Tag: imperfections

How Admitting Your Weaknesses Could Actually Make You Stronger

“The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” ~Nathaniel Branden

Do me a favor and don’t tell my wife what I’m about to share with you.

I have an absurd number of weaknesses.

Just kidding. My wife, of course, knows this. She is well aware of my many shortcomings. While she would be happy to add to the growing Encyclopedia of dumb shit I do, I will keep this short and sweet out of respect for your time.

We live in a weird culture that’s afraid to admit any of us have weaknesses or struggles. We’re terrified because none of us want to look stupid or unqualified.

We pretend to be squeaky-clean specimens of perfection, but inside, our minds are on the verge of exploding as we obsess over questions like: What will people think of me? Will they think I’m dumb? Will I be passed up for a promotion? Will others discover that I’m struggling? Am I actually a fraud?!

What makes this even more challenging is that it’s a silly game we all willingly play.

Think of a typical job interview.

HR: “So, Terry, we’re really impressed with everything you shared today, but we have one final question. What would you say is your biggest weakness?”

Terry: “This one’s really hard to admit, but it’s got to be that I work too hard. I’m always willing to go above and beyond to get the job done.”

HR: “Wow, thank you for being so vulnerable, Terry. You sound like you’d be a great fit for mentoring our new hires as they navigate the challenges of working in a fast-paced environment.”

Here’s the truth: We both know Terry is full of crap. Like, c’mon, Terry, is that really your biggest weakness? That you work too hard? Are you sure it’s not that you’re an emotional black hole since your divorce, which is why your kids don’t talk to you?

I’m aware that what I’m about to share sounds contradictory, but it’s true. Admitting you have weaknesses is a sign of strength, not weakness. You must know what you can do and what you can’t, your powers and limitations, your strengths and vulnerabilities, what’s in your control and what isn’t.

There are obvious circumstances that make admitting our weaknesses easy. In fact, not realizing you are outside the scope of what you know in these situations makes you look about as bright as a jellyfish.

Break your leg? You go to the emergency room.

Car alternator blows? You go to a mechanic.

Time to do your business taxes? You go to an accountant.

But here’s where we all start to fall apart. What about when you’re depressed, hopeless, or emotionally drained, and you don’t know how to help yourself?

What do most of us do in the above scenario?

Sweet eff all.

Actually, that’s not true. We double down on negative habits like drinking, eating, shopping, or mindlessly scrolling on our phones, hoping something will change our state.

We’re not weak, right?

We don’t have a problem, right?

Who cares if we’re not addressing our emotions? There’s work to be done. I already don’t have time to get everything done, so why would I waste time on crap like this?

It’s embarrassing to admit that I believed not addressing my weaknesses was a sign of strength.

My depression only made me weak because I kept it hidden in the shadows—not because mental health struggles are signs of inherent weakness. I endured relentless suffering, tormented by the belief that I was a worthless bag of flesh who subjected my loved ones to my endless mistakes and would be better off dead.

What was I trying to prove?

Why was I so afraid of looking weak?

Would I be less of a man?

And here’s the irony. By asking those questions, I realized that I was the one labeling these weaknesses as such. That shift empowered me to confront these challenges head-on, seeking the support of a therapist and coach, and hold myself to a higher standard.

I’ve discovered that these “weaknesses” are sources of extraordinary growth. Therefore, acknowledging our weaknesses is the key to becoming stronger.

I was blind to the cost of my denial until I gained a different perspective. I needed a new pair of glasses to show me that how you do anything is how you do everything.

When I viewed these moments as gravity problems—things I couldn’t do anything about—I felt hopeless about everything in my life. But when I realized that these were challenges that I could overcome, I was given the opportunity to see that I could conquer any obstacle in my path if I was willing to embrace imperfection.

Don’t let the subtlety of this shift in thinking race past you as you read the rest of this story. Understand first that you and I are having this conversation because I chose life.

If you don’t address a broken leg, you’re going to hobble around like a pirate for the rest of your life.

If you don’t fix your alternator, you have a 3,000-pound paperweight.

If you don’t get an accountant to handle your business taxes, you will pay dearly to the tax man.

And if you don’t address your emotional issues?

You will forever be anchored to a tiny, scared version of yourself. Never capable of reaching your potential.

It’s not enough to know that you have weaknesses; you must know when you’ve reached the limit of what you can figure out independently. You’re outside your boundaries if you don’t know which side of the line you’re on, or if there even is a line at all.

I’m not here to tell you what to do, but you can bet I will leave you with a question.

Six months from now, what will you wish you had spent time on today? What action would help you get the support you need to overcome something you’ve been struggling with?

Calling a friend?

Grabbing breakfast with your mom?

Booking a therapist appointment?

That, my friend, is what matters most.

And nothing else on your to-do list will fulfill you if you don’t prioritize it.

