Be kind to yourself - not everything always has to be perfect
Being myself close to becoming a mother soon, I feel like this topic of accepting imperfections and being kind to ourselves when things don’t go a hundred percent to plan will gain more and more importance in my life. However, in a world of Instagram and general social media perfection, not showing the world how well organized we are and even sometimes showing weaknesses and asking for help is something a lot of us really struggle with. The good news – we can learn to make it easier for us and let others support us without feeling incapable or diminishing our confidence.
The first step here, is to be honest to ourselves. Especially people like me who try to be very well organized and try to plan everything in their lives, really struggle with not fulfilling my own perfectionism. This can result into a vicious cycle and can lead to increased anxiety and a lack of general happiness and balance in life which should not be a long-term outcome we desire. Recognizing and then even questioning our own imposed perfectionism (very often this is not imposed by the outside world but by us being too hard on ourselves) is the first step towards understanding our own mindset and bringing about change to better cope with self – imposed high standards.
Once we recognize that our own imposed standards might no longer be accurate or realistic, we need to understand that this is ok and that we currently might face other, more burning priorities in our life. We have two options therefore, wither lower our standards, which I understand a lot of us are not often willing to do, or to ask for help and have others support us with tasks at hand, while we focus our time on those other priorities such as raising children. It is very often to have an honest dialogue with ourselves but also with our partner and people around us what we might be willing to sacrifice and where we see red lines to then outsource to our support network. Again, honesty and organization is key here.
Another very important factor is to not feel ashamed to ask for help while at the same time to be realistic of where people can support without overburdening them as well. The more we rely on others for help, the more appreciative we should become of those supporters we have in our networks and recognize what a large favor those often-little helpers do for us.
We should learn to be kind to ourselves. We cannot be perfect all the time and we don’t have to be. It is ok to sometimes not paint a picture perfect. Strangely, we will see that if we accept and even show weaknesses people will be a lot more sympathetic towards ourselves and be even more willing to offer their support. Showing weaknesses shows we are human and most of the time that gains us more sympathy in the eyes of others that might experience the same dilemmas. We are not alone in not being able to always perform, we will see that everyone around us has good and bad days too.
Be kind to yourself and try to accept that we cannot always be perfect. We can lower our inner perfectionism slightly without having major sacrifices. Quite the opposite – getting over that perfectionism together with openness to ask for help and show weaknesses will let us seem stronger and more sympathetic in the eyes of others, that will in return be happier to offer their support. Showing weaknesses is not easy but can be very rewarding if we have a strong support network to rely on.
