"Perfect” Is an Awfully BIG word. Let Go of It.

“Perfect” may only be two syllables, and yet it’s an awfully big word— big enough to damage self-worth, self-love and every relationship in our lives. Most of my life I found it impossible to love myself because of my unrealistic need to be “perfect.” That terrible need exposed all of my flaws and ruined my relationship with myself as far back as my childhood. It then made it impossible for me to have a healthy relationship with God or any other person.

I had way too many unloved parts of myself. Some of them were physical, some were about personality, but the most devastating ones were centered on the inherent, unchangeable parts of me. Some of us are taught— at very young ages— to hate our skin color or ethnicity, our gender or sexual orientation, our intelligence level or even our inherited religious background. We quickly learn what is acceptable or unacceptable from adults, society and religion. The very people/institutions that should nurture us instead divide us through prejudice and hatred of what they are incapable of understanding.

Tragically, when we are taught at young ages to hate inherent parts of ourselves, we are placed into a constant war with and against ourselves. I doubt that there are any people in this world who aren’t at war with themselves over some “unloved part” of themselves that they have never been able to accept and love.

No matter how small or how big that part of ourselves may be, it effects our entire network of relationship skills. I can’t have a good relationship with anyone, including my Higher Power, until I first have a good relationship with myself. And a good relationship means we learn to accept, honor and love those parts of ourselves that we were TAUGHT were unacceptable.

Think about it: We weren’t the first persons to declare that our skin color, or sexual orientation or ethnicity were unacceptable. Some other person(s) drilled that LIE into our young heads. We then chose to accept and believe the lie. And we have repeatedly used that lie to destroy our relationship with ourselves, God and others.

As adults, we have the ability to reason and discover our own truths in life; something we weren’t able to do as children when we first accepted the lies we were told. We must use our own adult abilities to reason and discern our truth. Once we have done so, we will be empowered to break free from owning the childhood lies we were told.

Granted, it’s easier to reason and move past the lies than it is to emotionally push past the trauma these lies have caused us. But we have to mentally move past them first, work through our emotional pain, and allow our feelings to slowly catch-up with our newfound ways of thinking about ourselves and our truth.

Learn to live your TRUTH by identifying those “unloved parts” of yourself that are keeping you from enjoying good relationships. Identify them, expose the lie you were told, and choose to abandon that lie in favor of the truth: You are “perfectly imperfect,” as is EVERYONE. And we are ALL good enough just the way we are.