Releasing Perfectionism On Your Personal Development Path

Hello,

Welcome to another episode of the Wild Free Will podcast.

I am here today with a personal story about how I made a big mess and put my foot massively in my mouth.

I think it's going to be good and we're kind of continuing this theme of just getting personal and kind of using my own experience as a way to kind of shed light on some things I think,

I guess my opinion obviously,

But also just the ways in which I see us needing to maybe make some shifts in the way that we approach our own self-care and I guess the way we approach our own personal development as well.

So this just happened recently.

This weekend I went to the beach with friends and I was talking to a friend about something that had happened in the past with a group of people that I have had problems with and I was talking about one person in particular and I was just like I really started railing on this person.

I was not being my best self,

Let's be honest.

I was really quite rude and really I think aggressive about this person and at the time I really didn't think much about it because I felt what I said and I was being honest and that doesn't make it okay,

It just it is.

I was honest and I was expressing how I felt and I was kind of fine with it at the time.

But then I went to bed and as I was falling asleep I kind of got this like hit of intuition.

It was just like you know that really kind of wasn't okay.

Take out the kind of.

It wasn't okay what I did and the way that I behaved and it made me feel gross and I'm really grateful for that.

I'm really grateful for that level at least of self-awareness even if it's after the fact.

Better late than never I suppose.

But I'm really grateful that I felt bad about it because I think that that is in part the correct way to feel about it honestly.

Like I shouldn't have said what I said and that's not necessarily the kind of person that I want to be.

And so I just kind of like let it go there and then this morning I was thinking about it again and I was kind of talking to myself because I'm being a coach and working with people you're basically I'm basically constantly questioning everything.

So working with clients so much of what I do and so much of what a coaching relationship is is literally just asking questions and helping people really get to the bottom of like why they feel the way they feel and what they need and what they want and how they want to move forward.

And so I find myself the more I'm doing this with clients and where I'm also doing it to myself and I really do think too even in the like the last two or three episodes of the podcast it's all been about like questioning why are we saying these things why are we why are we holding people to these standards etc etc.

And this morning I found myself saying like okay you know you just need to be more like love and light and you just need to like send love to everyone.

And it's not necessarily like that message is inherently wrong but the thought that popped into my head was but I still think this guy is an asshole.

So like I can send him all the love and light I want but like I believe everything I said.

I'm not proud of the fact that I said it.

I don't think that I needed to bring that energy to the interaction I was having but it does not change the fundamental fact that I can't stand this person.

Now I don't think even with love and light I do not think that we are meant to be friends with everybody and I do not think that we are all meant to get along.

I think that that is statistically improbable with seven billion people on the planet.

That being said I think that people are always worthy of being treated with kindness and respect and I think it says more about who you are as a person than it does about anybody else whether or not you manage to do those things.

So whether or not you manage to be respectful in your interactions with people and with this person in particular I like cannot stand this human but when I have to interact with them I am never anything but polite.

And so it got me thinking about this idea of like being a loving soul all the time and it's really funny because even this morning while I was on Instagram I was reading something about astrology and about Lionsgate which is actually today the day that I'm recording this podcast today is August 8th so it's 8-8 and that's Lionsgate and one of the things they were talking about is like how can you just be a beacon of love to all people and how can you send love to all people and be love all the time and I think that that is in some ways a beautiful goal and in other ways a completely unrealistic one.

So much of our personal development is focused on this idea of almost beating the human out of us.

We are never ever going to be positive all the time.

We're never going to be capable of being our best selves every moment of the day and I think that personal development in general is about moving from a space of suffering from our inadequacies for long periods of time to being able to recognize our weaknesses,

Recognize where we're struggling,

Recognize where we're not being our best selves and then make the shift more quickly.

It's not like we don't delve into that place.

It's not like we don't have negative thoughts or we don't have negative moments or we don't have bad days or whatever but it is about kind of being able to deal with those moments when they arise and having the tools in order to move forward but I found myself having this conversation of like you just need to be love all the time and that's not possible.

