Letting Go of PerfectionLetting Go of Perfection: Said and Done!  Recently I was struck by an essay about letting go of perfection.  I have grappled with perfectionism for decades, so this essay immediately resonated with me and I decided it was a “perfect” theme for this note :-).
This seemingly simple word has many layers of meaning.  Each of them would be worth a whole essay, or even a book, but for this note I’ll just touch on a few of them briefly.  When we strive for what we call perfection, it usually leads to suffering, struggling. trying to get things just right, and here’s the kicker:  often it leads to being hard on ourselves when we fall short of expectations, our own or others’.   This harshness toward ourselves means we cannot bring our best to our tasks, our lives, our functioning.  Major bummer!
A different perspective is presented in the essay Letting Go of Perfection.  The author actually suggests we might actually strive for imperfection!  What a radical idea, a new take on personal development!  “Life becomes much more interesting once we let go of our quest for perfection and aspire for imperfection instead.”  The author invites us to embrace imperfection as a goal… dropping perfection and going rather for experimenting, experiencing, learning… knowing there will be mistakes and problems along the way.  An African teacher, Peter Tabichi offers this inspirational quote: “If we don’t fail, we don’t learn, and if we don’t learn, we can’t change.”  
Another big insight came for me around the notion of perfection.  I love the vibration and eye-popping red that Japanese maples can be.  The trees looUnknown-1.jpegk so glorious, so exhilarating, and, well, perfect.  But as I observe in my essay below on Probing Perfection, on closer inspection, there was scarcely a single leaf that didn’t have some sort of blemish.  And I love looking at big trees….they too always have wounds, boils, breaks, bends… hardly “perfect”, and yet splendid.…
 It seems that we are living in times of both death and rebirth…with uncertainty all around.   If we are to show up we must first love ourselves, and that means giving up the critical harsh version of perfectionism and maybe even embracing  imperfection.  When we are OK with ourselves, we are our most effective at contributing to the larger whole, our personal development is freed from the burden of judgement and is free to unfold.
Feel free to share widely, quote or reference… we’re in this together, this amazing journey, roller coaster, miracle, mystery. and merry-go-round we call being human!
Jill Schroder is the author of BECOMING: Journeying Toward Authenticity.  BECOMING is an invitation for self-reflection, and to mine our memorable moments for insights, meaning, and growth.  Check the website for a sample chapter, or see the reviews to get a flavor for the volume.  Your feedback,  forwards, tweets, likes are most welcome. 🙂

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Probing Perfection: Looking at a large Japanese Red Maple in full fall color almost took my breath away recently.  It was grand, elegant, and seemed, shall I say, simply “perfect.”  We walked over to take it in up close. What a surprise!  There was hardly a leaf without some kind of blemish — some were a bit curled, had small or large holes nibbled by insects, has blisters made by parasites…  Really, this “perfect” tree was full of imperfections and blemishes. What a lesson!
Perfection and Projects: A minster at Unity offer this  provocative but inspirational quote, “The Universe is perfect just as it is, and you need a project.”  This contrast has continued to challenge me.  How could everything be perfect, if there’s work to be done?  Musing on this has been illuminating, and occupied me over many years.
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