The Myth of Perfection

One of the things that often trips us up is the belief that we have to be "perfect”. When we buy into this illusion, we stifle our heart and dampen our light. How can we free ourselves from the "myth of perfection"? Come explore in this 30 minute talk. Recorded live in February 2021.

Transcript

So,

Thank you so much.

It's really such a pleasure to be with you today.

And I was thinking that the fact that I'm doing a session on the myth of perfection takes a lot of pressure off,

Because any mistakes I make,

I can just use as part of the teaching.

So I think I might call every session the myth of perfection from now on.

So I decided to offer this session on the myth of perfection,

Because I think that it affects so many of us.

Whether or not you consider yourself a perfectionist,

That doesn't necessarily matter.

I don't think that there's one definition for perfection.

I think it shows up in a lot of different ways.

It could be a fear of failure,

A fear of making mistakes,

A feeling of never being good enough,

Deep concern about what other people think that immobilizes us and stops us from putting ourselves out in the world.

There's so many things that can impact our relationship to this so-called perfectionism.

Sometimes people say,

Well,

If I'm not going to have high standards and try to be perfect in what I do,

Then I'm just going to be lazy and do nothing.

But I think there's a very big difference between striving for excellence in our lives and trying to be perfect.

Because perfect is,

First of all,

Very subjective.

Who can say what perfect is?

We can look at nature and we could say nature is perfect,

But there's so much messiness in nature,

Yet there's an intelligence to it.

Somehow when we look at nature,

We honor and accept it for what it is.

Nobody looks at a mountain and says,

Oh,

That's a really beautiful mountain.

I love it,

But I just wish that peak was like a little lower at the top left.

I don't like how it juts out like that.

Nobody does that.

We don't look at a flower and admire it and say,

Well,

I just don't like how that petal is situated.

We embrace what is in nature.

We embrace the beauty of the imperfections of nature and we see the perfection in that.

Somehow we have a hard time,

Many of us,

Doing that for ourselves.

And there's so many different reasons for that.

All of the scripts that are given to us,

The programming from the time that we're very young when we're born into this world that tells us what success looks like and that equates our happiness and our worth with achievement and productivity and all of these types of things.

We are trained really from a very young age to seek external validation and confirmation in the world and we're praised when we do well.

And now in the modern world with technology and social media,

It just adds an incredible amount of pressure and illusion to this human life because there's so much pressure to create an image for oneself,

To be able to uphold that image,

And it gets very exhausting.

It really gets very tiring and it breeds and fosters comparison and competition and all of these things.

I'm not knocking social media because of course nothing is all bad or all good,

It has so many good things,

But especially for younger people,

It can create a lot of anxiety.

So there's a difference between trying to be successful and wanting to do our very best and putting this incredible pressure on ourselves to be perfect.

One is a form of healthy self-growth.

For instance,

An athlete that really strives to be the best that they can possibly be is doing that out of deep love for what they're doing,

Of wanting to be the best in their field.

But if that turns around to be other-focused,

Which I think perfectionism is a lot of time,

We're focused on the other,

It becomes more about what do they think of me,

I need that person's approval.

It just stifles our heart and it leads to so many crippling feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem,

Depression,

We don't feel good enough,

We don't feel like we can share who we are with the world.

And so I think this is a really important thing to look at together and to really dispel the myth of this so-called perfection that we have.

Trying to improve upon ourselves,

If it's coming from fear and shame,

Then we're not really expanding,

We're hurting ourselves.

When we're operating from the perspective that I'm flawed or there's something inherently wrong with me and I need to keep doing things to try to fix that and make that better.

Whereas if we were to look at the mystic wisdom from around the world,

The fundamental teachings from so many spiritual traditions is that we have an original goodness.

You can call it the divine,

You can call it love,

God,

Buddha nature,

Anything,

But the substratum of who we are is this pure,

Undefiled perfection.

And yet here we are in this paradoxical,

Dualistic world,

We're human beings.

And as human beings,

We have a lot of things that we are bringing in with us.

We have a lot of imprints,

A lot of impressions,

Traumas and wounds and insecurities and all of these things that make us human beings.

And it can seem like these two things don't really work together,

But that's our mind.

In our heart,

Everything is unified.

And both of these things can exist together and they do.

It's those vulnerable places that create the doorways for us to have connection and to really meet each other in a genuine way.

Otherwise we're just posturing and it leads to so many feelings of loneliness and separation.

I shared this quote that I just love so much the other day,

A Zen master's life is one continuous mistake.

That was spoken by Dogen,

Who was a great Zen master and poet.