Choosing not to act now is delaying a better future. So, whatever you’re going to do, do it. Do it now. Don’t wait.

February 22, 2024
How I Overcame the Stress of Perfectionism by Learning to Play Again

“What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play…” ~Plato

I am a recovering perfectionist, and learning to play again saved me.

Like many children, I remember playing a lot when I was younger and being filled with a sense of openness, curiosity, and joy toward life.

I was fortunate to grow up in Oregon with a large extended family with a lot of cousins with whom I got to play regularly. We spent hours, playing hide-and-seek, climbing trees, drawing, and building forts.

I also attended a wonderful public school that encouraged play. We had regular recess, and had all sorts of fun equipment like stilts, unicycles, monkey bars, and roller skates to play with. In class, our teachers did a lot of imaginative and artistic activities with us that connected academics with a sense of playfulness.

I viewed every day as an exciting opportunity and remember thinking, “You just never know what is going to happen.” My natural state was to be present with myself, enjoying the process of play

Unfortunately, my attitude began shifting from playfulness to perfectionism early on. Instead of being present and enjoying process, I started focusing on performance (mainly impressing people) and product (doing everything right). The more I did this, the less open, curious, and joyful I was.

Instead, I grew anxious, critical, and discouraged.

I first remember developing perfectionist tendencies when I was in elementary school and taking piano lessons. For some reason, I got the idea that I had to perform songs perfectly, or else I was a failure.

Eventually I became so anxious, I would freeze up while playing in recitals. I started hating piano, which I once had loved, and eventually quit.

My perfectionism spread into other areas of my life, too. In school, I pushed myself to get straight A’s, and if I earned anything less, I felt like a failure. I often missed out on the joy of learning because I was so worried about getting things right.

My perfectionism also negatively impacted my relationship with myself. I believed I had to look perfect all the time. As a result, I often hated the way I looked, rather than learning to appreciate my own unique appearance and beauty. I also remembering turning play into exercise at this time of my life and using it to pursue the “perfect” body.

Movement, which I loved when I was a child, began to feel exhausting and punishing.

Perfectionism also hurt my relationships with other people. I felt like I had to be smooth and put together and that I always had to put everyone else’s needs above my own. Not surprisingly, I often felt unconfident, anxious, and exhausted around other people.

At this time in my life, I believed that if I tried and worked hard enough, I could do everything right, look perfect, and make everyone happy.

My perfectionism increased in young adulthood until eventually it became unsustainable. In my early thirties, I became the principal of a small, private middle school where I had taught for eight years. I loved the school and was devoted to it.

In many ways, I was the ideal person to do the job. But I was also young and inexperienced, and I made some big mistakes early on. I also made some decisions that were good and reasonable decisions that, for various reasons, angered a lot of people.

To complicate matters, the year I became middle school principal, the school underwent a massive change in our school’s overall leadership, and we suffered a tragic death in the community. I worked as hard as I could to help my school through this difficult time, but things felt apart.

My school, which had largely been a happy and joyful place, suddenly became filled with fighting, suspicion, and stress. These events were largely beyond my control and were not the fault of any one person, but I blamed myself. For someone who had believed her whole life that if she worked hard enough, she could avoid making mistakes and could make people happy, my job stress felt devastating.

I felt like my life was spinning out of control and that all the rules that once worked no longer applied. I crashed emotionally, and I remember telling my husband at this time, “I will never be happy again.”

That was one of the darkest times of my life.

It took me several years to find happiness again. One of the major things that helped me to do so was recovering a sense of playfulness.

After my emotional crash, I decided I was done with perfectionism. I understood clearly that focusing so much on avoiding mistakes and pleasing-people was the source of much of my suffering.

I realized I needed a different way to approach life.

About this time, my friend Amy and I started taking fencing lessons together. I was quite bad at it, but it didn’t matter. Because I had given up perfectionism, I didn’t care anymore about impressing people at fencing class or performing perfect fencing moves.

Instead, I cared about being present with myself in the process and staying open and curious, and focusing on joy.

I had a blast. I felt free and alive, and something flickered to life inside me that had felt dormant for many years. I felt playful again. And I realized that I had been missing playfulness for many years, and that it was part of what had caused me to become so perfectionistic.

Playfulness is the attitude we take toward life when we focus on presence and process with attitudes of openness, curiosity, and joy. Perfectionism, on the other hand, makes us focus on performance and product and encourages anxiety, criticalness, and discouragement.

Fencing helped me rediscover play and leave perfectionism behind.

I fully embraced my newfound playful attitude. It touched every area of my life, and I hungered for new adventures. I began reconnecting with dreams I had put on hold for a while. Eventually I decided to leave my job as a middle school principal and return to graduate school to earn my PhD in philosophy, a goal I’d had since seventh grade.

