Addiction to Perfectionism

Addiction need not necessarily be to a substance, we can be addicted to certain type of behaviours, feelings/emotions or thought processes like addiction to being right, being wrong, being perfect, to judgements etc.

A couple of weeks back I was listening to some of the talks by Marilyn Bradford, who has created The Bradford System of Right Recovery for overcoming addictions. Some of clearings made me realize that I have been addicted to perfectionism for a large part of my life. I have heard Gary Douglas (the founder of Access Consciousness) say that one of his daughters wanted to join the beginner's Ballet class but she wanted to have private ballet lessons before she even went to the beginners class. Oh my gosh, I was like that too! How many of us want to be perfect at the things we do even before we start doing it?

Perfection is a lie, it is not real. It is a judgement that we buy and then defend for or against it continuously. Because of this point of view I realized I had limited myself so much with starting new things. There were so many ideas to implement but it was not done simply because I was not sure that it would be perfect. It was almost like my life was put on hold. When I realized that I was defending this perfectionism, and cleared my beliefs around it, life has been unfolding in a different way. With every new idea I now look at it as how imperfectly can I do this?! That just takes away all the projections, expectations and conclusions out of it and interestingly things turn out far greater than I imagine it to be. Many of us limit our potential and what we can achieve because we want it to be perfect and if it isn't perfect then it isn't good enough for us. If you are one of them, then maybe it is time to change the belief and let go of that judgement NOW?

What if your imperfect self were the perfect invitation you’ve been looking for?  The very imperfections that you judge and allow to stop yourself could be your best selling point!  How could that change your life and what you create?

"How would my life expand if I was willing to do things terribly?" is a question I have started asking everyday and that has allowed me to simply jump into create new things in life. How does it get better than this?

Here is a tool you can play with. If you could pick ONE thing that you could do terribly this week, what would you try? when you start doing this by picking one thing each week, you open up your potential to explore your talents and abilities and do all those things which you didn't start just because you thought you won't be perfect at it :-)


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To know more about my work and what I do, you can visit my website www.reviveholistic.com or www.pratimanagaraj.accessconsciousness.com