Can you find peace with perfectionism?

Webster: Perfectionism: 

A disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable.

Wow! That’s a pretty tough standard to live up to.

I should know. I could never live up to my own standards and nothing was ever good enough.

My body shape, my intelligence, my looks, the way I did a lift or exercise….nothing was ever good enough and I always beat myself up over it.

One time, I arrived  late to coach a training session (late as in after the official start time) and I couldn’t apologize enough. I thought I was the most unprofessional person and my clients would be so mad that they would quit.

All day long, I spent energy on beating myself up about how unprofessional and stupid I was. (Since then I’ve learned that there are way worse things I could have done  and that my clients are kind women who gave me grace.)

As you can imagine, this attitude caused a lot of sleepless nights and feelings of sadness and “unloveablity.”

It also caused a lot of missed opportunities, not to mention missed fun. 

Eventually, I became tired of the stress I was causing myself and made a decision that my best would have to be good enough.

And you know what? Our best…yours and mine, changes from day to day and from activity to activity.

Someone said to me,  “Sometimes there isn’t a right or a wrong. There just “is”.”

When you are a perfectionist, you are always looking for the “most right” thing to do, you’re trying to prove something to yourself or someone else and it is exhausting.

However, sometimes, there is simply a state of “being” and when you change your perception from doing/having something  perfect to the perception of “this is just how it is” there is a huge relief!

So often when it comes to how our bodies move, we can’t always control it.

It might sound weird, but it happens all of the time. Maybe a client had an injury or feels so much emotional  stress that her body doesn’t move the way it used to.

When you’re a perfectionist and your body doesn’t move a certain way, it can be frustrating and annoying and cause even further tension because you’re “not doing it right.”

But, when you give yourself a little grace and shift your thoughts to be more forgiving, you begin to realize that, just like most things in life, there is a process and a fair amount of wiggle room.

Wiggle room to not have to be perfect. Wiggle room to “just be.”

Wiggle room for your body (and mind) to have a range.

Meaning, for example, you can have a range of hip mobility, a range of emotions, a range of eating habits, a range in your body size….and They are ALL GOOD.

Finding peace with perfectionism, I think, is accepting that life offers you wiggle room….and it’s good to have some wiggle room.