Earning a PhD in philosophy may not seem like a very playful thing to do, but it was for me. For six years, I immersed myself in the ideas of great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Herbert Marcuse, and Paulo Freire.

It felt like I was playing on a big, philosophical playground. But I also faced some significant challenges.

I was thirty-seven when I returned to grad school and was a good ten to fifteen years older than most of my colleagues. Most of them had a B.A. and even an M.A. in philosophy, while I had only taken one philosophy course in college. I had a lot of catching up to do, and I faced some major challenges.

One of the biggest challenges I faced early on was our program’s comprehensive exams. We had two major exams over thousands of pages of some of the hardest philosophical works ever written. The exams were so difficult that at one point, they had over a fifty percent fail rate. If students didn’t pass them by the third time, the graduate school kicked them out of the program.

I was determined to pass these comps and spent all my Christmas and summer breaks studying for them for the first several years of graduate school. But I still failed both exams the first time I took them, and I failed my second exam twice.

It isn’t surprising I failed them, given the high fail rate for the exams and the fact that I was still learning philosophy. But it was painful. I had worked so hard, and I was afraid of getting kicked out of the program.

I was tempted to revert to my old perfectionist habits because they had once given me a sense of control. But I knew that would lead me down a dead-end road. So, I began applying all the lessons I had learned about playfulness to the comprehensive exams.

Rather than focusing on performance and the product, I focused on presence and process. I also focused on practicing habits of openness, curiosity, and joy. Mentally, I compared the comps to shooting an arrow into the bull’s eye of a target. Every test, even if I failed it, was a chance to check my progress, readjust, and get closer to the bull’s eye.

This turned the comprehensive exams into a game, and it lessened the pain of failing them. It helped me accept failure as a normal part of the process and to congratulate myself every time I made progress, no matter how small it was. This attitude also helped me focus on proactive, constructive steps I could take to do better, like meeting with faculty members or getting tutoring in areas I found especially challenging. (Aristotle’s metaphysics, anyone?)

I also taught myself to juggle during this time. Juggling not only relieved stress, it was also a playful bodily reminder to me that progress takes time. Nobody juggles perfectly the first time they try. Juggling takes time and patience, and the more we focus on openness, curiosity, and the joy of juggling, the more juggling practice feels like a fun game.

I began thinking of passing my comps like juggling, and it helped me be more patient with the process. I eventually mastered the material and passed both my comps.

Studying for the comps taught me to bring playfulness into all my work in graduate school.

Whenever I felt stressed out in my program, I reminded myself that perfectionism was a dead-end road, and that playfulness was a much better approach. Doing this helped me relax, be kind to myself, accept failures as part of the learning process, and to take small consistent steps to improve.

This playful attitude kept me sane and helped me make it to the finish line.

Playfulness was so helpful for me in graduate school that I have tried to adopt this spirit of playfulness in all areas of my life, including the college classrooms in which I teach. I have noticed that whenever I help students switch from perfectionism to playfulness, they immediately relax, are kinder to themselves, and increase their ability to ask for help.

I am dedicated now to practicing playfulness every day of my life and to help others do the same. Playfulness isn’t something we must leave behind in childhood. It is an attitude we can bring with us our whole life. When we do so, life becomes an adventure, even during difficult times, and there is always something more to learn, explore, and savor.

March 25, 2021
Why I Now Love That I’m Different After Hating It for Years

“Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.” ~Amy Gerstler

I grew up during the traditional times of the sixties and seventies. Dad went out to work and earned the family income, while Mom worked at home raising their children. We were a family of seven. My brother was the first-born and he was followed by four sisters. I was the middle child.

I did not quite know where I belonged. I oscillated between my older two and younger two siblings, feeling like the third wheel no matter where I was.

I was the one in my family that was “different.” I was uncomfortable in groups, emotionally sensitive, intolerant of loud noises, and did not find most jokes funny. Especially when the jokes were at the expense of someone else. Oftentimes that someone else was me.

Yes, I was the proverbial black sheep. I stood on the fringes of my own family, a microcosm of the bigger world.

Life felt hard and lonely. I felt isolated and misunderstood. Too frequently I wondered what was wrong with me and why I did not quite fit. Others appeared to be content with the status quo. I never was. Others didn’t questions the inequities I saw in life. I did. Others did not seem to notice the suffering of others. I epitomized it.

Being different did not exactly make me the popular one. In fact, quite the opposite. Who knew what to do with my awkwardness? I sure didn’t.

As a result, I was depressed a good part of my life. That was not something that was identified or talked about then. Too often it still isn’t. A disconnected life and feelings of loneliness and isolation will lead to depression, among other things.

I hit my teens and did what too many do: I looked for ways to be comfortably numb. My choice was alcohol. It gave me an opportunity to “fit in” or at the very least, not care about the fact that I did not. I rebelled. I self-destructed. For years.

