The courage to be imperfect

How many of us have wanted to do everything just right, to be the best at everything we do... to be perfect? Since childhood, many of us may have been driven by our parents' or our own desire to be better than our peers, than our brothers or sisters... Having a child with straight A's was a source of pride for many parents, while having low grades was shameful, and this is just one example. Many people grew up believing that they are only valuable when they do everything perfectly, believing that they matter, that they are only important when they excel and never make mistakes, and society seems to encourage competitiveness and perfectionism.

Thus, the desire to be the best, flawless, to climb the ladder, and the growing fear of failure put increasing pressure on the individual, and in the long run, this distances us from our authentic selves and the possibility of developing harmoniously and in congruence with ourselves. In fact, we block ourselves on the path to perfection, we focus excessively on all the things we are not satisfied with in ourselves, we consume our time and energy to achieve what cannot be achieved, and we carry with us the burden of being perfect, and this could be a source of additional stress, of anxiety fueled by our inner perfectionism.

No, this does not mean that wanting to be the best you can be is a negative thing, quite the contrary. It is important not to confuse the desire to be perfect with the desire to develop ourselves, to become the best versions of ourselves. It is only when we look at ourselves with compassion, when we understand that yes, we are human and we make mistakes, but we accept ourselves exactly as we are, imperfect as we are, and learn from our mistakes, that we can step through the door to true development.

Carl Rogers explains this beautifully: "I find that I am more effective when I can listen to myself with acceptance and be myself. I feel that, over the years, I have learned to listen to myself better, so that I know, a little better than before, what I am feeling at any given moment... One way of saying this is that I feel I have become more adequate in allowing myself to be what I am. It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way I would like to function. This must seem to some to be a very strange direction to move in. To me, it seems valuable, because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change," in his book "On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy, 1995, p.17."

So, someone who has wanted to be excellent and do everything perfectly for many years may find it absurd when they first hear about "The Courage to Be Imperfect" (Rufold Dreikurs) and may think it ridiculous to accept your imperfection. But it is precisely the realization that we are good enough as we are, imperfect as we are, the realization that we matter even if we are not perfect, that we make mistakes but accept ourselves as we are, that leads to inner peace and allows us to step courageously into life, truly as ourselves, and allows us to grow as human beings.