Perfectionism
Dear friends,
I have recently run up against a pandemic perhaps more dangerous, and certainly more widespread, than the one that caught all the news recently: perfectionism. If this afflicts you or someone you love, please read on (even if you discover a typo! :-) ).
What is it that causes someone to expect and, more than that, become distressed, when something they have done isn't perfect? I believe that all of the pain and distress we face in our lives is caused by tightly held mistaken beliefs, and in this case it is forgetting what we are actually doing here.
Of course we each want to be better at whatever we do: be better people, be smarter, more loving… and on and on. But we are not here because we have perfectly mastered those things. We are here precisely because we have not. We are in “school," so it ought not to be at all surprising when we do something that is less than perfect (or even—shudder—massively wrong).
Imagine a child in school who was so distraught over his performance he hid his test papers and never turned them in. Or he would get an answer on a test wrong and fall apart. Or be unable to sleep or forgive himself because he was constantly wracked with self-doubt and self-criticism for not having already mastered the subject he was taking in school. One would reasonably expect that child to have a hard time actually learning anything. If this sounds familiar… well…
When a mistake is made we need to train ourselves to mentally say, “Great! Maybe I can learn something here.” When someone criticizes us we can think, “Great. Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll see if it’s true and then what I can do about it in the future if it is. And if it is not, no matter then.” Remembering what we are doing here takes all the shock and regret out of making an error. You will probably make many thousands of errors between now and the time you leave this planet. Get over it! (And if that thought puts you into either shock or denial, please print this and post it somewhere where you will read it every day!)
Your worth and beauty as a soul on this Earth has nothing to do with what you accomplish or how good you are at something. We are each a manifestation of Spirit, and nothing we ever do could possibly add or reduce value in any important way. Let us learn from what is presented to us.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the staff at East West