And I just love that concept that our life could be one continuous mistake.

How completely liberating is that?

The things that we think are broken about ourselves,

The things that we don't want anyone to see,

The things that we think make us unlovable,

Or if anybody saw that about me,

There was just no way they would love me.

Maybe those are the things that are actually the beautiful parts of us.

Those are the things that connect us.

Maybe some of you are familiar with a Japanese art form called Kintsugi.

I was in Japan two years ago and saw some of this beautiful pottery.

If you have like a bowl,

For instance,

When it breaks,

They put it back together with lacquered gold.

Sometimes it's called golden joinery.

Maybe you've seen like a bowl or a cup and it has like gold kind of veins in it.

The beauty of that art form is that they are accentuating the cracks in Kintsugi.

They accentuate the broken parts because that's the beauty.

The beauty is in the broken parts.

I love that.

And I think it really applies to us as human beings.

I had an experience with my instrument here,

My harmonium.

I got this harmonium on Craigslist.

And when I first got it,

I really didn't know how to play it.

I was just learning and teaching myself.

I never had anybody look at it.

And after about 10 years of doing everything with it,

I thought that it would be good to have it looked at.

And I know a really amazing instrument repair person.

He specializes in Indian instruments.

I took my harmonium to him and he said,

Wow,

This is a great instrument.

I'm just going to do a little bit of work on it to clean it up a little bit and just a few air leaks in it and stuff.

So I just left it there.

I felt a little vulnerable because my harmonium is almost like a part of my body.

It's like my temple,

Really,

Where I go to pray.

Anyway,

I left my instrument there.

And when I came back about a week later,

He said,

Oh Carrie,

I fixed it all up.

I sealed it all.

It's perfect now.

And I was like,

Oh my gosh,

This is very exciting.

I started to play it and it totally didn't sound like my instrument anymore.

It was just a completely different instrument.

And I just burst into tears.

It was just a spontaneous feeling like,

Where did my instrument go?

And he said,

Carrie,

What's wrong?

I sealed up all the air leaks and everything and it's like perfect now.

The sound is clear and strong.

And I just said to him,

It just doesn't feel like my instrument.

And I realized that it had been imperfect before.

It had all of these cracks in it,

Which let the air leak out in different ways that wasn't optimal,

But it was mine.

This was my baby and it just sounded the way that I wanted it to sound and it resonated with me.

And so he said,

Do you want me to put the cracks back in?

And after that,

I just was laughing so hard because I realized it was such a teaching for me.

Everything is a teaching.

Everything in life is our teacher.

Everything in life is our scripture.

I really believe that.

And my harmonium,

My instrument,

It taught me that the cracks are what make the sound beautiful.

The frailties,

The things that other people think are wrong about it,

Think are broken about it,

Are what I love about this instrument.

And so he didn't put the cracks back in because I'm not sure how that would have gone over,

But he did do a few things to help some of the air come out again,

Which is not ideal,

But it is my instrument.

It feels more like my instrument.

So again,

That's just such a teaching that the things that we don't want to share or we don't want to show or that we're afraid of are often the things that make us unique and that are a gateway to deeper intimacy with each other.

Perfectionism is kind of boring.

For me personally anyway,

If I see someone doing something and I don't feel or their humanity,

I can't relate to it.

There's like a disconnect.

It's like,

Just sneeze or get like a stain on your shirt or something.

Please.

I need to feel your humanity.

What's our humanity that connects us?

And somehow we've been given these messages that we need to airbrush it out.

We need to use our filters,

Our Instagram filters.

We need to cover it up somehow and make it go away.

And there's the external manifestation and then there's the internal manifestation of doing that to ourselves.

There's two different kinds of shame.

There's a healthy shame that's like,

Okay,

I made a mistake.

This behavior wasn't really good.

And so I feel ashamed about it.

I want to do something to correct that.

When we have healthy shame,

We don't feel like we're the problem.

We recognize that it's our behavior that's the problem.

But toxic shame is when we think I messed up and I'm broken.

There's something wrong with me.

I'm the problem.

That's very debilitating to us because then we identify our image when we make a mistake or do something that has a frailty to it or a vulnerability or whatever.

We think that there's something wrong with us.

We identify with it instead of being able to see it for what it is,

As an opportunity to understand ourselves better and to accept ourselves better.

I've learned that times that I feel uncomfortable or scared are an opportunity for me to practice deeper self-acceptance and self-love.

It's so important that when we want to learn those things,

We need to put ourselves in environments or do things that give us an opportunity to learn.

If everything is just safe and an airtight container,

Then we don't really have a chance to see,

Can I love myself more deeply?

