Perfection & Limitations Bad For One’s Mental & Emotional Well-being: Be Imperfect & Take Risks
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Hello there. You found yourself reading this post because you really wanted to know how these two topics (perfection and limitations are bad for us and our health overall) well that’s great! So let’s get to it!
Perfection is something that we all are familiar with very well and we can relate to how we as a society have expected high expectations of perfection from each one of us as citizens. And what we don’t realize is how harming it is to our mental and emotional wellbeing. We don’t realize how expecting and striving for perfection is so damaging to all of us as humans and we are just covering it up with bandaids.
The real problem is that we as a society have become so selfish, ignorant, immature and blind to what is right in front of us. So by having the thoughts of arriving for perfection and making sure we all are striving for it too; we cloud our minds and judgments from seeing the real truth; that’s just behind it.
All we have to do is take the time to be empathetic for someone else as an act of kindness and selflessness. To be able to see something from someone else’s perspective and being fully mindful and with the 5 steps with ending the stigma around mental illness and mental health:
- Language matters
- Be kind
- Listen and ask
- Educate yourself
- Talk about it
Once we begin following these steps and other important stuff to work on ourselves and treating ourselves the way we want to be treated (the golden rule) we will begin to really see some change and make progress towards achieving world peace. Which is something we all make wishes for. {Oh and a pearl white bently as quoting from Miley Cyrus starring in “So Undercover” (link in title).}
Anyway back to the first subtopic of this post. Perfection is something that is really unhealthy for every human and have been blind to it for decades. Perfection harms our mental and emotional wellbeing in ways such as:
- The exhaustion from constantly on the mind of striving for perfection when it can look like many mistakes and also beating ourselves up for basically being human and stressing out and overthinking about not meeting society’s expectations of perfection
- The stress, anxiety, panic, and depression that is brought on by the high and constant expectations of perfection
These are just two that I can particularly think about at the moment. Perfection harms our humanity and earth in ways that we aren’t fully accepting and at peace with. And because we are against it and in dentil, we harm both even more. So how can we begin to change this cycle? Well it’s good to be kind to ourselves and try not to beat ourselves up for not being perfect and not knowing better. Because if you did shame yourself, that would be either called the stigma or self stigma.
- Self-stigma occurs when people internalize these public attitudes and suffer numerous negative consequences as a result. In this article, we more fully define the concept of self-stigma and describe the negative consequences of self-stigma for people with mental illness.
And it’s gonna happen and try not to beat yourself up for having moments of self stigma, we all go through it and we just have to allow ourselves to go through the emotions of it all to see everything clearly and be able to find wisdom from these experiences and find a better way to treat ourselves and find a creative way to change the cycle.
It may be hard but not impossible. I’m nearing my anniversary of 4.5 years in recovery with mental illness and I have quite a lot of experience to share and I’ve shared a lot already here in my blog here on Medium. So now let’s talk a bit about how we have many moments of throwing ourselves a pity party and feeling low about our choices and our current life at certain points in your life; that’s another part about perfection that we all go through in life.
Many of us go on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms that we have many of our high school friends and acquaintances on; and see how they are living a better life than you are; getting married, starting a family, getting career related jobs, high achievements, big milestone and etc. It’s common to beat ourselves up but it’s also possible to get ourselves from this state and find a small step to move towards a better life than the one we are living right now (while reading this).
Dear lifeless,
Your cat must be tired of the pity party you’ve been throwing yourself up every day. Maybe if you didn’t get yourself down so much. You wouldn’t be so pathetic. You want a life? Get one. Grant yourself a wish to change, and stop complaining, and do something.
It’s time to stop letting people with their lives being much better than yours (getting to your head) and letting people tell you how to live your life with society’s expectations and standards; and start living the life you wanna live. Even if it means drawing outside the lines. Like Selena Gomez said:
- What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
So remind yourself: it’s your life; they aren’t living it for you, so live it however you like. Let them live their life however they choose even if they continue to get into your head like Lucas Fryer said in Girl Meets World:
- Don’t let what anybody says get to you. That’s what gives them power.
So let’s give more power to ourselves and let’s make a great life! Why not add a big message to it; leave a mark behind; though you got lots of time to live till then.
Limitations is the next thing that prevents us from living our lives to the fullest and like it’s our last day. Like the lyrics in Nickelback’s song: If Today Was Your Last Day:
We gotta live today like it’s our last day. Because one of us are garenteed tomorrow. Many of us are limiting ourselves and the people we work with (managers enforcing rules to limit ourselves) because we think we have to.
But we don’t have to; even though something more powerful and higher in the pyramid created these rules to limit everyone in the working world and the whole world entirely; we shouldn’t let them have power over us like this for another decade. It’s time for us to take the power back.
Many people who are deeply less fortunate than we are in countries like Indonesia, Haiti, Kenya, India and others; have to limit themselves with what they wear each day and what they do and what they can do with their future due to their own circumstances. And here we all are limiting ourselves because we think we have to. But we don’t have to, we have that choice and power to do what we want even if it goes against the rules or outside the lines. Remember:
Let nothing stand in your way cuz the hands of time are never on your side.
We must be on our own side and do what we want, be who we wanna be, wear what we want and do whatever we want to do for our future. And do it in an inspiring way to bring others to aspire to your own real example. Because you chose to take back your power and make a life of your own on your own terms!
If you wanna learn more of each of the subtopics more in depth, you can take some time to read my posts below:
Perfection is truly something we should not continue trying to strive for because it is unattainable and there are way better things to strive for!
“Perfectionism is unattainable, but it’s a goal we often strive to achieve.” ~ Beti Wyn Holcomb
Stop judging people for what you see… You should see people for who they are and accept them rather than pointing out their flaws. Why hurt people when you can use words to heal people. We all have flaws. We all know none of us are perfect and no one ever will be. The perfect that does exist is where everyone believes that no one is perfect but choosing to look and treat them as if they were. Words can do so much as long as they are spoken right!
