND add some colour to your world.....

Perfectionists are colour blind; they see the world in black and white, seeing in colour is realizing that even though a certain solution to a problem worked well yesterday, it might not be right for today.

 

 

Blessings                                

Margs xx