As life will have it, I grew up, feeling my way in the dark, wondering when the lights would go on. I turned inward looking for the comfort I could not find from the world. I hid my pain and lostness. At times, I prayed that I would get cancer and die.

A heroic exit was not to be my path.

Do you know what I am talking about?

Maybe you feel what I have felt. Maybe you know the pain of chronic isolation and what it means to be different in a culture that prefers sameness. Do you wonder if you will ever be okay? Do you wonder if you will ever fit?

Well, let me tell you:

First of all, you fit. You have always fit. You belong. You have always belonged. You are needed—more than you know. These are truisms.

Others do not have to think you belong in order for you to know you do. Others do not have to treat you as insider in order for you to know you are.

Knowing, intellectually, that you belong is one thing. Feeling like you belong, now that is an entirely different thing. That is an inside job. In other words, that is your work to do.

So, I did what I had to do to bring change, in order to get the life I wanted. I stepped up to the challenges in my life, which came through my work world and my personal relationships.

I often ran into conflict with authority figures, changing jobs frequently. I didn’t know how to let others close to me. I was afraid of being rejected, so I used anger and avoidance to distance those that mattered to me the most. I was not happy, content, or at peace. I felt that more often than not.

So, I faced my pain and hurt instead of numbing it.

As I got more honest with myself, I began to consider that maybe there was nothing wrong with me. Maybe there was something wrong with the world or the system that wants to tell me there is something wrong with me.

So, I began to view myself through different eyes. I began to make some noise. I got out of the bleachers and stepped into the ring. I chose to participate in life as I was, not as others thought I should be. I started to push up against the boundaries that others had set.

Yes, I faced rejection. I dealt with disapproval. It was hard. Really hard. It hurt. I cried. I stomped my feet. I cried again. I gave myself permission to feel angry.

In spite of the internal chaos, in spite of the hurt, in spite of my turmoil, I would do it all again.

When we are trying to make changes, when we are owning our own lives, when we bump up against the expectations of others, it frequently gets messy before it gets better.

DO IT ANYWAY! Because it does get better. For every person who rejects you, another will embrace you. But you can only meet those people if you first embrace yourself. Because you need to accept yourself to be able to put yourself out there.

When you feel afraid to move forward, move anyway.

When you want to quit because it feels too hard, rest. Do something nice for yourself. Then get back up and keep moving.

There is light. Even when you can’t yet see it.

There is hope. Even when you can’t find it.

There is love. Even when you can’t feel it.

Work at finding your voice by getting quiet and paying attention to your feelings and inner nudges. Learn to trust yourself by acknowledging that only you know what is true and best for you. Know your worth by recognizing your intrinsic value as a unique person with an abundance of admirable qualities.

Start caring more about approving of yourself than waiting for others to approve of you. Own your life and take responsibility for your well-being and happiness. No one can do that for you.

Figure out how to forgive yourself for the mistakes you will inevitably make. Learn how to love yourself more than anyone could ever love you.

Accept yourself—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then get about changing the ugly as best you can.

This is what I have done. This is the hard work that brings transformation.

In the process of all of this I made a phenomenal discovery…

ME!!

What a discovery! I have gifts to bring to the world. Gifts that will leave this world better than I found it.

When I was younger, I didn’t like how sensitive I was to the energies around me, how I felt things to the core of my being, and how I hurt when I saw someone else hurting.

Those around me seemed playful and fun, though, I could see the hurt in them. Life did not feel playful and fun to me. It felt serious. People were hurting. Why didn’t anyone other than me notice?

I was hurting. Why didn’t anyone notice?

I gravitated to the heavier side of life, fully identified with the suffering around me.

I wanted to be anything other than what I was.

I now understand these qualities to be empathy and intuition. Two things the world greatly needs.

I learned to trust those qualities. They led me down a road I could never have imagined. I now have a thriving counseling practice, helping others to heal. I get to watch them discover their gifts. Better than that, I get to watch them go from hating who they are to loving and embracing who they are.

Then they go out and find ways to help others do the same.

But this story is not just about me. It is also about you.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are amazing and beautiful, just as you are. Flaws and imperfections included.

Don’t change yourself for a world that wants to tell you who you are.

You tell the world who you are. Let’s change this place together and allow difference to be the norm, because our beauty is in our diversity.

I invite you to take the journey inward to self-discovery. Then bring what you’ve learned and share it.

Bring who you are and let’s change this world, one person at a time.

March 10, 2021
3 Tips to Embrace Imperfections and Bounce Back from Mistakes

“There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.” ~Conrad Hall

Back when I was a teenager, I was kind of a perfectionist. Or, well, I wasn’t really a perfectionist—I was actually a “fake” perfectionist.

Allow me to explain: I put on the perfectionist persona. I acted and behaved in a certain way so that everyone (including both my fellow classmates and teachers) thought and believed that I was the perfect student when I wasn’t.

