HERE is a link to The Radical Imperfectionist Podcast on iTunes.
I have been thinking a lot this past week, and working a lot internally, on my thoughts around this topic, and I am really pumped to dig into it here with you. I have talked a little bit about it on my YouTube Channel, and on my Instagram account, but, as always, I like to go a little further and dig a little deeper here. I really hope you will engage with me on this topic.
The topic for today surrounds being accepted and liked by other people. This takes the idea of other people’s opinions a bit further, to their actual acceptance or rejection of one as an individual.
This is something I have a lot of personal experience and struggle with. When I think someone doesn’t like me, I often feel this very familiar fear-induced almost knee-jerk reaction. It feels as though my heart skips a beat and I immediately start to feel unworthy. Now, this has been changing over time and with the more work I do in this area, but generally I can still feel a physical response within my body; like my body reacting to what my brain had for so long defined this to mean for me. When I think about NOT being liked, I find that the thoughts that are behind this idea (thoughts that I unquestionably and yet unconsciously believed and lived in reaction to) are that if I am NOT liked then all of the terrible thoughts that I already have about myself are obviously true. That those lies that try to hurt me can assert themselves now through proof.
The flaw in this way of thinking is that my need for acceptance is actually, at the most core and basic level, something I really need from myself. I need this to come from my internal world. The perceived need for acceptance by other people is actually a spotlight on this underlying thought that I do not at my core believe I am enough; that I am truly lovable and loved. There is a belief that I am not worthy of that needed love, and thus I feel the need to get that love and acceptance from those around me.
The crazy thing is that when others do like us, logic would mean that this would dispel the lies, right?!?.. wrong. Maybe it can feed the ego a little bit, but when at our core we still have not changed foundational thoughts that we often don’t even know we have; unconscious thoughts which we believe and are acting in reaction to; then being liked actually reinforces the lies… Because the belief of the lies within ourselves (that we are not really and truly loved or lovable) is so strong that our brain uses the thoughts we are believing to inspire and produce more and more lies that align with itself. Lies which create and administer imposter syndrome. Lies like “Well, yeah, sure they like you now, but that’s not who you really are. If they really knew you, they wouldn’t like you.” Or… “Just wait, one mistake and they’ll know you’re a fraud. Then the real you will come out and your screwed.” Again, this is because when at your core, you don’t actually accept who you are; you don’t actually deem yourself worthy of love, and embrace you, then no amount of external affirmation will change that thought. That thought needs to be addressed head on. That thought needs to be recognized, it needs to be identified so that we can spot it as it tries to creep in, and when we begin to start distinguishing the thoughts under this lie, then we can finally see it for what it is, a lie empowered by the story in our brains.
Perfectionism keeps us from being authentically who we are because perfectionism empowers the lies. Perfectionism is the food and the fuel for the liar and the stories our brain makes that become our enemy narrative. This damaging story, taking us farther and farther away from connection, and vulnerability and acceptance and hiding us in shame, fear, loneliness and despair. When we are acting in perfectionism, we are doing it out of fear because of the power of this core belief; this belief that we are not lovable, that we are not worthy of real love or acceptance.
Let’s stop right there for a second and repeat that… when we are acting in perfectionism, we are doing it out of fear because of the fact that we still believe at our core that we are not worthy of real love or acceptance. We believe that we need to be something else in order to find acceptance, and that is the most debilitating and life-stealing lie there is.
