Perfectionism: How I created my Own Worst Enemy

Perfectionism: How I created my Own Worst Enemy  

(My process with Perfection)

During my process of redefining and living the word Perfection, I discovered this sneaky little manipulative voice coming at me in moments of opportunity for change. This, a practical example of how we are, in fact, our own worst enemies. The problem though, is that we don’t always see and understand HOW EXACTLY we CREATE ourselves into our own worst enemy!

Interestingly enough, we oftentimes approach our ‘enemies’ with blame and tons of emotional attacking in our ourselves, our minds. I found I was doing this with my own mind. When it came to me genuinely WANTING to change my relationship with perfection, it felt as though - at the same time as I was wanting to change - a part of me was doing everything and anything possible to NOT change. A part of me was blaming and reacting to my own programming of perfection, another part of me was ‘attacking’ myself while trying to, in moments, change my relationship with perfection…so, this change process was quite an internal rollercoaster ride! Let me explain HOW EXACTLY I CREATED myself into my own worst enemy within and during my process of changing my relationship and living as the word PERFECTION:

The first dimension I noticed was me blaming and reacting to my own programming of perfection. Here, whenever I NOTICED and RECOGNISED I was going into a pattern of perfection: I would judge myself, become emotional – essentially accept and allow myself to go into a cycle of victimization. This, an example of how we become enemies OF OURSELVES and why, along with walking the redefining and living of the perfection, it was SO IMPORTANT to me to equally walk the change FROM SELF JUDGMENT to ACCEPTANCE.

Most who have walked their process of understanding how we create our own problems within our own minds within ourselves lol – have noticed that: the MOMENT you KNOW EXACTLY HOW you created a certain thinking and reacting pattern / personality: there’s this inherent tendency to judge yourself / react to yourself when you see you accepted and allowed yourself to go into it again. Which is REALLY BIZARRE when you look at it, because: you’d ‘naturally think / believe’ that – because you’re in the PROCESS OF CHANGE and genuinely wanting to change, that all the doors will open up from there and everything and everyone will support you in and during this process of change…even your own Mind! But, does that happen?!?!?!?...NOPE! If anything…when you START the process of CHANGE, that’s the moment the challenge starts on so many levels within yourself. Because, even though a PART of you WANTS to change – the MAJORITY of you AS THE PATTERN you have existed as, such as perfection for example, that you have conditioned into every part of your mind, being and body…will ‘fight for its right to exist’. YEARS of conditioning RISING UP and ‘fighting change’. This in itself also opened up an interesting process of WHY we make CHANGE and SELF CHANGE so DIFFICULT for ourselves?!?!?!? This I will answer in posts to come! But, for now – let’s continue with the process I have walked in this first dimension of why and how it is that I was fighting and reacting to / blaming my own programming – creating me into my own worst enemy instead of my own ‘best friend’ to assist and support me in this DECISION to CHANGE my relationship and living within and as the word perfection:

When I made my first mistake after redefining my relationship with the word PERFECTION – I realised I was ADDING another dimension / process to my experience. When I made my first mistake, I could see how my tendency for perfectionism creeped back in, with this little voice in the background of my mind saying: “why didn’t you do it better?” / “how could you have done it so wrong?” / “I mean, really?!?!?!? Why are you even trying!!!” / “you’re just not good enough, stop, let it go, give it to someone else to try”. Once the very familiar thoughts of judgment arrived after not attaining my absolute perfection in a moment, I started judging myself for going into that very pattern again lol. Then, the inner voice changed to: “why did you try being perfect again?” / “you know you can’t be perfect” / “I thought I was changing” / “I can’t be perfect, just accept it!” – but all these backchats were done in the emotional experience of victimizing myself in noticing the pattern, instead of SUPPORTING myself…

I will continue in the next post with how I managed to change / transform my own worst enemy creation in my process of change from perfection, into me becoming my own best friend: assisting and supporting myself in my DECISION to CHANGE and actually DOING it!

The Perfection of a Moment

The Perfection of a Moment

As mentioned in the previous post, I from here starting writing out – daily, the most common self judgments I accepted and allowed to entertain and participate in within my Mind. From here, I started redefining the self judgments into self acceptance. Together with this, I started a process of redefining self perfection more into something real, something tangible that assisted and supported me in my process through making mistakes and learning from them. This I will continue with in posts to come.

