Why you need to say yes to the mess

Let’s break through the BS behind perfectionism. Image by Ivan Vranic on Unsplash

This morning, I tried to do a video post for Instagram. I tried take after take to get the words, the light and the sound right, plus my hair and my face. After the better part of an hour, I realised what I wanted to say – was being called to say – wasn’t about what I thought it was.

What I’m actually here to talk about is PERFECTIONISM.

We can all be pretty flippant about our perfectionist tendencies. And yet, the reality is that perfectionism leads us to waste time and energy. It stops us from getting projects off the ground, it leads us to compare ourselves with others, and it generally sucks the joy out of life.

It’s insidious. And I’m sick of it. Aren’t you?

The (false) fairytale of perfectionism

We’ve been sold and we’ve fallen for, hook, line and sinker, the fairytale that we can be perfect – that life can be perfect.

TV, movies and magazines say it to us every day. Social media does too. And we feed it with our fucking ring lights, our airbrushing, our filters.

We feed it with our smiles plastered on, with our Botox, with our apple-pie pictures of happy families (meanwhile everyone was fighting five minutes before the photo was taken).

We feed it with our rejection of the lumpy, bumpy, discoloured fruit, choosing only the perfect, pristine-looking apples instead.

The lie is that, once upon a time, there was a person who decided to work a little bit harder, to work out a little bit harder, who ate all organic, who didn’t that chocolate or those crisps, who didn’t drink that glass of wine, who meditated for 30 minutes more every day, or who took this one course and did this one thing in their business, who manifested just a bit more and wanted it a bit harder and… in the end they lived happily ever after. Their life was shining, 5D and perfect. They had the perfect body, the perfect 6-figure business, the perfect partner, the perfect family, the perfect balance of work and family, and the perfect holidays.

The fairytale of the perfect life is about as real as a Barbie doll. Image by Sandra Gabriel on Unsplash

Working out, eating organic food, meditating, courses… these things do have value. But there’s got to be some give. If we force ourselves to adhere to these things to the point of beating ourselves up if we fall off the pencil-thin pathway we’ve created for ourselves, or rigidly denying ourselves the glass of wine or the chocolate every time, because we believe we’ll somehow one day be perfect if we just do or don’t do this one thing… we will only find ourselves exhausted, depleted, and deprived of the joy of life.

You’ve probably heard something similar before. I know I have. And yet… I feel like we need to keep hearing it.

Say yes to the mess

Say yes to the mess. That’s where the gold is. Image by Karen Maes for Unsplash

Life is messy. WE are messy. (My hair is messy – and it could really do with a wash, but I just can’t be bothered.)

And that is 100% totally OK. In fact, this the mud we came to be in.

At least, I did. 

For a while, I worked in a business that was, despite everything it claimed to be, was ultimately about living, behaving and working in one rigid, perfect way in order to attain enlightenment.  

Combined with my own tendencies towards perfectionism, it became a double whammy that left me exhausted, depleted, disconnected from my loved ones, and stuck in never-ending mental tape loops of self-doubt and criticism.

When I realised that life isn’t about any of those things, I left.

I also realised that elevating human consciousness isn’t about any of those things, either.

How to elevate your frequency + live a life you love

If you want to elevate your frequency, or if you simply want to live a good life you can be proud of when you’re on your deathbed, then let it get messy.

EMBRACE the mess.

This is what it means to be human.

And it’s how you be in the mess that matters.

Can you accept and admit to the world that your body isn’t perfect, your job isn’t perfect, you’re barely scraping by financially, your eating habits aren’t perfect, your children aren’t perfect, or that you wake up feeling anxious every day, or that you got drunk and said something stupid and you need to take ownership of it?

If we can be bold and courageous in the mess – if we can look at it and be with it and own it rather than turning away and pretending everything is fine and perfect – THAT is the path to ascension.

I didn’t come here to live like a monk on a mountain, or to be Barbie in her pink, plastic palace. (I know we’ve just had the Barbie movie and from what I can tell from the trailer, that’s all about imperfection. But that pill’s a little hard to swallow when you’ve got Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken.)

What I came here for was to connect deeply and honestly with others, and ultimately, with myself. I came to laugh and to cry, to feel the highs of the joy and the beauty of it all, and to cry at the pain and the beauty of it all. I came to LIVE life fully, mess and all.

What about you? What did you come here for?

3 takeaways from this post:

1.    The pressure we put on ourselves to live, work and be perfect eventually leads to exhaustion, unhappiness, and disconnection from the people we love.

2.    Instead, we need to accept the reality of our situation and embrace the mess.

3.    Stepping willingly into the mess and not looking away from it takes courage. It’s also a path to ascension.

I can help you drop the perfectionism and say yes to the mess, so you can live life to the full and elevate your frequency at the same time. Drop me a line if you’d like support, or book a transformational coaching or shamanic healing session here.