Let me tell you, and I will tell you over and over and over again, as this is the purpose of this all. You are overwhelmingly enough. You are incredibly and deeply loved. Your heart beats for you. Your lungs breathe so you can live this life, loving and being loved. Your purpose is to love and be loved, and you are already enough. You don’t have to do anything to earn or gain the acceptance you need. You are enough. I will be redundant and annoying and repeat myself as much as possible on this very topic, because this lie that we are unlovable is the one at the core of the other lies. It is the lie fueling the other lies; the one that started it all. It’s the lie that causes the pain that spurs us to inflict pain on others… This lie matters. It matters that we start to recognize this within ourselves, that we name it and that we call bullshit on this lie. I remember someone once saying it this way, to which I’ve added my own spin, and for those of you that are Christians, this may resonate with you; someone once said to me, if you were the only person in the whole world, Jesus would have gone to the cross just for you, to kill the lies and the pain the lies have inflicted on your heart and within your life. In another way, you are not meant to be perfect. You are meant to be, to love and be loved, and you were made perfectly for this mission. It is this lie that gets in the way of all of that beauty.
When I was maybe 16 or 17, I remember hearing about a book and someone shared with me. The book was called The Rules and talked about a surefire set of rules to make sure a man fell in love with you… I was 16 people. In my 16-year-old brain, this book was the rules of how to make sure I wouldn’t be hurt any more, and I wouldn’t be alone. I saw this book as the key to finding what I desperately needed. I was so thirsty for love, and this would make it all possible. This book said things like never ask him out, never call him, and Goodness knows what else. It was a bunch of rubbish but I believed it and I tried these rules over and over. Even though the rules failed me, I decided it was that I failed at doing them perfectly. I don’t remember many of them anymore, but I do remember how this provided more fuel for my perfectionist thought world. More guidelines I would follow in order to be someone that was loved and lovable. Just one of the instances where I clung to ideas which then allowed myself to become trained into more self-judgement.
I remember then again, when I was 24, coming out of a 6-year and very painful relationship; I had a resolve that I would never be hurt like that again. With these experiences, my brain made a firm decision that it was not safe to be me, and planted acres of perfectionist seeds within the fertile soil of my brain. To protect myself, I decided that I would become what was acceptable and I would do it perfectly or die trying.
The thing about the trap of perfectionism is that it is an incredibly self-sustaining model that strengthens itself relentlessly. When you are being accepted, you are stuck in imposter syndrome with shame drowning out any joy you hoped to find from this perceived acceptance, and when you aren’t being accepted, the lies yell louder and louder giving you no breaks whatsoever.
Brene Brown talks about something she calls whole-hearted living. She defines Whole-Hearted Living as “… engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.”
This is the kind of living that actually fulfills us as it is what we desperately need. We need to accept who we are apart from our actions, so that we don’t need it from the external world and we can live in a way that aligns with truth and integrity and honors who we are.
Brene also talks about authenticity, and as she defines it “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we are supposed to be and embracing who we actually are.” This is something I think I need tattooed on my hand. This is exactly what we are talking about here. When we talk about the lies that cause us to think we need to be liked by everyone, it steals from us the beauty of authenticity and whole-hearted living. It steals from us our freedom.
I remember when I was 26, and living at the top of my crumbling perfectionist tower. I had a really close friend at work, who was amazing and I just loved talking to her and being around her. She was someone who was always working to grow and was incredibly passionate about her life and family and friends. Well, there was also a new girl at work, and I made a point to try to make her feel welcome. I talked to her every day. I complimented her hair, genuinely, and I really wanted her to feel welcome. I remembered how it felt to be new, and I hoped that I could ease the transition. Well, when I came back from my honeymoon, my close friend and I went to lunch. She was clearly distraught, and felt horrible but wanted to tell me something. She apprehensively shared with me that the other girl had said stuff about me but didn’t want to because she didn’t want it to make me feel bad, but she did want me to know that she would not hide from me when someone said something about me and she had my back. The new girl hadn’t yet known that this woman and I were good friends and this new girl had shared with my friend how immensely she disliked me. How annoying I was and she essentially couldn’t stand me at all. I was shocked.