When it comes to redefining yourself within words – the key is to find an ‘anchor point’ within your everyday life that serves as the initial platform within and as which you practise the redefined-living of yourself within and as the word. For example, with me: I started changing the living definition of myself when it came to the word ‘perfection’ in the context of making mistakes. Once I became more comfortable and natural in living the word perfection in this one context – I started expanding myself, my world in a way of seeing where else, in what moments in my everyday life can I redefine and live the word perfection.

But, initially – it assists and supports to start with ONE POINT within yourself and your life to get a ‘feel’ for the process involved with redefining yourself in and as a word. Once you get through the anchor point – really visibly change in who you are in thought, word and deed in a proven way for yourself and others: you will find that the next points / dimensions in yourself / your life you’d like to change will be much easier, because you have now developed that trust and knowing within yourself when it comes to how to redefine and live yourself within and as a specific word.

Getting back to my anchor point, starting my process of redefining myself within and as perfection, which started with my experience in moments of making a mistake:

Within the experience and reflection of making a mistake, I would during this process forgive the judgments and change them into acceptance, gifting me the opportunity within myself to be able to take a step back and look at what I need to refine, adjust, specify and re-align within myself. To so be able to look at the mistake, learn from it, grow through it and also become a living example of others to be able to effectively learn through and from me based on my effectiveness of learning from and through the mistake. Then, I would equally start living my redefinition of the word perfection, which was: “To walk the process of writing, forgiveness and change within awareness – with the specificity, detail and depth of self honesty and awareness that is here as me in THAT MOMENT / point in time in my process.”

Essentially, perfection for me became something personal and intimate in my process walking from consciousness to awareness. This definition assisted and supported me in a way of not so easily / readily accepting and allowing judgments or accepting and allowing the fear of not being perfect, because I would remind myself that: I am me. I am here. I will strive to in this moment, this experience – be as specific, detailed and in-depth with myself as I am honestly, within my awareness able to. To assist and support me and so others.

Therefore, perfection was not defined in relation to others or anything external about myself – but rooted within WHO I AM able to be, the POTENTIAL I am able to be in moments and experiences within myself and my life.

In this, perfection then also became my personal challenge, where: I wouldn’t only ‘just be specific, in-depth and detailed’ but PUSH MYSELF to be as specific, in-depth and detailed as possible. Always REMEMBERING and REMINDING myself I am in a CONSTANT, CONTINUOUS journey of LEARNING in this lifetime within myself and my life. To ACCEPT mistakes EQUALLY as I would accept MYSELF! Acceptance when it came to mistakes assisted and supported me to drop this polarity of judgment and perfectionism, as well as the fear and desire inner-conflict I existed in for much of my life.

This again, the beauty of redefining words and so redefining yourself. From perfection being both a fear and desire, catapulting me into the consequences of self judgment: I transformed me and so the word perfection for me in a way that assisted and supported me within my personal process. Where the word and so my living experience of it became a support for me, rather than my own self-destructive demise that I accepted and allowed.

I’ll continue more in posts to come

The PERFECT Judge

The PERFECT Judge

(My process with Perfection)

Connecting all the points I opened up and discussed in the previous two blogs about Perfection:

On the surface, I was see-sawing between the desire and fear of perfection (desire to be perfect, yet fear of not being perfect); while being stuck in the middle as the inner-chaos that ensued because of it. With the outflow consequence of self bullying, self criticism, judgments, not being good enough - together with the emotions of fear, anxiety, stress, worry etc.

Upon introspection and investigating the deeper dimensions: I came to see, realise and understand that what was within and behind this ‘vague perfectionist image’ within my own mind was Judgment. The very nature / essence of my perfectionism was based in judgment. 

From here, let’s have a look at the dynamic between self judgment, self acceptance and perfectionism when it comes to your personal relationship and experience with yourself:

With bringing all the dimensions, points and layers together – I found, in my experience within myself that the perfectionism ‘replaced’ my self acceptance. So, with not understanding that self-judgment exists because self acceptance does not exist, I in my mind programming / design created this ‘vague perfectionist image’ of myself to try and balance the extent of my own self judgment within myself, my mind. Essentially simulating an ‘image of myself in mind representing the illusion of acceptance’ / ‘my ideal acceptance’ according to what I believed / perceived I should be or would be if I were in my ideal / best state of acceptance.

