Per-fact working with what is here to be created/ directed within the principle of what’s best for all – Working in specificity, living in ways that are taking into consideration an outcome that will benefit myself and all equally – there are no inner-guidelines according to my own value schemes based on comparison or fears within that. This is how we can transform our current participation in ‘perfectionism’ to self perfection.
Perfectionism – system word and the familiar imprint.
I read the word perfectionism and remembered the usual talks my parents would have with their friends around the table and how my father would boast about his peculiar traits of being methodic and a perfectionist. He’s cool from the system perspective and I’ve learned heaps from such specificity and efficiency within taking into consideration aspects that make our day to day living more practical – yet a lot is definitely based on fear and an underlying desire for control. Now that I look at the word I see that looking at the ‘driving force’ of this experience is having everything working the way ‘he wants it to be’ and this aspect can consume him the moment things don’t go as expected.
That’s when anger would ignite within him right away – it was a ‘known’ fact that if something didn’t work out the way it was expected, we would have to deal with his bad temper. It’s been cool actually because this past year I’ve gotten to be more open in talking about how to support ourselves with my parents/ family in general, so I’ve been able to point out in the exact moment when he’s going into anger and frustration for things not resulting the way he wanted them. This has been supportive for him to snap out of it and realize that all the fuzz is absolutely unnecessary and that things have to simply be physically directed without adding any other ‘charge’ to it.
The reason why I’m writing about my father is because I require to apply the exact same points for myself. I can see myself in him in terms of how we have lived ‘perfectionism’ as literal cage wherein we want everything to be ‘under control,’ wherein we don’t want to make any mistakes which is essentially out of fear, fear of not keeping up with this ideal that we’ve created of ourselves, our ‘reputation.’ I now remembered asking my father in one of these events ‘well, what is it that worries you the most if this doesn’t work out?’ and he replied something along the lines of ‘what everyone will say about it.’ And then he goes into his petulant mode wherein he’s just like a little kid that has been caught in the nitty gritty of what is actually ‘mattering’ within our mind, it’s actually funny because there is no place to hide once we reveal and expose ourselves.
So, it is about fearing others’ judgments, fearing not being ‘up to the expectations’ which is just an overall fuckup since we then will try and make everything fit our imaginary idea – not a pleonasm but a required redundancy to realize how we cannot become an ‘idea’ that is only existent in our mind unless we actually live it in fact. When living in comparison and caring too much about our general ‘presentation’ toward others, we start hindering our expression and placing a lock to our expression to not get out of the ‘known-safe bounds’ and in that, giving up the ability to express, share, being, speak and act because of caring too much about what others have to say about it.
How I have experienced perfectionism.
It started when I was a little girl – kindergarten to be precise and I wanted to be the perfect girl that did everything I was told to do. The moment I deviated from it like grabbing a pair of scissors and cutting some boy’s hair, getting scolded and resenting such action coming from the ‘teacher,’ I got ‘stuck’ within the point of never wanting to create such ‘harm’ on to another, the kid started crying after it all seemed like ‘fun’ to me. That’s the first imprint of ‘being mean’ at school and being reprehended for it. From there fear kicked in and made sure I was doing everything I was told to do out of fear of having to go through that ‘humiliating experience.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having experienced humiliation out of being scolded without anyone taking into consideration the inner-workings and intentions behind the actions – in this
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to move from self-expression into fear because of not wanting to be ‘scolded’ again ‘in public’ and experiencing such humiliation which I didn’t know existed at the time, creating a general imprint of ‘fear’ which then became the driving force to ‘do as I’m told’ and be an obedient sheep in class.
In fact, from that moment on any ‘fuck up’ that I made during the elementary school years – like being kicked out of the class for talking too much which only happened once – I felt like the scum of the Earth, I feared to be expelled from the honorable wall of fame at school – losing the grace all teachers and others had – the ‘reputation’ point became quite prominent when being the ‘perfect system’ that does ‘everything perfect.’ In fact now that I see the latest points wherein that word has come up in my reality, I get this icky feeling like fuck that’s just not cool, it’s all ego based – how could ‘accomplishing tasks’ be related to ‘being perfect?’ It all was part of getting to know how to score in the system of rewards – nothing else.
I can only accept Self Perfection as myself and in that, we all have to stand equal and one to it – that would be principles and self-will to be efficient, practical, specific in terms of what will create an outcome that’s best for all. I speak of ‘creation’ because that’s what we are doing here with ourselves and the world. Therefore, now that we understand that all points within creation must be equally responsible, we can see how within being self responsible, correcting ourselves and accumulating words and deeds that co-operate to create a best for all outcome is walking the process of Self Perfection. This then cannot be a mind/ ego-driven move, but a best-for-all consideration that anyone can apply in an equal manner.
