Stop Being So Hard on Yourself! 3 Reasons You Don’t Need to Be Perfect

As children, we believe we can do anything. We’re proud of ourselves and connected to who we really are. But somewhere along the line, we start to lose that appreciation and self-love. We begin demanding perfection and putting unrealistic pressure on ourselves.

This is one of the biggest challenges we experience in our spiritual work because it informs all areas of our lives. Here are 3 reasons to stop being so perfect all the time:

1. You are inherently a powerful being. Your soul contains the essence of the Creator, which means you are an innately powerful force beyond anything you can even comprehend. Even right now, as you are in this moment. All the spiritual wisdom, the teachers, the studying, and prayer – they are not meant to give us something that we don’t already have deep down within us. The spiritual work that we do helps us connect to our soul and the unlimited potential within us.

Look back at times in your life when you really felt complete and in touch with yourself. You are meant to be in that space all the time. For many of us, it is difficult to believe that we are super powerful, but unless we know it to be true and accept it, we aren’t going to experience it. Accept your greatness and take the time to meditate on this reality.

2. Mistakes do not diminish your greatness. Because our souls are beautiful, powerful sparks of the Creator, there is nothing that can ever change that about us. Our mistakes and failures do not diminish who we are at our core - all they can do is conceal it.

Think about a lamp. You can cover it with a veil, and the light will shine dimmer. The more veils you add, the dimmer the light shines. Eventually, you may not even be able to see its light anymore. But that doesn’t mean the bulb is shining any less brightly. The same is true of our core. There is nothing that can ever extinguish the Light of our souls. Our spiritual work helps us to slowly strip away the layers we have accumulated over the years so that our innate Light can be revealed.

Remember - you are still a beautiful, powerful being even if you stumble. Don’t let your mistakes cover up the brilliance within you.

3. You are meant to have imperfections. We are all a wonderful paradox, a mixture of both Light and darkness simultaneously. But we have a tough time accepting that both of these aspects can coincide within us. We tend to think that we can’t be “good” people if we do something wrong. As soon as we make a mistake, we think that’s all there is to us. So, we hold ourselves to an impossible standard of perfection and start to change the way we see ourselves.

This also affects how we see other people. We categorize others in our head as either “good” or “bad” people based on the way we perceive their behavior when in reality, they too are a mix of Light and darkness.

We are not meant to be in a state of perfection but rather in this dual state. If we were perfect all the time, there would be no growth, no room for improvement, and no need for our spiritual work. What each person is meant to do in this world is unique to them, and our flaws are an important part of that.

Accept that you have flaws and that you are in the middle of a process of growth.

It is so tempting to want to be perfect all the time. We want to be the best parents, the best friends, the best students, the best in our career – the list goes on and on. But being a perfectionist limits our growth. Be messy! Try everything, stretch beyond what you think is possible, help others in ways that are uncomfortable. Instead of pushing yourself to be perfect, push yourself to grow in new and interesting ways.