Why You Should Accept That You Are Imperfect

It’s on YouTube, on Instagram, in the media, everywhere. People seem to live a perfect life. Just like everything they touch turns into gold. Yay, they are perfect and live a perfect life. But do they really?

Is perfection even possible?

And why do we seek perfection?

I do not have answers to those questions but I have a theory. And I’d like to share it with you.

I’ll skip the first question because we all know to some degree that there is a lot of fake stuff out there on the internet. And not only there. Most of the time you do not see the real stuff. It’s so easy to rent a mansion and Ferraris, take some shots and post them anywhere. Nah, let’s set this aside, it brings us nowhere.

But perfection is not only there. It’s, for example, one of the most accepted “faults” in job interviews, at least here in Germany. We want to be perfect husbands, wives, moms, dads, big sister and so on. You name it.

The thing is, this perfection is always projecting a self-view of how and who we want to be. It is not real. It’s merely a wish of being something else. It’s not us in the moment.

That is good and bad at the same time. It’s good because it shows us ways we can improve and make a better version of ourselves. But also bad, as it creates a lot of tension in the current self. We are not that perfect person and thus we often tend to judge us for the worse. We are stupid, we are always late, were never good in math or whatever, we insult us and take ourselves down when things are not going as we want them.

It reminds us that we are not perfect. And because we are not perfect, we must be bad, right? Bad is the opposite of perfection, isn’t it? At least we believe that deep down in us.

But here is the thing. Perfection does not exist in nature. Nature is imperfect. And we are part of it, thus we are imperfect too.

Accepting that helps to live a better life. You just stop chasing the perfection thing and start living. That does not mean, that we stop improving. We just stop chasing perfection. And it frees us from the pain and struggles this self-view of perfection creates.

Now, we can clearly see that we are imperfect. But we also see that we can change our lives, ourselves to something better. If you are unhappy with certain behavior, start changing it. But do so without the projection of a perfect self in the future. Aim for a change but don’t beat yourself up when something goes wrong.

Don’t beat yourself up for your quirks, behavior or whatever.

Accept imperfection and just do your best.

You’ll be surprised how your life will change for the better over time.