The reason why we have become so hooked on ‘perfectionism’ is due to the current system wherein one has to be absolutely ‘fit’ and aligned to its rules to keep going – this is just another survival-mechanism point because the main motive is fear once again. Whether it is fear of judgment, of not having money, fear of loss, etc. we have to take such fears to see where we have placed our value/worth upon.
Walking in this process has allowed me learn how to work as a team for the first time as I used to ‘loathe’ to work in teams, because it would usually mean having other 4 people wanting to be in my team because they knew and I knew I would do it all – yes I would create such a situation for myself and accept to do it all most of the times just so that I could make sure it was done ‘the right way.’ Once again we see that the motivation was fearing it would be a fuckup and believing that ‘my way’ is the ‘best way.’ I have stunned myself whenever I see how cool it is to brainstorm about points to the extent that I can see how funneling everything within the principle of equality can create an actual diversity of perspectives that lead to the same point – yet using different ways and expressions to get there, that’s the cool part.
It’s probably been over a decade since I started letting go much of the initial hardcore perfectionism I experienced as a child – I mean, when I was around 8 years old if things didn’t go out the way I wanted, I would become frustrated and angry and bottle myself in it only getting to see some ‘light out of the tunnel’ with some support that I would get from my mother at that time, allowing me to see how I was simply able to do the things without having to be so strict and ‘hard on myself.’ I see how I would take such comments like ‘quick fixes’ that she could say in order for me to have like a spoon fed of honey to get past the bitterness, I would not really consider what she was saying. It did support to snap out of it and learn to be more flexible with my own religion. Like if I would say: I go to bed at 9:15 I had to be in bed at that time, no matter where I was I would have to be in bed because otherwise I was breaking my own rules and that was equal to what missing Sunday’s mass is for a hardcore christian.
I created for myself an overly-apprehensive childhood, no one was putting a gun to my head to have set such standards of ‘being the best’ all the time, it was like literal preprogramming running itself wherein my parents never had to bother in asking if I had done my homework or doing exhaustive reviews on my homework. My mother would support me with tools to learn useless data and create questionnaires to enhance the understanding of what I was learning – that was it. The drive that I would experience in an almost automated way to ‘be the best one in the class’ was driven by fear of losing my reputation and image toward others.
After these initial years at school I learned ‘the ways of the system’ wherein I simply got to know the ‘rules’ and started manipulating the points to get the desired outcome, extenuating the effort as well. This is Not Self Perfection at all! Yet from a system perspective it was regarded as such – it was me becoming part of the ones that are able to manipulate things to suit my reputation/ ego. It actually sucks when people build a certain ‘idea of yourself’ and then create all types of expectations of ‘who you are’ and when finally getting to meet you, they eventually see you are just another mortal that is not self perfected – yet.
I can also now pinpoint the times in the past wherein I would create this ‘lower standard’ of something I had created even though it was ‘well done’ just to create a ‘safe zone,’ like a margin of error wherein if people thought it wasn’t ‘good enough,’ they would have my initial input of the work ‘not being good enough’ so that they could then measure the end result according to their judgment and my input and create an ‘acceptable average’ from it all. All fucked up complicated value systems – the mind complicates everything and it’s all done just for the sake of keeping up an imaginary standard that apparently can uplift of diminish who we are – it’s not real!
From Perfectionism to Self Perfection – the process.
The way to go every time from here on that I experience any perfection-demon kick I stop for a moment and become aware of what is the driving force within this – what is it that I am actually supporting here and if common sense is not able to be found, we’ll know it’s being an ego-driven task directed to fulfill a certain patterned-idea of myself that is not self-supportive, that will not be applicable for all equally and will only stand as a general bluff within my experience.
Self-perfection is taking all into consideration to the best outcome possible – perfectionism is just ego-driven desires and fears which are the same but just in opposition to each other. It implies then stopping the desire to be ‘the best’ or beating my own standards and self-created ‘records’ to simply continue living in a way that is supportive for myself and everyone equally. That way we let go of measuring ourselves against ourselves and others and feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’ about it.
“Perfectionism is based in fear – self perfection is based in self creation” – Bernard Poolman
And with that we can see how we’re all walking the process of self creation wherein self perfection is the accumulation of consistent self-application directed toward a best for all outcome.
Learn more at: Desteni
MarlenLife's Blog 