It is impossible to be love all the time.

It is impossible to be a great person all the time and this continues as like ever everlasting or never ending discussion that I'm having with myself and with you guys about how the shift from personal development and self-help has become almost this insidious search for perfection.

So what we're expecting of ourselves is not actually that we're better than we were or that we learn from our mistakes but it's how we show up perfectly in every moment and we follow the personal development tools or rules sorry and we use the personal development tools in order to show up like flawlessly in all moments and I think that is also in part because of the way that the industry portrays itself where like you see all these people working online and they're like making a bazillion dollars and they're all really beautiful and they're all really thin and they're all living this life that's like whatever it is like it's all it's almost like hyper exaggerated and so like even within that this idea of like freedom lifestyle and what you can create by focusing on yourself it's like we're over almost overselling it and we're not really seeing like the ugly side of life and the ugly side is always there.

The only thing that I can say to you is that with your tools and with the time that you spend working on personal development it lasts less time.

Yesterday for example I was an asshole at like 4 p.

M.

And by the time I went to bed at 10 or whatever I'd already realized hmm yeah I probably shouldn't have done that I probably shouldn't have said that and I don't want to be that person like how can I do better next time but then the the second side of that it's like the pendulum swung from one side which was being a jerk to the other which was trying to be like an angel and that's not reality either like I'm not going to be able to necessarily sit here and just kumbaya and send love and light to everybody all the time like I can do it when I'm feeling well and when I'm taking care of and and we should yeah we should send love and light and we should maybe not in those words that's fine like you should but be kind and respectful to people and and whatever and always try to do our best and I don't think that I did my best yesterday and that's what bothers me about my behavior but then what bothers me about my reaction is that the opposite side of that was like sheer perfection well you should just never have a negative thought because when I was thinking like I said about you know why should just try to be more loving to all people really be open and see how that shifts the energy that comes my way the thought that I had was like yeah but I still think this person's a jerk it really it doesn't change the fundamental the fundamental conversation that I was having with myself it's just about like accepting that I am the way I am this person is the way they are we are not necessarily meant to like coexist but I am expecting of myself and of this person to a certain extent that we can have like a mutually respectful and polite relationship and we do in all honesty we do I don't feel like there's not this level of respect when we're like in engaging with each other but if I spend time thinking about the way that this person has behaved towards me and towards other people I just think like not somebody that I want to spend my time with not somebody that I want to be surrounded with and it's just really interesting because going back to the discussion of like how we deal with things I wonder sometimes why we have these expectations of ourselves like I was very much expecting myself to kind of go into this like almost meditative state and to constantly be at peace with everything and I think that is the dream you know like if we were to kind of describe what our ideal situation would be I think that is exactly what it is we want to be in this ideal state where we feel good all the time where everything is great everything is perfect and we're not really being bothered by people and we're not being triggered and that is kind of what we're always like endlessly searching for we're looking towards the destination but the journey in and of itself is actually the reward and if I look at what happened yesterday the six-hour journey that I took from being a complete ass to like realizing that I was an ass like I'm pretty proud of that not proud of the way I behaved no but definitely proud of the fact that in six hours I had this kind of come to Jesus moment where I realized like I probably shouldn't have done that the other side of this aside from like except expecting perfection from ourselves and and whatnot and kind of being okay with releasing the fact that we're human and we are going to screw up and we are going to put our foot in our mouths and we're just going to make mistakes I think the other side of this is actually being aware of the energy that we bring to situations so yesterday I was in this really idyllic setting and I was having a really real conversation with someone and I really appreciated the conversation that we were having there was a lot of like honesty and a lot of respect I think and a lot of things that came up like from the past to now we were just kind of like talking about life and how it's evolved over the years and stuff like that and like I really appreciated the conversation and when I think back to the space that we were in both being at the beach being here surrounded by beauty and nature and this really peaceful sort of setting and I think about my behavior one of the things that really strikes me is that that energy like the energy that I brought to the conversation in this particular moment not the whole