To place it / describe it in other words: it’s like I managed to collect / gather all the judgments of myself in one ball and then into another ball I projected the ‘opposite of all of my judgments’ (which became my vague self perfection image).

Here is the system / design of polarity I was stuck in, because I didn’t then understand or know that the KEY to release myself from self judgment was to WALK THROUGH self judgment and create myself into and as SELF ACCEPTANCE. But, because I also did not know or understand that I have the ability / capability to CHANGE who I am within and as self judgment: I managed to create a polarized BALANCING SYSTEM between judgment and perfectionism within myself to try and manage / deal with the extent of my judgment within myself.

This finally made me realise that the ‘problem’ was never within and as the word ‘perfect’: it was an illusion. The real problem was who I am within and as my relationship with the word JUDGMENT. With the fact that I did not have any definition or understanding of SELF ACCEPTANCE and that self acceptance cannot exist as long as judgment exists. Together with this, I never actually really looked at defining perfection: my ‘vague perfectionist image’ was made up of polarity opposites of all my self judgments!!!

As mentioned in the previous post, I from here starting writing out – daily, the most common self judgments I accepted and allowed to entertain and participate in within my Mind. From here, I started redefining the self judgments into self acceptance. Together with this, I started a process of redefining self perfection more into something real, something tangible that assisted and supported me in my process through making mistakes and learning from them. This I will continue with in posts to come. 

How Self Judgment supported my Journey to Self Acceptance

How Self Judgment supported my Journey to Self Acceptance

(My process with Perfection)

A dimension of perfection I’d like to open up in this post has to do with how I realised there was this ‘vague image’ of myself in my mind. This image representing perfectionism – always doing, saying the right, best things for myself and others. So, ANY moment I did not live up to my own perfectionism – down comes the wrath of judgment, criticism, mental and emotional self bullying. Spiralling me into a state of inferiority, being self conscious, introverted, always second guessing and questioning myself. Remaining in this constant state, while at the same time still doing my best to attain this perfection I was striving for within myself.

I do emphasize that this image within my Mind was vague. Vague, in the sense that – I could never quite clearly ‘define’ what it means to be ‘perfect’ in my own eyes, just that however and whoever I was, was never good enough. It’s like I had created this ‘god’ in my mind – the ‘almighty perfectionist’ and everything of who I was, how I lived in thought, word and deed could not live up to this ‘almighty perfectionist’ in my mind.

So, here I was in this constant, continuous inner-conflict within myself: creating a simulated, vague projection of perfectionism – while at the same time NEVER feeling like ANYTHING I was doing within all that I am in thought, word and deed was living up to those standards. As I mentioned, I always in some way found a way to find something wrong, bad, not good enough within myself.

When I eventually managed to drop the veil of perfectionism – I found that what was lying beyond it was pure SELF JUDGMENT. I found a part of myself hiding behind perfectionism. A part of me sitting on a chair in my own Mind ‘looking down at myself’ – magnifying all the problems, issues and experiences I went through within myself, my mind and general life experience. It’s as though saying to myself “I want things to be perfect” sounds better than “I am seriously judgmental of myself, I am not good enough, everything is always wrong and bad, I will never attain to becoming more than who, how and what I am now”. So, I was HIDING a part of MYSELF within and behind this apparent strive to be ‘perfect’: THE JUDGE.

Interestingly enough, buying into this simulation of perfection inside my mind – proclaiming the façade of “I want to be perfect”: I was EVERYTHING but that. In my VISIBLE LIVING I was the complete opposite of perfection (according to my definition of self perfection back then): introverted, suppressive, shy, self conscious, trying to fit in, inferiority complexes by the many. Yet, I was so obsessed and possessed by this interplay between myself and perfectionism: I deluded myself into believing that “I am on my way to becoming perfect! I will become perfect one day!” Yet, existing in pure inner conflict day in and day out – ‘cause no matter how hard I tried, I never reached perfection, always the opposite. In a way, almost becoming addicted to this relationship with myself that I had programmed / created for YEARS: always striving to attain the unreachable, the vague, the undefined perfectionist within myself by constantly and continuously bullying myself with thoughts, emotions, criticism and judgment. Creating in this vicious cycle a form of self-punishment for not living up to my own and other’s standards or expectations.

