Natural Freedom

Ever since I could remember. Okay seriously probably since grade school I could remember always trying to accomplish things perfectly. School work, basketball, exercises. You name it and most of it I tried to do perfectly. Now, my mom is a NEAT freak! I mean you leave a remote crooked and she has to straighten it out. It's a pain in the ass to be honest. My thought is chill the fu** out! Who care's it's croooked leave it! But, she care's and that's how she is, so that's cool.

I'm writing this, because today at work while walking to the back I had a thought or realization...whatever, that when I came into this genre of life; growth and workings of your inner demons I wanted to PERFECT it. I wanted to be a man with no insecurities or flaws. Not, firstly I'm still not sure if there's anything wrong with or if its impossible not to have any insecurities. What's your thoughts on that?

The second point was a problem though. The flaws. I wanted to be a perfect specimen. A MAN! One with no flaws Perfect FLAWLESS! Flawless, so that woman could not resist me. Oh boy what did I get myself into?!

Yet, today I realized it's all 50/50. You can't have white without black. You can't be human without flaws. Our flaws are what makes ourselves...ourselves. I viewed my flaws as bad and never manned up to accept them. I payed the price with many years of sorrow and pain. I viewed things like I had to be a certain way. And, still now I see others and catch myself wanting to imitate them; be them so to say. I think what I really want is how comfortable they seem being themselves. I haven't had that yet since childhood. To be comfortable being me. I never accepted it. I never said: Hey I'm fucking shy and that is 100% OKAY!

I'm still here, so I still have time to change it.

I'm saying much like fight club's TD said let's stop being perfect: On that note if everything was COMPLETE. All we wanted and pursued was DONE. What would be next for us? Insanity? It never is complete. Once or if you ever achieve completeness your going to have to spend the rest of your life MAINTAINING it!

Two years ago I believed I could work on this all and be DONE with it forever, but that's all Smoke and Mirrors RJD2.

WHUH!!! Weird shit!
I was thinking about Fight Club this week, and I looked up this EXACT SAME QUOTE from the movie just yesterday! Synchronicity? Coincidence? Who knows...

I hadn't checked this forum for a while, but I came back lurking a couple of weeks ago... There is a lot of interesting discussions going on here!

Also I had similar realisations. I was thinking about how I always want to be a winner. In fact everybody does. We are taught to be succesfull; you have to be a winner. Losers are being left out. Nobody wants to be a loser. But then it struck me... You can't always win! That's just not how reality works. Whenever there is a winner, there is also a loser. Nothing wrong with that. In fact to grow and evolve it is necessary to lose sometimes. We learn by making mistakes. If you win, you might learn something. But if you lose you will definitally learn something!

It is very stressful to always be a winner, because it is impossible. You will have to hide the fact that you lose sometimes to other people! But... it's okay to be a loser sometimes! It makes you grow.

Perfectionism is a deep program - I know it very well, and can definitely relate to wanting to do inner work perfectly, etc.

It' still rooted in the idea that once you do it perfectly or right, then everything will fall into your own mind's definition of "perfect" -- which is the opposite of letting go, the opposite of accepting yourself as you are right now, which is not broken. It's chasing something that can never exist, withholding satisfaction / self appreciation etc until that non-existant thing is reached.. which is my definition of hell (i've lived it).

My teacher once said "perfection is a bad idea." -- it's just a concept in the mind about how things should theoretically be and is always fighting against what's actually there.. which IS perfect. It's the definition of "perfect" that is off. There's only what is happening.

Or to quote someone else -- "What's wrong with right now if you don't think about it" ?

What if you aren't here to continue to fix, change, grow, work on yourself, as a project with an end goal, but to just to be, and express who you are -- inherently valuable and worth being expressed, "flaws" and all?

Letting go is not a technique that fixes things.. it's a letting go of this idea that there is something to fix (and that you could actually fix it if there was).

These things have helped me w/ perfectionism and of course lots of inner work on what perfection means to me, for me it is rooted in being 'the best' or 'superior' which like just about anything traced down to being approved of = safe = fear of death.

_________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXz8xMaJi4

Perfection and the whole notion implies a destination, rather than a journey.

There is no destination, there are stops along the way.

Let it go and enjoy the ride

_________________
In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject.He keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Perfection is not when there is no more to add,but no more to take away.

I love it when we hear simple advice such as this "let it go and enjoy the ride". I'm not being sarcastic at all. I'm rather amazed at how SIMPLE it all is, but for some innate reason I, and I think others, make many things COMPLEX as if they need to be such to get it through my/our thick heads.