Everybody thought I was the student who got straight A’s, was a bookworm, was involved in every extracurricular activity that ever existed, never got in trouble in school for anything ever, and was an overall stellar student.

Though some of those things were kind of true—I mean, I was involved in a lot of activities and I never did get a detention ever—I was very far from a stellar student.

I didn’t get A’s in middle and high school; I mostly got C’s. I certainly wasn’t a bookworm; I hated reading all this fiction stuff I was told to write book reports on.

The truth of it all was that I was really stellar at one thing: faking my own perfection. I had mastered the skill of being seen as the perfect, most stellar student in order to hide my own shortcomings.

I was trying to hide that I wasn’t so great at studying and getting good grades. I was trying to hide that I did, in fact, get in trouble every so often.

I was trying to hide my own imperfections. I was terrified that the world would see that I had weaknesses and inner wounds. I feared that others would know that there were tasks that I was not good at or just flat-out could not do.

To this day, the fear of others seeing my imperfections is still an issue to some extent. Like the fear of judgment that comes up whenever I make a typo in an article or whenever I give a presentation and accidentally mispronounce a word.

My inner critic still likes to creep in and try to debilitate me from moving forward.

Whether we are a child trying to avoid bad grades or an adult who is trying to write the perfect book, we are all struggling with accepting our own imperfections.

We are all on the journey of hindering the voice of our inner critic and allowing our true selves (imperfections and all) to be seen.

Here are three ways that can help you create a habit of accepting your own imperfections:

1. Focus on utilizing your strengths, not your weaknesses.

Many of us grew up societies where we were told we have to really focus on strengthening our weaknesses. If we weren’t great at math, then we got the idea that we needed to spend more of our time and energy strengthening our abilities in math.

Though there are benefits to strengthening our weaknesses, it can really cause a blow to our self-esteem and motivation to focus on them. We can develop the idea that just because we are not good at this one thing, then we are a failure.

So ask yourself: What things am I really good at? Is it music? Languages? Writing? Speaking? Physics? Identify what things come natural to you and make it a goal to really enhance your gifts so you can be the best that you can be.

2. When you mess up, say to yourself, “I am beautiful!” Then write down all the ways that you are beautiful.

Let’s get real here: Whether you are doing something that is your strength or your weakness, at some point or another you are going to mess up.

The problem, however, is that when we do mess up, many of us shut down. We stop trying, and our inner critic starts telling us how we are not good enough.

Next time you mess up when you’re doing something, say out loud, “I am beautiful!” Then get out a sheet of paper and write down ways that you are beautiful. What are the good things that you do for others? What are the amazingly beautiful qualities that you have?

To enhance this even more, make it a habit to do this same thing when someone else messes up. See someone trip over their words during a speech? Remind yourself that they are beautiful, and why. See someone make a typo? Remind yourself that they are beautiful, and then write down a quality that they possess that makes them so beautiful.

We are all connected, so by sending other people love when they expose their own imperfections, we will give ourselves space to heal as well.

3. When you mess up, just keep going.

For many of us, the problem is that when we mess up, we just stop working. We get so caught up in the belief of “I am not good enough” that we stop ourselves from moving forward.

I struggled with this constantly when I took my very first watercolor painting class two years ago while I was living in Korea. Over and over again I found myself making a small error, getting all worked up about it, shutting down, and basically just wanting my art teacher to do it for me.

Over time I gradually learned to just let it go and keep going. I ultimately developed and strengthened my skills by setting the intention to keep going regardless of any errors I made along the way.

So, whenever you do mess up, whether that be using the wrong brush for that one stroke, saying the wrong thing, losing something important, or tripping over your own two feet, just brush it off and keep on going.

Breaking down, stopping, and worrying about it doesn’t allow us heal and transform. Accepting the mistake and continuing to act does!

Happy woman image via Shutterstock

October 30, 2014
5 Tips to Accept Your Imperfections, No Matter How Different You Feel

“I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go.” ~Sheng Yen

Growing up different isn’t easy for anyone.

I was born normal, happy, and healthy. I had five fingers and five toes. I reached all my developmental milestones and showed promise as a vivacious, energetic child. It all changed when I was ten months old.

I became violently ill with bacterial meningitis. I battled the infection with a strength I was naturally graced with at birth. One week into my hospital stay, I was finally able to lift my head; two weeks later, I was back home.

I was lucky to escape with my life from the meningitis. When it’s not fatal, it can result in long-term complications, such as low IQ, cognitive impairment, loss of limbs, and learning difficulties, to name a few.

I came away with profound hearing loss. Not quite deaf, but enough loss to have it impact on my daily functioning.

At seven years of age, I got my first pair of hearing aids. It opened my world to a whole new experience. I could hear a lot more and I have this vivid memory of hearing a leaf scatter across the pavement for the first time. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that noise was.