We don't have the opportunity to learn that.

The fear of failure stops so many of us from really doing the things that we want to do.

But there has never been any success without failure.

I really genuinely don't believe in failure.

I remember when I was working on my second album called The ROM Sessions.

It took me over five years to make that album.

I just couldn't break free.

I was in this creative rut and I really felt like something was wrong with me.

I felt like I'm doing something wrong.

I'm a complete failure.

No matter what I do,

I can't finish these songs.

I can't see the end of this album.

I can't figure it out.

And I just kept trying and trying and falling down and falling down and trying to get up again and falling down.

And eventually,

After five years,

The album was born and it felt like something that was born out of a deep struggle,

But a struggle that was so worthwhile.

Because whatever perfectionism that was wrapped into that experience,

It fell away.

It actually changed the way that I work now when I record music and stuff.

I'm not anywhere near as hard on myself.

I don't have that same pressure or tension that I had at that time.

It was like I needed to go through that to have it change.

But sometimes we repeat these patterns over and over again,

And we feel like we're failing or we feel like something's not changing.

But it's not true.

We can't always or ever really know what our so-called progress is.

A metaphor that my teacher Amma has used before that I like is just about being on an airplane.

But when we're on an airplane,

It seems like we're not moving at all,

But we're going really fast in the sky.

And eventually we end up at a different destination.

So we don't know what looks to us as a failure is just a stepping stone to something else.

And I think it's so important to do little things to go out of our comfort zone.

What's the worst that could happen?

What's the worst that could happen if we so-called fail?

Every failure is an opportunity to love ourselves more.

In that way,

It's completely worthwhile.

Who cares about the outcome?

I was happy when my album came out,

And I was happy that I could share the music with people.

But ultimately,

It was learning about my own creative path and expression and my own heart that was the takeaway.

You know,

When we put ourselves out in the world,

It's guaranteed that there will be people who don't like us or don't like it.

It's so easy to want to buffer ourselves from that.

But ultimately,

We really can't.

Even now,

There's 940 people here.

Maybe some people are enjoying this and maybe some people really aren't.

And everybody's having a different perception about me,

What I'm saying,

The way I'm doing what I'm doing.

And that's just this world we live in because we live in an opinion factory.

Everybody has an opinion.

But if we live our life being hostage to other people's opinions,

Then we basically are just putting ourselves in a little closet.

And there's so much suffering in that,

Too.

So ultimately,

What matters?

What's more important?

Is it sharing who we are?

Or is it allowing other people's opinions,

Which are no more relevant than our own,

To dictate how we live our lives?

Ultimately,

When we meditate on the reality of our mortality,

There's a lot of liberation that comes from that.

I remember seeing a picture of a sign at a temple in Thailand that said,

100 years,

All new people.

Like,

Don't worry.

In 100 years,

All of us here in 100 years will be gone.

It's like a flash of lightning.

This life is really like a flash of lightning.

And to have a human birth is such a precious thing.

So why are we living our lives,

Beating ourselves up,

Putting ourselves down,

Being so hard on ourselves,

Judging ourselves,

When we are these amazing beings?

Each of us has something unique within us.

There will never be another person like you in the history of the universe.

There just never will be.

And that's a very special thing.

So I feel like in order to work with this myth of perfection,

It's so important that we learn to really respect who we are,

To honor and love who we are.

And I think it begins with acknowledging the harm that we may have caused ourselves.

And that may sound kind of heavy.

I don't mean it in a heavy way,

But we often talk to ourselves in a very negative way.

I've just found this all around the world and places that I've traveled and done programs and talked to people and knowing from my own experience that this is very pervasive.

People often talk very negatively to themselves,

Or we hurt our own heart.

We don't need to.

And we don't always take the time to recognize that and to acknowledge that and to offer amends to ourself.

We need to be able to forgive ourselves for our perfectionism,

For pushing ourselves so hard,

For being unrelenting with our own heart.

There needs to be an acknowledgment of that sometimes,

To heal the root of the shame or whatever it may be that is the breeding ground for perfectionism.

It doesn't just come out of nowhere.

It's born out of certain fundamental beliefs that we may have about ourselves that we feel we need to prove our worth,

That we need to prove who we are,

Or that we need to control life so if everything is perfect,

We can be in control of it.

But what would happen if we just let go and trusted life a little bit more,

Trusted ourselves a little bit more,

Let up a little bit?

We need to offer that love to ourselves,

And in order to transform these tendencies that we have,

We have to first acknowledge them.

We have to first become aware.

That's why the Buddha said,

Suffering exists.

