Pressure for Perfection

Anyone else ever feel like you are juggling a thousand things, carrying the weight of everything, yet still trying to be perfect at all of it?

I know I have and my goodness has it weighed on me for far too long. I realized it's time to stop three things right now!

1. Stop striving for perfection. It doesn't exist.

2. Stop being so hard yourslf. You are doing the best you can.

3. Stop feeling pressure to be like everyone. You are perfect just the way you are.

It came to light recently (and probably my whole life) I take everything upon myself. I put pressure on myself to be perfect in order to help others.

More specifically, I learned that my habit when someone is struggling is to take it upon myself to help or fix it. If the relationship is struggling, I take it upon myself to carry it and will it forward. If people are struggling, I become their champion or cheerleader, regardless if I don’t even have the energy to be my own. I take on all of the issues and people as if I alone can bear them and push them forward.

Then, and this is the real kicker, I am hard on myself when I can’t manage all that or am failing at it. Which is crazy! NO one person can handle everyone’s stuff, and no one person can handle the responsibility of an entire relationship. So of course it was too much for me and I was overwhelmed.

I mean I am wise regarding self-awareness. I've done the work and the homework. But sometimes I let that get to the point that I think because it’s my strength, I need to help everyone to be the same. That is not a reality. I need to learn to use it as my strength, pass wisdom when able, and let it stop there. Don’t take on their stuff as if it is my responsibility to make people become self aware. I can help them learn at times, when it doesn’t mean giving up pieces of myself. But I can’t take it on as my responsibility.

We hold emotion in our bodies. I'm not an expert at this concept, you can google it if you want. I read "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay and it gave me a lot of insight on the concept (not an affiliate, just a book I read). But I just have learned to listen to my body of where I'm holding emotion. When my massage therapist pinpointed a spot she asked what the emotion it was and I said it felt like anger or resentment. Then she asked is someone being hard on you and are you carrying a lot?

Dang, there it was I was the one being hard on myself! I had been striving for perfect and failing (no surprise).

I had been carrying the weight of everything. Carrying my relationship, carrying my well-being, carrying every person who talks to me about their problems, carrying the weight of doing well at my job, carrying a thousand responsibilities. My shoulders felt all that baggage of carrying that weight on them.

That’s too many things to carry! Plus on top of it, I expected to be perfect at all of it! And I was being hard on myself the entire time when I was perfect. Talk about immense pressure. And because that was all too much, I got angry and resentful anytime someone talked about themself and I felt the need to help them. Anytime someone asked me for anything really. Like my boyfriend asking me to run the massage gun on his back made me angry. Which is silly and minor but it was solely because I had nothing left to give.

I had felt like the song "Surface Pressure" from Encanto. I was putting so much pressure on myself that I was starting to crack from the inside out. Take the pressure for perfection away!

But only I could step back and take that pressure off my plate. Tell myself that I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to take on everyone and everything. It's not a requirement and it's important to set boundaries, so that I don't. I'm responsible for me and other's are responsible for themselves.

I’m imperfectly perfect. My flaws are apart of me and all of it is perfect. Striving for society's idea of perfection is exhausting!! I do not need to constantly strive for perfection in every single area of my life. It’s impossible and it’s exhausting. That pressure causes people to crack; me to crack (just like the song haha).

Stop setting unrealistic expectations and standards for yourself. Stop being so hard on yourself on top of all that you are balancing in life. We are not built for that kind of pressure. Nor is it okay to be negative and talk badly to ourselves when we believe we aren't "perfect." That poor self-talk is just as damaging.

Learn to care for yourself first by setting those boundaries. Learn to be okay with where you are in your journey. Learn to be okay with who you are as a person. Learn to be happy with imperfectly perfect. No more pressure for perfection!!