It brought challenges along with it too.

I was known as the kid with “the things in her ears.” I was bullied for being different. I hung out with the boys playing football and cricket because the girls didn’t want a bar of me.

It left me emotionally dead. I was really good at burying all the pain inside and trudging along every day.

I became a master robot—a mechanical human being incapable of trusting and feeling. It was my survival mechanism doing its best to avoid accepting who I really am.

Entering the real world after school became a shock. Out of my comfort zone, I had to enter a world of large groups, noisy parties where I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, large lecture rooms, and meeting new people. I had to suddenly be more than okay with my hearing loss.

I had to be okay with being a little different.

It was the biggest lesson of my life—my own perceived fears are far more powerful than anything else.

I perceived people would treat me different or look at me differently if I told them I had hearing loss. By believing this, I practically encouraged them to treat me differently without realizing it.

So there I was, in my late teens, brewing with years of buried emotions and a confronting new reality of accepting who I am. So what did I do? Partied hard of course. The emotions came out in a flurry of binge drinking and hangovers worthy of a death bed.

It took me three years to finally wake up. Three years to finally realize that I must accept every part of me in order to live the life I want. Negative emotions continue to build up when we cannot accept ourselves for who we really are, and burying our emotions is no different to avoiding our true self.

Accepting who we are is a beautiful, bone-achingly hard thing to do. It’s about being vulnerable, consciously opening our eyes to our flaws, and seeing them in a whole new light. It hurts at first, but it’s a pain worth a thousand lifetimes.

By changing our perception to see our flaws as neutral traits that are both good and bad, we change how we choose to react to things. It will ultimately change our life for the better.

I’ve learned to see the benefits of my hearing loss. I’m a world-class lip reader who can probably “hear” better than you in loud settings. I’m more visually aware and observant than most, which has been incredibly handy in understanding human behavior.

I had to face my hearing loss through accepting it as a genuine, unique part of me. I am absolutely in love with my life, despite all its challenges and pitfalls, and I have no doubt that if I didn’t have this unique part of me, I would be in a very, very different place.

If I could give you five tips to help you accept who you are, they would be this:

1. See your perceived flaws in a whole new light.

Nothing is ever completely good or completely bad. In fact, everything is in perfect, harmonious balance. Find the benefit of that one thing you have trouble accepting, and change your perception to see that it’s not so bad having it after all.

2. Practice gratitude daily.

We all have so much to be grateful for. Gratitude helps to cultivate a positive mindset, which will help you to accept yourself for who you really are.

Create a daily gratitude journal and list three things for which you are grateful. Do this in the morning to start your day on a positive note.

3. Recognize that you are not your thoughts.

We get so lost in the story that goes through our minds. Our egoistic mind is, in fact, our greatest storyteller. And too often, we believe everything it tells us.

Learn to recognize that thoughts are created by an egoistic, survival-focused mind. It sees the threat in everything. Start to separate yourself by asking your mind this: “Does this thought serve me and my purpose? Does this thought actually help me?”

4. Be vulnerable with others.

You will be pleasantly surprised to know that you are not alone in this big, beautiful world. Someone out there has gone through your tribulations and trials, and they will understand what you are going through.

We can feel so alone with our ego at times, so sharing with others can help us to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It also helps us to change our perception, as others can guide us to a different angle.

5. Look after yourself.

Eat a nourishing diet, move regularly, rest often, and be mindful. We, too often, underestimate how the mind and body work both ways. By looking after your body, you are creating a sacred environment for your true being. It makes acceptance a lot easier when you look after the house your soul resides in.

It wasn’t until I started applying these five tips that I finally began the arduous process of accepting every little part of me, including that ever so tough one of my hearing loss. Every day, I accept myself a little more.

I just want you to remember this: you are imperfectly perfect, just the way you are.

Photo by g-imagination

February 25, 2014
A Lasting Romance Is Built on Flaws: 6 Tips for a Strong Relationship

“Let our scars fall in love.” ~Galway Kinnell

We all bring our own baggage to any relationship. I know that my past relationships have shaped my approach to love and romance. When we seek out that special someone to share our life, the disappointments of our past relationships tend to get in the way of new discoveries.

It’s human nature to size up a potential partner by drawing from past experience.

There are so many ways to catalog the possible flaws: He’s too short. She’s too tall. Too fat. Too thin. Not enough education. Too much education. Or you become judgmental about how much your date eats or drinks or how they interact with other people.

The perceived flaws get in the way of making a connection.

It’s like the three bears’ approach to dating, looking for that partner who is “just right.” Too often we make the mistake of looking for a mirror of ourselves in a partner.

After a while, I realized that the perfect mate doesn’t exist. There is no “right” person who has everything on my perfect mate checklist. And even if I found someone with everything I was looking for, wouldn’t that relationship become dull with time? They’d be too much like me.