Face-to-face, I was incredibly appreciative and brushed it off. I truly was grateful to have a friend who would tell me when someone was saying things behind my back, but it started to eat at me. I was mad at myself that it was eating me up, but as I now know, it was because I was dealing with foundational beliefs about myself. I believed the lies that I was unworthy of love and acceptance, so I needed it from those around me. The fact that one person did not like me was not the end of the world in theory, but on my insides, it watered the lies. It fed them until I felt, so deeply, the rejection as a reinforcement of my lack of value. This story isn’t something to feel sorry for me about at all. I have “not liked” people before. I have been nice to their face and then behind their back said unkind things. I am not at all proud of it, but this is the truth. I have acted in pain and thereby spread pain and I do not blame this girl for not liking me now or take it personally. I honestly don’t know that I had really liked or disliked her yet either; this is just an example of how my brain responded with beliefs it already held about who I was and where my value lay.
Fast forward, just a few months ago… I talked to an amazing veteran homeschool mom over messenger who’s path had crossed mine in the most delightful way and she asked me to tell her about myself. I said I was a vast array of things, and at the end I said I was weird or crazy, or maybe I said both… Because, well, I just am.
She paused in our back-and-forth and then replied asking me what I meant. My heart dropped and I had a moment of internal panic. My thoughts made me feel like this was bad, and was worried I had scared her off. I explained that I am goofy and silly and a little crazy, or something like that. She was incredibly kind and engaging, she said she was too serious sometimes and she needed a little more of that in her life; to which I felt a deep sigh of relief inside… It’s funny because that was just a few months ago and that momentary fear still rocked me a little bit because I let this idea, this prospect of this miscommunication between us and the uncertainty of that vulnerability mean something about my worth. You see, I am still working on my awareness of the lies. I also am aware that I won’t take down the liar. The liar is still there taunting me, trying to take me down, BUT, I can strengthen myself and the voice of truth within me so that the lies are seen as that, lies, that don’t derail my thoughts. So that I don’t get stuck trying to gain the acceptance of others to satisfy my need for love and belonging. So that I don’t allow moments like these to convince me to close off and not proceed bravely, with vulnerability and trust in my own resilience and the process of life God has before me.
Well, I just looked up the word Weird in the thesaurus (rather than the dictionary), and technically they could mean awful, freaky, ghastly or eerie; but they can also mean curious, eccentric, magical, mysterious and so on… I just looked up the word crazy and the results are: insane, kooky, mad, nuts, and nutty… but also silly. Thus it really matters what one means by a word, doesn’t it?!? What is normal to one might seem strange to someone else, and it might seem normal to yet another. Once we accept our own individuality; whatever we choose to call what it is that makes us uniquely us, then we can learn to embrace it and learn to be brave. It can be brave to live your truth whether it sets you apart or not.
Something I read recently related the idea of trying to be liked by everybody to being likened to a ball of clay trying to mold ourselves into that which is before us. I am not a ball of clay to be shaped and molded to fit whatever type of person or situation is before me. Neither are you. WE can both learn to hold our shape, to learn what shape that is, and to honor those around us as different than us.
There is a quote that I also read recently and fell in love with. It’s by P.T. Barnum and says “No one ever made a different by being like everybody else.”
If we hope to actually go out and make a difference in the world, we need to be not only okay with who we are but actually really BE totally who we are. We need not only to accept ourselves, but to embrace ourselves. That includes our strengths and our weaknesses. This also means we acknowledge that even though we have areas where we struggle, we also have areas where we thrive.
It is the very balance of our strengths and weaknesses which allows us to both connect deeply with others who offset these strengths and weaknesses, but also to find such satisfaction in these relationships. I think it’s because we have areas where we struggle which others might be strong and areas they struggle where we might excel, that we, when we are in a place of embracing ourselves, can grow and really find deep meaning in those relationships. It humbles us in a shame-free way when we are able to see ourselves as beautiful in the way we are imperfect, and see the ways in which others enrich our lives from their own individuality as well. Embracing who we are allows us to learn to accept others because it all comes from within us. When we love ourselves, we have love to give others because it is a thriving system that fuels itself, just as the opposite is true. When we are loving ourselves, it produces more love than we need, abundantly flowing over onto those around us. And acceptance and embracing ourselves is a part of that loving action. It allows us also to be free of the mental clutter of making value judgements of what others are doing and how they are doing as well and to see within the very fibers of our lives, those very messages that we need to hear. The messages that empower us. The very messages that we are searching for.
