You Were Never Meant To Be Perfect

Are you tired? Not just physically — but tired of trying so hard. Tired of the relentless effort to get it right.

Perfectionism is exhausting because it is endless. There is no finish line. You achieve the thing and immediately see what is lacking.

This is a sacred talk — not a technique, just permission. I speak from clinical training (somatic therapy, attachment, family systems) and honest observation about the world we live in: the curated lives, the productivity worship, the algorithm that rewards performance.

You are not a project to be optimised. You were never meant to be perfect. You were meant to be you.

By Abi Beri | Somatic Therapist & Integrative Practitioner

Transcript

So welcome everyone, And thank you, Thank you for listening. I want to ask you something, And I want you to answer honestly, Even if only to yourself. Are you tired? Not just physically tired, Though probably that too, But tired in a deeper way. Tired of trying so hard, Tired of holding it all together, Tired of the relentless effort to get it right. If you are listening to this, There's a good chance you've spent much of your life in the pursuit of something called perfection, Or if not perfection exactly, Then close enough, Good enough that no one can criticize, Good enough that you cannot be rejected, And good enough that you finally, Finally get to rest. But there's one problem, The rest never comes, The therapy never ends, Because the goalpost keeps moving. You achieve this thing, And before you can even feel good about it, You're already focused on the next thing. You solve the problem, And immediately find three more problems. You get approval, Somehow it does not land, It does not fill the gap, Or the cup, Or the hole it was supposed to fill. So you try harder, Do more, And be better. And you wonder why you're so tired. Perfectionism is exhausting, Because it is endless. There is no finish line, There is no point at which you can finally have done enough, Been enough, Achieved enough to stop. There is a treadmill that goes nowhere, And you've been running on it for years. What if you could step off? Now perfectionism does not come from nowhere, It is not a personality flaw, And it is not because you're neurotic, Or anxious, Or just wired all the time. It is an adaptation, A survival strategy, Something you learned usually very early, Because it worked. And for most perfectionists, It started in the family. Maybe love was conditional, When you were good, Really good, You got attention, Approval, And warmth. When you were messy, Struggling, Imperfect, That warmth withdrew. So you learned good equals loved, Imperfect equals unsafe. Maybe there was a parent who needed you to reflect well on them. Your achievements were their achievements, Your failures were their shame. So you carried the weight of their self-esteem on your small shoulders, Performing excellence, So they could feel okay. Maybe the household was chaotic, And your perfectionism was a way of creating control. If I just get everything right, Maybe I can hold this together. Maybe I can be the stable one, The reliable one, The one who does not add to the chaos. Or maybe it was subtler than that. Maybe no one explicitly demanded perfection, But you absorbed the message anyway, From school, From culture, From the water you were swimming in, Be good, Try harder, Do better, And do not make mistakes. In attachment terms, Perfectionism is often a strategy for maintaining connection. If I am flawless, I cannot be rejected. If I never mess up, You cannot leave. If I anticipate every need and exceed every expectation, I get to stay. It is, As it at its root, A fear of abandonment, Dressed up as high standards. And it worked. In its way, It kept you connected, Kept you approved, Kept you in the game. But the cost was enormous. Because you were never actually resting, You were never actually safe. You were just performing safety over and over, Hoping it would eventually become real. Now, As a holistic therapist, I'm always curious about where things live in the body, And perfectionism has a very, Very clear signature. There's almost always a bracing, A holding. Muscles that do not quite release, Even when there's nothing to hold. Shoulders are slightly lifted, Jaw is slightly clenched, A readiness in the system, Always prepared, Always vigilant, Always scanning for the next thing that needs to be handled. So perfectionists often do not know how to fully relax. Not because they do not want to, But their nervous system has learnt that relaxing is dangerous. If you let your guard down, You miss something. You might make a mistake. You might be caught being imperfect. You know that thing where you're supposedly relaxing, You're on holiday, You're in the bath, But you're doing something that's meant to be restful, And your body is still tense, Still braced, Still running some background programs of vigilance. That is perfectionism in the body. It does not believe you're allowed to stop. And then there is the inner voice, The one that monitors, Evaluates, And criticizes. The one that notices everything you did wrong and very little of what you did right. That same voice lives in the body too, And it creates a constant low-grade stress, A hum of not good enough that becomes so familiar that you do not even notice it anymore. But your nervous system notices, Your cortisol levels notice, Your sleep, Your digestion, Your capacity for joy. They all notice. So perfectionism is not just a mindset. It is a way of holding your body, And your body is tired of it. Now, I want to talk about the world that we're living in, Because perfectionism does not exist in a vacuum. It is being fed constantly by the culture around us. We live in an age of curation. Everyone's life is a highlighted reel, And you scroll through images of perfect homes, Perfect bodies, Perfect relationships, Perfect careers, And somewhere in your nervous system you absorb this message. This is the new standard, And this is what you should be achieving. So never mind that it is all edited, Filtered, Carefully selected from hundreds of attempts. Your nervous system does not know all that. All it sees is that everyone else is doing better. And then there is the productivity culture, The worship of busy, The idea that your worth is measured by your output, Your efficiency, Your ability to optimize every moment of your day. Rest is lazy. Slowing down is falling behind. You should always be improving, Growing, Becoming a better version of yourself. Now, Do you have perfectionism in all that? The assumption that the current version of you is not good enough. You are a project to be worked on and a product to be improved. The self-help industry, The wellness industry, And I say this as someone who works in this space, I think, Often makes it worse. You are sold solutions to problems that you did not know you had. We show you all the ways you could be better, Calmer, More enlightened, More healed, Have more boundaries. So there are new standards of perfection, And it's called growth. Now, I have to be careful here. I make content, I offer services, And in some ways, At least I like to believe that I'm in the business of helping people change. But I want to