I finally figured out that it’s better to seek out a partner who understands and shares my failings; someone who would complement my worst characteristics. To find my soul mate, I first needed to be able to look inside, examine my character defects, and change them or embrace them.

As I got older, I stopped trying so hard. I started to relax, be myself, and invite women to accept me for who I am, flaws and all.

I can be geeky. I can be arrogant. I can be aloof. I can be a real know-it-all. I can be selfish. I have any number of character defects. But by taking my own inventory and laying my faults on the table for all to see, I could invite someone to accept me for me.

I finally married at age fifty. It took me that long to figure out that I had to be true to myself in order to be true to a partner. And now I have a beautiful wife and two terrific stepchildren who love me for me—flaws and all.

Like any family, we have our fights. When we forget how to tolerate the other’s defects, my wife and I can get into a real shouting match. It’s at those moments that I have to remind myself to embrace our flaws and follow some simple rules:

1. Communicate.

I tend to live too much in my head, and when I listen to my own inner voices too long, I lose touch with what’s real and start imagining the worst. Good communication solves that problem.

My wife and I share our feelings, our anxieties, our hopes, and our dreams. We communicate, but we try not to take on each other’s problems as our own. Just simply saying “I’m having a bad day,” or “I don’t really want to talk about that now,” we can stay connected and leave the doors of communication open without getting into a fight.

2. Respect each other.

Even when we disagree I always try to give my wife the respect she deserves. When we do fight, we try to practice fair fighting, being respectful of the other party and hearing their side. If you are considerate of your partner, it’s easier to find a middle ground.

3. Respect each other’s space.

And we make sure we give each other space. We each have friends and activities we pursue on our own.

My wife will go out with her girlfriends to hear a local band or see a ballgame, and it’s understood that I’m not welcome. I also work at home and we have set ground rules around my hours and my workspace. For example, my wife keeps our house spotless and she knows that, even though I am a slob, my office is off-limits; it’s my space.

4. Rely on each other.

No matter what we are doing or how busy we get, we know we can count on each other for support.

I try to call on that support when I really need it, so I don’t take it for granted. And if my wife needs help with a technical problem or is worried about the kids, I make time to assist or lend a sympathetic ear.

As we have grown together we have become better at triaging crises; if a problem can wait, we set a time aside to deal with it when we can both give it our full attention.

5. Take your own pulse.

I try to stay in tune with my own moods and feelings to make sure my inner demons don’t affect my family.

When my inner voices start to whisper to me, I can start blaming my family for my own failings. It’s then that I pause, take a deep breath, and try to distinguish what is real and what is imagined. It eliminates a lot of family drama.

6. Keep the romance alive.

Despite busy schedules, my wife and I take time out for each other. Friday is date night and it’s sacrosanct. We go to dinner, take in a movie, or find some activity we can share and enjoy together. We also work to make time on weekends for joint activities, even if it’s grocery shopping or a trip the hardware store together.

After many years of self-examination and soul-searching I understand that I am the only constant in any relationship. When I found a partner willing to love me for my flaws as well as my good points, I knew I had found the right mate.

Even when I screw up, the foundation we have built tolerating and even celebrating each other’s faults and foibles, our humanness, is strong enough to withstand anything.

November 18, 2013
Wabi Sabi: Find Peace by Embracing Flaws and Releasing Judgment

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama

Several years ago, a colleague and I were invited to give a presentation on mindfulness at our State Mental Health Conference. I was a novice and flattered to be asked.

Singing bowls, which are metal and look like a mortar and pestle, are useful tools in mindfulness practice. The bowl is placed on a cushion and, when struck, makes a beautiful sound like a bell.

The tone and pitch are determined by the size of the bowl and thickness of the metal. They’re used for various purposes, but always signal the beginning and ending of a mindfulness meditation.

At the time I owned a tiny brass bowl that made a beautiful high-pitched tone. It was a lovely bowl, but the sound only traveled to a small area.

Needing the sound to travel to a larger audience, I took a shopping trip to our local New Age Emporium. It was a large store with every thing you could want: art, bamboo plants, books, Buddha statues, hemp clothing, incense—and singing bowls.

I made my way to the meditation section and was quickly drawn to a Tibetan bowl with metalwork that looked old and well used. I picked it up and felt how it nestled in my hands like a warm cup of tea.

To quote Goldilocks, the words “just right” came to my mind. I fell in love with it, and though the bowl was a little pricey, the comfort it gave me when I held it was priceless. The singing bowl was going home with me.

Next I needed to find a cushion. I wanted it to be deep red, green, or maybe even royal blue, but where were the cushions? I was expecting a large stack to match the number of bowls, but alas, there was only one.