conversation but when I was like speaking about my experience with this person that energy that I brought to the conversation I just think like that really brought the vibe down and it was so unnecessary and I think that's another kind of focus here like what the energy that we have like are we bringing anything to the table are we adding to the conversation or are we kind of just like spewing our emotional garbage on people and yesterday in this particular point of the conversation I think I really was just spewing emotional garbage I was kind of I think triggered and then I had a reaction and it kind of just like came out all over the place but I don't think it added anything to the conversation that we were having or to the day in general and that's something that I really want to try to be mindful of moving forward it's going to happen again I'm going to put my foot in my mouth again I'm going to screw up again it is life life is ebb and flow it's waves it's not like we're never going to get to this point where we're like perfect and stable and even if we did do you know how bored we'd be we would be so terribly bored that we would start to create problems just to have something to say and something to do I genuinely believe that because I see it often both with clients and with friends when things are going good people start to do something to fuck it up so they have something to say so they have something to share so they have something to complain about because complaining becomes a sort of bonding mechanism for people and if you're interested in learning more about that or hearing more about that I have an entire podcast episode all about how like we can we bond over complaining and how to kind of like cut that shit out because it's not okay but yeah it's just it's all it's all really interesting the fact that like I was not mindful of my own energy and I brought energy to the situation that I wouldn't necessarily have and there's something to be said too for like the energy of the people around you too and how that influences because we're all feeding off of each other so I may have been picking up on energy from anyone around me I was in a public space like I was in a setting surrounded by lots and lots of people it was a beautiful Sunday we were at the beach there was a million people I may have been triggered by the conversation that we were having but I'm still responsible for the energy that I bring to any given situation and I do wish that I had had more control I believe that everything happens for a reason I will never like let that go because it serves me so well believing that like it really has taken me so far and so I believe that that my screw-up yesterday happened so I could end up ultimately learning a lesson about my own behavior and then also transmute that lesson here into the podcast if I don't put my foot in my mouth yesterday we're not having a conversation right now so it's hard for me to kind of regret that it happened but I do want to be mindful that in the future I show up with a lot more integrity number one and really being mindful of what it is I'm bringing to the table so I'm gonna kind of end this here and I hope that this served you I hope that this was useful in some way and that it highlighted a couple of things one that we need to be mindful of the energy that we bring to a situation because that's all on us and yes we may be triggered and yes we're gonna screw up and yes things are gonna be hard but ultimately the responsibility is on our shoulders to make sure that we show up in a way that makes us feel good and that we can be proud of and the other thing is too that within the self-help world in the personal development world if you are on your path and you are working towards becoming you know hashtag the best version of yourself and living your best life and all of those things just know that there is no point that you will arrive at where you will stop growing or stop working on yourself or stop learning it's a fallacy we are being sold a dream and it's being used to market to us in order to get us to basically shell out more money for this program or this book or this workshop or whatever I mean I've talked about it a million times and it's gonna be true today tomorrow and whatever it's gonna be true for as long as we live in a capitalist society so we just need to be mindful of it and understand that it's not that's not the whole story there is no destination there is no perfect moment in time that we will ever arrive at where we do things right all the time and we never make mistakes and we never are negative and we never feel bad like that's not gonna happen and that the goal is really to shift that into doing the best that we can and making the amount of time where we feel bad or we're suffering or we're negative less that is the goal with personal development right to really shift from putting that like colossal pressure on ourselves to be perfect to allowing ourselves to be human to be a human being right in that energy of just who we are and so yeah I think that's basically it I hope that covers all of it I feel like I forgot to recap something but now that moment has passed so here we are I hope this serves you well and I'd love to hear what you think please feel free to like leave a review or rate and yeah anything if this resonated let me know if it triggered you let me know I'm here for it all I want to have a dialogue I want to learn and grow with you alongside you I want us all to change and and yeah become the best version of ourselves in this moment doing the best that we can and learning and growing together so please just feel free to reach out I hope that you have a wonderful day.