The adage “No one’s perfect” has been said how often? If you are like most individuals, there are likely too many to list. Most likely, you have mentioned it as well. However, a lot of us struggle to mask our defects and are at battle with these.
However, you can’t be who you indeed are while your attention is diverted to hiding the flaws you perceive in yourself. This is because your imperfections are inherent characteristics of you and cannot be rectified. You need them to improve your sincerity and interpersonal skills. You have to accept your flaws and view these as possibilities for further improvement rather than becoming “below than” due to them. The following sections serve as a manual for carrying out that task.
The following sections will reveal what
- a comparison between individuals and broken ceramics;
- the one boundary that must be crossed; and
- how suffering may spur growth
Chapter 1 – Your distinctive weaknesses endear others to you.
Can you think of a situation where a broken item gains value? That could sound unusual, yet in the Asian art form of Kintsukuroi, that is precisely what occurs in ceramics. Kintsukuroi, which translates roughly as “golden repairing,” is the age-old custom of using gold to patch shattered ceramic. It transforms clay objects that would normally be useless into something exquisitely valuable.
The distinctive fractures covered in gold that distinguish each piece of ceramic give it charm and worth. You might be surprised to learn how similar humans are.
The natural tendency of most individuals is to conceal their imperfections. Yet this because? Even if they may appreciate perfectionists, they are not always attracted to them. Conversely, they are attracted to those who exhibit human frailty and lead to errors.
A psychologist named Raphael Levi first described this inherent propensity to respond sympathetically toward persons who disgrace themselves in the mid-1970s. The Pratfall Effect was his term for it. The concept is that errors, such as losing something or falling, reveal an individual’s frailty. Because of this, we enjoy increased compassion for them and find them to be more endearing.
However, if defects make people more likable, how do we dislike our imperfections so much?
The response is heavily influenced by our receptivity to nonverbal and verbal signals. We are so sensitive to criticism that we seriously expect it; if a visitor gives us a sidelong glance in society, we think we are speaking too aggressively or otherwise acting inappropriately. However, the visitor might just be looking around the place!
This is how to overcome your fear of receiving unfavorable comments: embrace your shortcomings wholeheartedly rather than attempting to cover them up. When you have done that, criticism provides knowledge that you may either use to your advantage or disregard entirely.
Additionally, you ought to embrace your shortcomings. The same as Kintsukuroi ceramics, you are wonderful despite your defects. Holding them makes you awesome. This entails approaching your ideas, deeds, or even mistakes from a point of comprehension rather than condemnation. With this perspective, you accept the imperfect aspects of yourself instead of thinking there is anything improper with you. You will discover precisely how to do this in the subsequent sections.
Chapter 2 – You must reach a state of consciousness to become awesome.
Luke, a colleague of the writer, has a wise maxim about solving issues: “You can not overcome an inside difficulty with an exterior remedy.”
Luke is an expert in his field. He spent years abusing alcohol and other substances to cope with inner problems like sadness. Dependence has now emerged as a fresh difficulty as a result of this. He was ultimately able to recover, which further enabled him to get rid of his drug dependence, but only after he confronted his fundamental issues.
Being flawed is an internal process, much like recovering. Just identifying and taking responsibility for the feelings and acts that prevent you from progressing allows you to move forward.
The majority of individuals are trapped in a “less than” position as they begin their path into flawsomeness. Instead of accepting accountability for their participation in something terrible, they become protective and throw the finger at those who surround them in this state of accusation and rejection. For instance, not owning up to your role in a marriage’s dissolution is a typical case of “less than” conduct. The same goes for asking others to improve instead of changing yourself. It reminds me of the tale in the Holy book about overlooking the logs in one’s sight when bringing out the sliver in another person’s eye.
What is the route from this point to flawsome then? You must begin transitioning from “less than” situations to the “more than” counterparts, then. Tolerance, mindfulness, inquiry, and responsibility for one’s concerns are the key components of a “more than” position. Once you are just above the threshold, you remain aware of your adverse reactions to the environment and take ownership of them. You ultimately start opening up to embracing your shortcomings and growing from them. Whenever you do, a flawed growing stage starts.
There is no straight road to abandoning “less than” positions behind for good, but that is not that of becoming faultless. It is crucial to recognize once you have deviated from the norm and take action to fix it. To achieve it, you must accept just several basic guidelines.
The initial? Being aware of your vulnerabilities.
Chapter 3 – Knowing your sensitivities offers you the opportunity to choose how you react to those.
Imagine you are engaged in a discussion with somebody when all of a sudden, you get a strong, unfavorable response to their statement. Your hands begin to perspire and your shoulders stiffen up. You could perhaps experience a little dizziness. When you realize it, you have ever said anything embarrassing or behaved inappropriately, like screaming at the opposing individual or walking out.
If you recognize this, you most certainly were reacting to a trigger. Concepts or individuals who operate as prompts might drive you out and make you behave negatively. And they frequently prevent you from truly acquiring knowledge and benefiting from that too.
However, there is a little great news: first of all, you never get over it; each person has unique reactions. Additionally, you have control over how you respond to things.