It was magenta: not my favorite color to say the least. Magenta! Absolutely not! I am not a magenta person, and it looks so garish next to my earthy singing bowl. But if that wasn’t enough, there was something even more disturbing than the color magenta.

The embroidered circle on the top of the cushion was off center. It wasn’t a little off. It was a lot off.

Are you kidding, I thought. How could anyone expect to sell this thing? No wonder it’s the last one. It’s the leftover; who would want it? I can’t imagine using a “misfit” cushion for my presentation.

It would be humiliating—almost like I left my zipper down or had toilet paper hanging under my skirt.

I felt a physical sense of resistance when I looked at it, as if my heart had hands that were pushing it away. My stomach began to twist, and I felt a golf ball forming at the base of my throat.

After recovering from my horror, I laid the cushion down and decided to scavenge the store. I was banking on the chance that there was an abandoned cushion misplaced. Surely in a store this big, there was one more cushion.

I investigated as though I were a detective looking for clues. Trust me, if I had been looking for a needle in a haystack, I would have found it—but I didn’t. There wasn’t another cushion.

I sulked back to the scene of the crime, aka “the misfit cushion,” and glared at it. Once again, the resistance began to bubble up, but this time something miraculous happened.

The whisperings of wakefulness called my name, and gently I returned to the here and now.

Stop I thought. If you’re going to give a presentation on mindfulness, practice what you preach. You can’t be mindful if you have fallen into the trance of being judgmental. You are being mindless.

Observe the resistance. What does it feel like viscerally? How does it feel in your hands? Close your eyes. Hmmm, it feels like a cushion. Set the bowl on it and strike it. Oh, it sounds beautiful—what a mellow tone. The cushion is perfectly functional.

Look closely at it…

The solid color is magenta. It’s shiny and soft. The embroidered circle is on the bottom left hand corner, and it’s about 3 inches in diameter. Hmmm. The sides have a band of embroidery circling it. Hmmm.

Then the insight began to pour in. Who said the circle has to be in the middle? Why is the middle correct, and off center not? Perfection and imperfection imply right and wrong, but is that true? Who said symmetry is beautiful and asymmetry is not?

As I questioned everything I had mindlessly assumed, I realized the cushion was perfect in its imperfection and utility.

Understanding, along with my new eyes for finding beauty in unexpected places caused me to meet my teacher, in the form of a singing bowl cushion. I held it close to my heart and welcomed it home.

My epiphany was an example of the Japanese term Wabi Sabi, which is a hidden treasure available to us all that offers peace, balance, and freedom.

Wabi means simplicity, quietude, harmony, peace, and poverty as in being stripped down to the basics.

Sabi means things that come with age or time, and taking pleasure in that which is old or well used; “the bloom of time” as someone once said.

Put those two words together and you have a feeling similar to faith—hard to explain, but a way of knowing that represents the peaceful acceptance of things as they are, including imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness.

Wabi Sabi doesn’t only help with changing how we see physical objects. We can practice Wabi Sabi in our relationships, in our professional lives, and in any situation where we may be causing ourselves stress with expectations and judgments.

When navigating these life experiences, it’s important to remember:

1. Flaws are the leveling field of humanity.

We all have them, rich and poor alike. It is our blemishes that connect us with our humanness.

2. Wabi Sabi doesn’t imply giving up striving for excellence, but it does ask us to accept what is true.

It asks us to slow down and look at things deeply, discovering beauty that might ordinarily be passed over in unexpected places.

3. Resisting judgment allows us to see the whole picture, not just the fragment that too often is allowed to run the show.

In doing so, we make room for peace that comes with acceptance. Peace brings relief, wisdom and connection.

4. By calling a truce with imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness, a paradox happens, and we discover harmony and balance.

My magenta, off centered cushion; my sensei, takes its place at the top of my gratitude list and continues to teach all who meet it.

Photo by Wabi Sabi

August 5, 2013
We Are All Imperfect: How to Own it & Keep Growing

“Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.” ~Julius Charles Hare

A few weeks ago, I made a mistake.

I wrote a newsletter about my relationship with money, explaining that I used to get worried about money, but I feel differently now. I wrote that I’d realized that doing what I love is the most important thing.

As long as I am doing what I loved, I don’t have to feel anxious. I trust that the money will appear, without me having to chase it.

After I sent the newsletter out to the 500 people on my subscription list, I had a funny feeling in my stomach.

The next day, I asked a friend what she’d thought about what I’d written.

She said, “It sounds like you’re still worried about money.”

She was right. That explained the funny feeling in my stomach.

The things I said weren’t quite true. I wanted them to be true because I wanted to be the kind of person who doesn’t worry about material things.

It was true that I’ve made some progress in my relationship with money. But I’m certainly not as serene and trusting as I portrayed myself in my newsletter. I still have mornings when I feel panicky about finances. (more…)

March 10, 2011