As I said, the opposite is true when we are not accepting ourselves and living in perfectionism. Both systems work to perpetuate what is at their core. Lies are the opposite of love. When we believe the lies, we fuel them, feeding them and helping them to live abundantly overtaking our lives and spreading lies and pain. When we believe the truth and believe in the value we have, we fuel this cycle instead and spread the opposite.
One thing that I realize the more work I do in this area is that the lie that I am not lovable, which fuels the thoughts that I must be accepted by others to gain the worthiness I deeply desire, promises that “If I can prove myself worthy of love to myself with the acceptance of others, then I will find the joy and peace I need.” It’s one of the most dangerous expanding root-like lie biproducts of perfectionism because when I am seeking to find my acceptance within the world of other people’s opinions, I will never be at peace. I will always be stuck in a rat race trying to stay one step ahead, breathless and exhausted and overwhelmed. I have been there a thousand times before, and never ever did it produce anything like joy or peace in my heart or any part of my life. The opposite is true, as often is the case with lies; when I surrender what other people think, realizing that they think the way they do as a byproduct of their own worlds; realizing that their thoughts and opinions have literally nothing to do with me, are not my fault, or my business and cannot and should not be changed by me; and when I instead go inward and begin to deconstruct lies of my own self-acceptance so I can embrace who I am; my strengths, weaknesses, weird quarks, mistakes, flaws and all of it… when I do this, I gain TRUE freedom. I actually start to taste peace for real. I experience what it feels like to live at peace with the imperfectly beautiful being that I am, and slow down enough to find joy in my moments. I stop comparing myself, because I realize the value in our individuality. I am able to take off the goggles that distorted my view of not only myself, but the world and see lessons where I would have only sat in judgement previously; I begin to see what I really want and where my power lies, and I find actual joy and contentment in all of it.
It is in our acceptance that we are both liberated and at peace to be who we are and accept others. We can’t really grow, when we aren’t rooted. We aren’t rooted when we are constantly unsure of who we are and what we are doing, and what to do. We need our shape. We need our unique design to allow us to blossom and move forward.
So… after having said all of this, I can understand that this can all seem incredibly exciting but also to the hard-core perfectionist, this can seem utterly impossible. This can seem daunting and like yet another thing to place on our shoulders and judge ourselves against in our ability to be successful, to perfect.
Guess what sunshine, this is not what this is about. This is about the opposite of perfection. This is about calling bullshit on perfectionism and saying that it is a liar. That you were never made to be perfect and that trying is keeping you from living the greatest life possible. And that this life that is before you is, hands down, the most fulfilling and incredible life because this life IS perfect for you. It’s perfect because of where you’ll mess up and what you’ll learn from each mistake. It’s perfect because of the flaws that will bring you to connect with others who help you to realize that often our flaws are where both our passions and strengths grow from. Living your life imperfectly is the most perfect thing that actually is. It is when you can surrender the fabricated ideas of perfection that you will start to actually see where you are and what you have with gratitude and perspective. Each time I choose to call out the lies and live as me, not filtered, vulnerable enough to share the countless mistakes I have made and also my successes without apology, I gain strength in my shape and I actually see myself for who I am and see the beauty of it. Each taste of this kind of freedom is life-giving water. Then, as we mess up. As we make mistakes, and we see that they don’t take us down completely, because our expectations are being transformed, we see beauty in all of it. I am not as terrified to be found out. It still scares me. I still hear the voices of fear, but I lean into my courage anyway more often than I did before and each time, the lies become more and more obvious in their nature. I recognize them… They’re more vivid and identifiable.