This journey within and as the word Perfection – starting with my own initial definition and experience of self perfection: assisted and supported me in my process of learning what it means to drop SELF JUDGMENT, live the word(s) SELF ACCEPTANCE. Once this process started: I started the process of REDEFINING perfection, self perfection within myself which also tied into my process of making mistakes, learning from them in a way where I stand as an example for myself and others. I will continue with this in posts to come.

The Dark Truth lurking within my Desire for Perfection

The Dark Truth lurking within my Desire for Perfection

With walking a process redefining the word dependable and so redefining who I am in thought, word and deed in relationship to it – and this process changing me, my life and living experience: I was also challenged with the word PERFECTION.

As I mentioned before - this is one of the dimensions in the process of redefining and living words I thoroughly enjoy, but at the same time experience to be quite challenging: as you walk a process of redefining and living ONE WORD, MORE WORDS and so parts of yourself become exposed requiring some well needed redefinition.

I started my initial redefining and living process of the word(s) self-dependable on who I am when making mistakes: to instead of judging, criticizing and beating myself down with my own thoughts and emotions, assist and support myself to ‘humbly and gracefully embrace the fall, the mistake’, stand up within it and learn from it in a way that will not only support me, my life – but others as well. That my learning process through and from mistakes can guide others in their lives in a way where they can apply the principle of prevention and learn from me, my mistakes so as to not make the same unnecessary mistakes in their lifetimes. In so doing, many individuals can then rather focus on immediate growth, learning and expansion. We oftentimes think we need to ‘learn from our own mistakes, make all the same mistakes’ – when you can learn just as well by walking in the shoes of another’s story, their mistakes, what they learned from it and take the insights, realisations and perspectives into yourself and your own life.

Within this journey of redefining self-dependable when it came to my experiences and moments of making mistakes – I noticed this element of the ‘desire for perfection’ coming through strongly, contributing much to what caused my initial self-criticism, self-judgment and beating myself up with my own thoughts and emotions.

I didn’t realise the extent to which this ‘desire for perfection’ was existent within the depths of my mind and affecting the very nature and experience of my thoughts, words and deeds until I slowly but surely started the process of ‘peeling through the layers’ of my mind, my consciousness when it came to how I programmed myself within and as the word ‘perfection’. It was so extensive, that – whenever it came to relationships, any type / form of relationship like my relationship with myself, my family, friends, potential partners, acquaintances, work colleagues: in any given moment I’d walk into a moment with them wanting the moment, experience and relationship with them to be PERFECT in all ways. I was always ADFRAID of doing something wrong, saying something wrong, not doing / saying something in the ‘right way’, not PLEASING enough, not being good enough, not striving for enough within the given relationship, not looking good / perfect enough…and the list goes on.

This is something about this process that’s been intriguing and eye-opening in many ways: as you explore the depths of your mind, your consciousness and into the programming of yourself within words – such as the word PERFECTION – you come to understand yourself, who and how you are in thought, word and deed SO MUCH BETTER in a way where you can really, genuinely change. For me, I initially believed that I was just someone who was very judgmental, hard on myself. I initially believed I was someone who was always afraid of making mistakes, doing the wrong things, not being good enough in my own and other’s eyes and so living in a constant polarity of ‘desire for perfection’ and ‘fear of not attaining and living up to that perfection’. I believed and lived all of this, until I started exploring my own programming within and as word PERFECTION - where I came to see, realise and understand that: the SOURCE of my criticism, judgment and being hard on myself, the SOURCE of my FEARS when it came to my relationship with myself and others: all originated from my misaligned definition and so living of the word PERFECTION.

In the next post I will continue sharing the very long journey I walked with correcting my relationship with perfection that I started walking simultaneously with redefining the word(s) self-dependable in the context of making mistakes. Together with this, how exactly I realised the severity of this perfection relationship I created with myself and others in my MIND, what a shock it was to me to see the extent to which I lived in almost CONSTANT FEAR AND ANXIETY because of it. From here, how my relationship and living of myself in thought, word and deed changed with redefining the word perfection and so redefining myself – setting myself free from constant fear and anxiety by ending the POLARITY between FEAR and DESIRE of PERFECTION.