This is a general meditation with several mantras to address internalized perfectionism.
It is rare to feel perfectly balanced,
Positive,
And worthy every minute of every day.
And we actually don't need to feel those ways in order to live a beautiful life.
It's only when we think we need to feel those ways that we hold ourselves back.
Trying to be emotionally perfect prevents us from living in ways that give us a fulfilling life.
Sometimes,
Doing hard or risky or important things has tag-along feelings of fear,
Insecurity,
Concern,
Worry.
When the mind notices how intense your vulnerable feelings are,
It wants to get rid of them and that's natural.
It's thinking it's protecting you.
But if we can only live when negative feelings are gone,
We will always be waiting to live.
Instead,
We are going to treat negative feelings and thoughts as passers-by.
Things to help us understand the stress we are under,
The care we have in our hearts,
And the humanness we experience.
We also cannot eradicate perfectionist thinking from our minds.
There's nothing inherently wrong with your mind wanting to protect you from negativity through suppression.
We aren't going to dismiss the mind.
We are going to use it.
The mind needs to be trained to recognize negativity for what it is.
Usually fear,
Ego,
And care that manifests in unhelpful ways sometimes.
We aren't going to suppress it,
But we aren't going to embody it either.
In fact,
The more we try to suppress negative thoughts or our desire to get rid of the negative thoughts,
The more we are actually trying to be cognitively or emotionally perfect.
Responding to our unwanted thoughts and feelings,
Allowing certain internal experiences to be there,
To make space for them,
To learn how to feel less threatened in their presence.
That is the path to allowing imperfection.
That is the path to learning to identify less with perfectionist tendencies.
That is the path to choosing humanness.
Today,
We will focus on our breath.
We will find resistance to unwanted thoughts and emotions in our bodies.
And we will be compassionate.
We will allow thoughts and feelings to come and go.
After repeating each mantra after me,
We'll have a few minutes of music where you can repeat any of the mantras that you need today or notice unwanted feelings going through your body and use the mantras to address those.
Or simply let go of the mantras and focus on your breath and send yourself a warm presence.
Let's begin.
I want you to first focus on your breath.
Notice the cool air upon your inhale,
Traveling in through your nose and into your lungs.
Notice the warm air leaving your body the same way it came.
Cool air in and warm air out.
Notice how the chest rises and falls with every inhale and exhale.
How the shoulders slightly move up and down.
How the belly even expands and contracts with the cool air in and the warm air out.
For these next few moments,
Notice your breath and these sensations of breathing in your body.
If you notice that your shoulders are tense,
Allow them to drop away from your ears.
Allow your tongue to drop away from the roof of your mouth if it's there.
And allow your jaw to relax,
Also dropping downward.
Cool air in and warm air out.
With your next few inhales,
I want you to allow your breath to find the place inside your body that's experiencing anything unwanted.
Any unwanted emotions like resistance or unwanted mental experiences like distraction,
Feeling afraid,
Worry,
Disappointment,
Anger.
Go there simply.
No need to search too hard for it.
For some people it's in their shoulders,
Their neck,
The crown of their head,
The middle of their belly.
If it's all over,
Then that's okay too.
Just focus on a place in your body where you know it is,
Where you can feel it.
And allow your breath to surround that place.
Imagine that you are floating in on your breath to this area in your body.
You are a wave of energy and you are being present for where these unwanted feelings and thoughts exist right now.
Imagine sitting down next to them.
Looking at them.
Looking at them.
I'm going to say several mantras about living with certain unwanted thoughts or feelings.
Repeat after me.
May I live with imperfection.
May I live with irritability.
May I live with feeling wounded.
May I live with feeling afraid.
May I live with resistance.
May I live with feelings of attachment.
May I live with concern and worry.
May I live with not being all powerful and all knowing.
May I live with not knowing.
May I live with distraction.
May I live with not always being present in the moment.
May I live with disappointment.
May I live with anger.
May I live with shame.
May I live with inner turmoil that's hard to figure out.
May I live with wanting and yearning.
May I live with feeling off balance.
May I live with feeling not enough.
May I live with feeling too much.
May I live with my sensitivities.
May I live with overwhelm.
May I live with fear.
May I live with urgency.
May I live with losing track of time.
May I live with being uninspired.
May I live with missed opportunity.
May I live with sometimes getting it wrong.
May I live with feeling unsettled.
May I live with losing the moment.
May I live with feeling sad.
May I live with feeling empty.
May I live with feeling unfinished.
May I live with my mental movements.
May I let them come and go without defining me.
With each next inhale,
I bring warmth to the places in my body I hold these difficult experiences.
I surround the sharp edges of these feelings and I soften to them.
With each exhale,
I relieve my body of striving to be anywhere but here.
Today,
Instead of striving to get rid of unwanted experiences,
May I be with them.
May I tolerate them.
May I let them come and go.
May I decide what to do or be in this moment based on what I need and what's important to me.
For these next few minutes,
You can repeat any mantra.
Notice a feeling that I didn't say that's in your body and add it to a mantra.
With each inhale and exhale,
Imagine a warm presence coming to you and a release leaving your body.
We are going to close out our meditation for the day.
The imperfectionist in me acknowledges the imperfectionist in you.
We are going to close out our meditation for the day.
The imperfectionist in me acknowledges the imperfectionist in you.