So, I want to ask you to let go of this as being any set of rules to measure yourself against as you may have in the past, and instead simply start to make yourself understand that when you feel crappy about who you are; when you feel terrified about being found out or not liked; that this is because you don’t have internal acceptance.
For me, I need to remember that regardless of what I do or don’t do, God knew it all. He knew it all before time began and yet he still made me. That idea alone proves for me that it was never about me being good enough. He made me because I am a work of art to him, the one that matters most in my life. And a work of art that pleases him with all of these imperfections. I was made with a beautiful purpose and that purpose has nothing to do with doing it all or being it all or how well I do or be anything. It’s about learning to be what I was made to be, and not trying to change myself into anything else.
You do not need to, nor are you supposed to be anything or anybody else. You wouldn’t be happier. The only way to find that peace and joy you long for is by really, fully and completely being you. Being the you that God fell in love with before he even started painting your incredible face. Start reflecting on that being. I have had to apologize to my body and my self for being such a bully for so many long years of my life. I have had to say sorry to my thighs for saying they were too thick and my boobs for saying they were too small. I’ve had to apologize to myself for saying I was stupid or that I couldn’t accomplish that which I was made for or that others were better than me. I have also had to go on the other side and forgive myself for all of it too. This involved a time of grieving for me too, and that’s ok. Realizing the pain that we have experienced and that we participated in the bullying that inflicted our pain (on top of the pain we may have caused others in this mess) so heavily can invoke a lot of other emotions. And they can be heard. We also have the ability, after we have sat with, heard, and validated for ourselves those deeply stuck emotions about this pain,.. to tell the story from another angel. We have the ability to reflect on who we have become and areas where we have thrived because of the challenges we have faced. We have an option to allow this to propel us forward in the way we choose to let the story be told going forward in our heads. As I’ve said before, our brains are always making sense of the world and telling stories. We get to reprogram our brain when the stories we are running in our heads are not actually helping us live in freedom or get to where we need to be going. We wouldn’t allow the GPS to lead us north when we need to go south, so don’t allow your GPS to keep telling you lies. Start to work actively on noticing and recognizing the lies that are being told in your own life, and then rewrite the stories with truth. Re write the stories with the truth that will both empower you to where you need to and want to go, and that will bring the most love and perpetuated truth within your life.
I always try to leave you with some things that you can try to work on to help in the area I talk about. Each time I talk about things that have helped, and it’s funny because so often I don’t even do these very things, even though I know that they help. But as I think these out with you and for you, I’m also thinking and talking them out for myself. In this way I’m reinforcing for myself what helps me so that I will remember them in my own times of need. This work is work for all of us, and I am no exception. I am constantly working on this, and often I forget. But I will now share some things that do really help me, or have helped me which I hope to do more of and you can join me.
Baby steps. Sometimes it can feel super daunting to think of the idea of trying to like yourself when you are buried under so many lies. So, Instead of Focusing on the idea that people may not like you and always trying to shift to how to accept yourself, you can focus on the fact that there are people that like you that do know some real things about you. Even if you tend to have people pleasing tendencies, keeping you somewhat or maybe even mostly masked, you can actively recognize that your closest friends and or family know you more than others and they still like and love you. So often, when we are worried about what people think it’s because we are stuck comparing ourselves with people that we see as maybe more perfect, and we are in comparison falling short because… well, they’re not us. No matter what, they’re not us. If we are stuck comparing ourselves to these perceptually perfect-ish individuals, then when the idea of them not liking us crosses our mind or becomes a possibility, we feel utterly terrible about who we are. Because we were already stuck seeing how much like them we want to be, and aren’t, and now the idea of them not liking us means we clearly don’t matter.
Comparison absolutely and totally steals our joy. And it can be hard to get out of that, but we can start to get out of the trap by instead looking at people we actually do know and love, who actually do know and love us too.