When your change comes, physical effects like hot hands and dizziness will alert you to the presence of a trigger. However, by being aware of your sensitivities, you may begin to manage your responses that were before your body is trying to alarm you. Understanding the various trigger types is useful in this regard. We’ll examine a few now.
Subject prompts are facts or concepts that you consider offensive, unjust, or just do not agree with. Relational stressors are related to the source of the data and any unfavorable impressions you may have of them. You are again faced with a delivering trigger while how data is presented causes you to tune out and quit pandering. Identification prompts are lastly beliefs regarding you that are completely at odds with your understanding of who you are. Each of those, for instance, happened to the writer whenever a colleague labeled her as “threatening,” a quality she would never connect with herself.
You may begin to notice trends toward what triggers you, which will enable you to recognize circumstances that might trigger you. This offers you the opportunity to regulate your responses while problems become out of control.
Begin by holding off on responding and begin to concentrate on your breathing to seize control of a provoking situation. This gives you enough breathing room to collect your thoughts, consider how you are feeling, and decide how to respond. Think about what is setting you off, your part in the scenario, and if you have previously experienced something similar during this period. Next, consider what activity will assist you in learning from the circumstance.
Chapter 4 – We learn best when we are receptive to many viewpoints.
How can we determine the reality in any particular circumstance? It is indeed a challenging question to respond to. Truth is complex and frequently incorporates a variety of viewpoints. But that would not prevent us from thinking that our viewpoint is the sole valid one. In reality, numerous individuals are inclined to reject any viewpoints that differ from what they hold.
But this conduct is bad. The second element in this flawsome path seems to be about appreciating these viewpoints because they present chances for learning and development.
There are several explanations for why we find it difficult to comprehend various viewpoints. One is what psychologist Dr. Aaron Becker first dubbed cognition distortions—biased methods of thought. The majority of false beliefs are compared by the writer to a very unfavorable mental governing board. On this page, several people attempt to persuade us that we are the sole individuals who can tell what is good and wrong when others promote making snap judgments. Those still encourage us to strive for excellence or to measure ourselves against others. We are less inclined to be able to properly view facts regardless of whether the director is in command.
The manner we interpret information would be another barrier we face daily and its varied viewpoints. We frequently color the value we give to news based on our presumptions. For instance, you may conclude a buddy does not desire to get out with you when she breaks arrangements to go out to lunch. However, just removing does not mean that the unfavorable reasoning is all in your mind.
How do you guarantee that you can view and benefit from these, given all that impedes the process of our accessing all the accessible points of view?
For starters, you could reserve a room for the data. This entails giving all of your attention to the data you hear and deferring your opinion until you have had a chance to process it. instead of not expecting the unexpected when, for instance, your buddy suspends arrangements for lunch. Offering oneself the opportunity to fully validate data allows you to benefit from the education and development that various viewpoints may provide.
Chapter 5 – It takes constant decision-making to choose advancement in the transforming process.
Consider a scenario in which a circle of mates decides to travel to a place they have always wanted to visit. They eventually load the car and go after several weeks of planning and deliberation. There are many intriguing places to see throughout the route, as well as some conflicts. However, the journey comes to an end when the team reaches its objective.
This highway journey involves peaks and valleys as well as teaching opportunities, similar to the journey of being flawed. However, there is a significant distinction: unlike a long journey, the flawed approach has no clear endpoint. The last phase, transformation, enters the picture at this point.
There is no end point or singular “oooh!” point to development. We may foster it by following and benefiting from the initial two elements of the flawed trip, which are closer to growth. You go through a tiny change each moment you notice a trigger, for instance, and stop to make sure your reaction is correct. You will notice that prompts have a decreasingly unfavorable impact on you over the period.
However, the reality is that before you achieve any significant headway, you will probably have to repeat this procedure several times. Additionally, the procedure would likely become unpleasant and potentially expensive every moment you undergo it. Consider someone prone to being in unsatisfactory partnerships. This would likely become awkward and possibly even traumatic for them to look at themselves in the camera and acknowledge their part in selecting these partnerships. However, it will additionally teach them important behavioral skills and eventually enable people to stop perpetuating such behaviors in the future. They need to confront these unfavorable emotions if they want to develop and change.
We will not always be accurate in this. We will all experience instances when we frustrate ourselves, and others, or have a bad influence on people. If this occurs, working on our forgiving will enable us to keep moving forward. In essence, consider forgiving as a growth supplement that we can provide to others or receive on our own while we work to accept our imperfections.
Flawsome: The Journey to being whole is learning to be holey by Georgia Murch Book Review
We must comprehend that to cross the boundary—where flawsomeness resides—we must move beyond the behaviors that bring us a “less than” position, such as rejection and blaming. It is not easy to get from one place to another. It is indeed a continuous cycle that calls for us to be aware of our sensitivities, manage how we respond to them, and understand that there are multiple perspectives to every story. We reach a condition of continuous development and evolution while we are more capable of controlling our trigger points and interacting with the truths.
Consider defeat to be an incident rather than your essence.
You could experience guilt after failing at anything and begin to view the defeat as your identity. One can declare to oneself, “I am such a disappointment,” rather than admitting that you erred and that each person suffers failure from time to time. This is a bad strategy. What you should do is recognize that failures and imperfections are a natural aspect of life and that they present possibilities for growth.