That was the first noble truth.

He said it because we can't do anything about our suffering if we don't actually realize we're suffering in the first place.

If we don't know we're suffering,

We're not going to do anything to change that.

So in the same way,

If we're not aware of how hard we are on ourselves,

If we're not aware of how terrified we are to fail or to make mistakes or how much our concerns about what other people think about us influence how we live and how we feel,

It's hard to do anything about it.

So we really need to connect to that,

To see that,

And to bring some light there,

To bring some light to those wounds,

Just some love,

Some attention to those wounds.

It doesn't always need to be a psychoanalysis.

I'm not saying that that's not helpful.

Of course there are times when we really do need to go into things and look at them and understand them and analyze them,

But oftentimes it's just our own awareness,

Our own presence that can be so healing if we can bring that to ourselves,

Our own presence to ourself,

Our own heart to ourself and shine the light there.

Awareness itself is a great healer,

And there's nothing that we really need to understand about it except just to be there as a nonjudgmental open space for ourself and to realize that all of these things about our humanity that often cause us pain,

They contain a lot of opportunity for our transformation,

And they are fertile places for us to learn about ourselves and to grow and to connect with each other.

If I was just sitting here and acting unaffected by any of this or perfect or I don't have issues or wounds or frailties of my own,

Then it would be hard to really relate to me or even to trust anything I'm saying.

The way that we trust each other is through being real.

One of my favorite quotes,

I'm sure so many of you know,

From Leonard Cohen is forget your perfect offering.

You know,

There is a crack in everything,

That's where the light gets in.

Maybe perfection is in the messiness.

Maybe the messiness is the perfection.

This is the paradox,

You know,

We're these human beings with all of this stuff going on and yet there's also something within us that is so much deeper.

The metaphor that I really like to use is binoculars because sometimes we need to use the side of the binoculars where we zoom into our life experience and we look at the fine print when we look really closely at these ancestral traumas that we may have or these wounds or these things that have caused us pain or these patterns that we have that we can't break free from and all of this stuff.

We need to look at it,

Put it on the table and look at it sometimes.

And then we need to turn our binoculars around and we need to look from far away.

We need to be able to look at our life from a little bit of space,

From a little bit of distance,

Like being on the moon looking down at the earth.

And that's an opportunity to witness ourselves,

To have compassion.

Being able to witness,

To look from afar,

Changes the perspective.

And both things are needed.

If we only have one or the other,

Then there's not a balance there.

Our humanity,

That's the soil for everything.

But we also don't want to get so lost in all of that that we forget that there's also an inherent perfection within us.

There really is.

There is that light or an intelligence within our being.

And it's important to connect with that too.

If we wait until we're perfect to do anything,

No one will ever do anything.

If I waited until I was perfect before I sat here with you,

I would never do it.

I'm not perfect at all,

But yet it doesn't matter.

I'm just myself.

And you're just yourself.

And we can meet in that place of truth.

There's so much freedom in that.

We all have that birthright to be who we are and to share who we are with the world as we are.

And I think it's so important that we extend love and forgiveness to ourselves and keep showing up.

Keep making that effort to bring that light of awareness to patterns of shame or to the feelings of inadequacy or brokenness.

And know that that's part of this human journey to help us rediscover our wholeness.

The brokenness is the gateway to discovering what's never broken within.

Thank you so much.

Reviews

Absolutely excellent , Carrie, thank you so much for this! I have recommended it to a couple of my friends that are in the depth of this right now because it speaks so eloquently and beautifully to this issue. . I've been through everything you talked about and I'm now finally coming into a place of grace and forgiveness of myself. I loved the story about the harmonium! It was such a great example of how dearly we hold those little things that are just a little out of tune with our light that can hold us back from expressing our radiance in fullness. It's still being expressed , just not to its brightest . Thank you again! Namasté ❤️🙏🌅

Carrie, I love how you help us connect with the spiritual within our shared humanity. Whether through listening to your talks or your music, something deep moves within me. There is joy in humility 🥀 Thank you 🙏🏼

This is so so beautiful 🤍

Thank you for this talk. Your compassion and light shines brightly. ☮️💟

Thank you Carrie, your talks always hit me at the right time. This was perfect :)

Loved the person story. This was so lovely!

So helpful , thank you 🕯️

“There is a crack in everything, that is where the light gets in.” that was so incredibly well-communicated and, hence, received. Thank you, thank you… thank you. :)

Almost perfect 🥰

I heard this when it was live. Thanks for posting it here—I needed to hear it again. 💜🦋

Thank you!!

Amen to that, Carrie!