Oh, and those people that we think are perfect, are unquestionably not perfect. You’re not seeing the whole picture, and as hard as that is to remember sometimes, it’s true. I remember reading a marriage book that said to stop comparing your spouse’s weaknesses with another person’s spouse’s strengths. When we are comparing ourselves to someone, thinking that someone is better, we are so often looking at their strengths against our weaknesses and that’s always a sure bet to leave us feeling less than! We all have strengths and weaknesses, and just because all you can see right now is someone’s strengths, doesn’t mean they don’t have weaknesses. They may be good at hiding them, or you may be great at filtering them out of your perception, but they are there.
So, again, when you instead focus on those people that you love that love you, you can start to realize that not only do they know your flaws and you know theirs, but they still love you and you love them. And it’s those feelings that are nurturing and able to feed the thoughts that actually empower your life. And Brene Brown says something to this effect as well, that when someone really loves you, its’ not that they love you despite your imperfections, but it’s because of them. When I look at my friends, it’s the whole mix of genes and personality and everything that I love. I love knowing what they struggle with and where they succeed. I do not love my friends or family because they are of value to me. I love them because they’re uniquely themselves and because knowing someone for real is so incredibly beautiful. And when we can start to see that, then we can start to see from even just a logical standpoint, that we are lovable as we are. It can start to shift the definition in our head away from the perfectionist definition and toward one that involves wholeness, vulnerability, and authenticity. Remind yourself constantly that they love you this way too. It’s not just that you love them with their unqiue mix of characteristics and soup of ingredients that make them themselves, but again, they love you! When you are really loved by just a few people… even one person, even a parent or a sister or a single friend, you can start to work on seeing yourself through their lens. It can feel weird and unnatural at first as you’re getting your bearings, but it is incredibly helpful and becomes easier.
I know that I thought that the whole “love yourself” campaign was akin to being self-centered and egotistical for a long time. The whole self-care, self-love movement was something I reacted to with knots in my stomach of both longing and judgement. That was until I heard Kara Lowentheil talking about this very topic on her podcast. She said that so many people have this perception but that when we are self-loathing, we are the most self-centered people of all. This makes so much sense because it’s when we are in shame and fear and all of that pain that everything revolves around those lies. No truth can get in and thus: no love inside, no love outside. She said that when we actually love and accept ourselves, we really spend very little time thinking about ourselves in a selfish or self-centered way; in fact, we are not constantly pre-occupied by thoughts of ourselves. It makes so much sense when you think about it. When we already accept who we are, we are free to focus on life, and the outpouring of love on those around us… not starved and drowning. Really try to let that sink in.
Next, when you start to get pangs of fear and anxiety about other people liking you, start to seek really to understand why you would care what a particular person, or even just other people in general think of you. When you love and accept who you are, what other people think doesn’t matter.
So, when you get this pang of unworthiness in the pit of your stomach when other people’s possible negative opinions of you creep in, its’ because you are still believing a thought that you are afraid others will confirm for you.
This concept I’m talking about doesn’t mean you’re perfect and have no flaws and if only you’d see it. NO of course not. Again, nobody is perfect and we weren’t made to be!
And then on the other side… if you are thinking about your actions and have been acting in selfish ways… well, we act in alignment with our thoughts and feelings, so often if we are thinking we are one way, we will again act in a way that affirms those thoughts and feelings. We all need to reflect on our actions and assess weather or not they’re in line with who we want to be and make changes to habits. But we can’t make these kinds of lasting changes when we still have beliefs about ourselves that are unhelpful. If you act in a selfish way often, there is a reason. A core belief that is causing you to feel a certain way and fuel the behavior. Are you afraid of their not being enough, and live in a scarcity mentality? This happens a lot to me. Just as they say on airplanes, and the cliché is overused, but bear with me here; you do need to place the air mask on yourself first before you can help others, and that is not selfish. If you’re not getting oxygen and running around with no oxygen and not helping anyone, yep, you’re not going to feel very helpful or giving. There is a thought… a thought that you are believing about who you are at your core that has affected your actions. Sometimes this thought or belief has been affecting your actions so long that you have solid habits in place reinforcing the thought regularly.