be honest. Sometimes the most healing thing is not another program. It's not another practice, And it's not bi-weekly sessions. It's not another way to improve yourself. Sometimes the most healing thing is the permission to stop. And let us talk about that algorithm for a moment. The systems that govern what we see, What gets rewarded, What rises to the top. The algorithm rewards performance. It rewards polish. It rewards content that makes people feel something intense enough to engage. It does not reward ordinary. It does not reward good enough. And it does not reward the quiet and imperfect human reality of most people's lives. So we perform, We curate, And we present the best version. And then we wonder why we feel like frauds, Why we feel exhausted, And why we cannot just be ourselves. You are not imagining it. The world is set up to make you feel inadequate. Not because there is conspiracy, Just because inadequacy sells. If you felt fine about yourself, You would not need that product, You would not lick that link, And you would not try that program. So the economy runs on your sense of not being enough. Imagine now, Just for a moment, What it would feel like to opt out. To say, Actually, I'm fine. I'm not perfect. I'm not optimized. I'm fine. I'm human. And that is enough. I'm fine. I'm human. And that is enough. And that's revolutionary. Really. Now I want to name the cost clearly. The cost of perfectionism. Because sometimes we do not realize what perfectionism is taking away from us. It takes your rest. You cannot truly relax, Because there is always something that could be better, Something you should be doing, Some standards you're not quite meeting. It takes away your joy, Because you cannot be present with what is good when you're always focused on what is lacking. You achieve that thing, And instead of celebrating, You're already critiquing what could have been better, What is not quite right. It takes your relationships, Because perfectionism makes you hard to reach. You are performing so much that people do not get the real you. And when they love the performance, Part of you knows that they do not really know me, But they love my mask. It also takes your creativity, Because creativity requires risk, Experimentation, And the willingness to make bad things on the way to making good things. Perfectionism hates that. It wants the final product, But not the messy process. It also takes your humanity, Because humans are not perfect. We are messy, Contradictory, Unchangeable. We make mistakes, Most of us at least. We have bad days, And by design we are imperfect creatures. Perfectionism says, Not acceptable, Fix it, Hide it, And do not let anyone see it. So you end up living a half-life, Polished on the surface and the exhausted interior. The image of having it together, And your private life is falling apart. Is that really what you want to keep doing? Now, Here is what I want to offer, Not as a technique, Not as another thing to be perfect, Just as a truth to consider. You are not a project, You are not a product to be optimized, And you are not a rough draft waiting to become a final version. You are not a problem to be solved. You are a living, Breathing, Unfolding human being, And human beings are not meant to be perfect. If there is a thing called a soul, And I believe there is, It did not come here to achieve perfection. It came here to experience, To learn, To feel, To love, To lose, To struggle, To grow, And to be human in all its mess and all its beauty at the same time. So perfection is static, It is an end point, And life is not static. Life is a process, Change, Becoming. So you were never meant to arrive at some finished state when you finally got it all right. It would have happened by now if that was the case. You were meant to keep living, Keep learning, And keep being surprised by yourself. The trees do not try to be perfect trees. They just grow, Sometimes crooked, Sometimes with broken branches, But they are still trees. They are still valuable, And they are still part of the forest. Somewhere along the way, We decided that humans should be different, That we should transcend our nature, That we should optimize ourselves into some ideal form. What if that was never the assignment? What if you could be more like the tree, Growing, Changing, Imperfect, Alive, Not trying to be anything other than what you are in this moment? What if good enough was actually good enough? I'm not asking you to give up or settle, But just recognize that you were never supposed to be any other way. The striving and exhaustion and the endless pursuit of better, That was the detour, And coming home to yourself imperfect, Human, And real, Might be the destination. Let me offer you something, Not advice, Not strategy, Just a permission. You are allowed to be imperfect. You are allowed to make mistakes, To change your mind, To not know the answer. You are allowed to have bad days, To struggle, And to feel bad. Fall short of your expectations. You are allowed to rest without earning it. You are allowed to take up space without justifying it. You are allowed to exist without performing. You are allowed to be work in progress, Not because you need to be fixed, Because that is what being alive means, Unfinished, Becoming, And human. I know the nervous system does not update because someone gives you permission. Ears of conditioning does not dissolve in a talk. But sometimes, Hearing something that resonates with your truth is the beginning. Sometimes, Having someone say, You can stop now, Someone who's not trying to sell you a better version of yourself, Sometimes that cracks something open. So you can stop now. You can stop now, Not stop living, Not stop caring, Not stop growing, But stop the relentless, Exhausting, Impossible pursuit of perfection. That you can stop. And then what remains, When the perfectionism softens, Is just you. The imperfect, Real, And human you, Which it turns out was always enough. You were never meant to be perfect. I want to end this now by acknowledging something. Letting go of perfectionism is not easy. It is not a one-time decision. It is a practice, A slow, Gradual softening and remembering that you're allowed to be human. There will be days when the old patterns come back, When the inner critic is loud, And when you find yourself performing, Striving, Exhausting all over again. That is okay. That is the work. We do not heal in a straight line. But maybe sometimes, In quiet moments, You will remember what I said today. And you will try it on just for a moment. What if I did not have to be perfect? What if I could just be this? And in those moments, Something might ease, Just a little, Just enough. You were never meant to be perfect. The world will keep telling you otherwise, Keep selling you improvements, Keep showing you ideas, Techniques, Keep suggesting that you are not bad enough. You do not have to believe it. You are allowed to be imperfect. You're allowed to be human. You're allowed to be the messy, Complicated, Unfinished real person that you are. That was always the assignment. Now go gently. Rest when you can. And please remember you are not a project. You never were. Thank you for being here. Thank you for joining me. And namaste.