Where can you start to see the lies that you are afraid other people’s opinions will reinforce? When we can let go of other people’s opinions as a matter of fact and verdict on our worthiness, we are free to see other opinions with a filter that can allow us to reflect on truth and assess our actions while also rejecting the lies. Believe me, I know, as I struggle with this one regularly, and lately I have noticed it more and more in my marriage and in parenting.
When you become aware of these thoughts that you’ve believed, you can choose what you really believe and then they just move from belief to thought. Then you can start to recognize the thought and when you hear it, with awareness, or maybe when you dig and find it, you will see it as the thought that you once believed and it will loosen its grip on you. Like an old bully. They don’t always go away, but you can start to walk away. Like Rebecca Scritchfield says in her body kindness book, you recognize the bully, call it by name, then turn around and go play with your real friends. Notice the lies, call them out, then go spend your time with and in the truth.
Where your values lie, there is your truth and there is your ally. What matters to you? Who is it that you really want to be? The lies are keeping you from being this person. When you start to recognize that this is the person you really are. Underneath the layers of lies and belief of those lies, there is the person who is all that you hope to be. Once you start to believe the truth, you’ll feel it, you’ll think it, you’ll recognize the lies, turn away and turn to the truth. Your emotions will follow, and your actions will align with the way you think. It will be work, but it will be organic. It will be hard, but simple. Become your ally. Strengthen the voice of truth and even though there will still be thoughts and emotions that come and go from lies, you can allow them, recognize them, not resist them or get into a power struggle with them, and keep turning to the truth. It won’t be perfect, you won’t be perfect, but you don’t need to be because that’s never been what any of this is about.
In summary here, none of life is really personal. People will sometimes like you and sometimes they won’t, but it’s because of their own world with all of what’s going on in their own head with their own thoughts and battles with the lies and the truth. It has nothing to do with you, is not your business, your fault or something you can or should try to change. The right people in your life will like you. The people that like you are people that are meant to be in your life, in your circle. They will lift you up and you them. Look to what they think of you to help you start to get past the lies if you’re having trouble digging in on your own. You are loved because of all of you, not just your perceived perfections. Anybody that really knows you, knows you’re not at all perfect, and they are the ones that truly love you anyway. That is sometimes very helpful proof to make yourself aware of the lies in the beginning as you start to do this work. Remember, that when you compare yourself with others, you are not really seeing them completely, and comparing what you see as flaws to what you see as perfection in someone else is always going to feed lies, it is simply not logical. Your unique mixture of personality, weird, strengths, and weaknesses makes you an incredibly perfect fit for your life and if you were somebody else you wouldn’t have the same relationships and strengths and experiences to enjoy and learn and grow from.
Accept who you are… accept all of you, so much so that you learn to embrace yourself UN-apologetically. So that you can live aligned with your values, speaking your true voice and not changing yourself to fit any mold other than that which was made uniquely for you. Then you will not need to cover up your weaknesses. Contrarily, you can share them so that others can know that they are imperfectly beautiful too and don’t need to change who they are to be loved and accepted. Don’t sacrifice who you are, your life, your passions to be something inauthentic. It’s not worth it. Every moment lived as you were designed is the most peaceful, joy-filled and fulfilling that you will have. Real friends that love the real you will be true friends, and you will live this life fully. But first, you have to be your own true friend.
This work is hard, but it’s not as complicated as it may seem. We need to practice and we need to make it a habit, but the changes will come when we do this. You’re not alone in any of this. You are beautiful in all of the messy and incredible ways that make you YOU. I am grateful for you.
Thank you for joining me.
Sincerely,
Holly Ann Kasper
The Radical Imperfectionst
