What if I told you there is a valid reason you feel like you have to be perfect or please people?
Our whole lives, we are scanning our environment for cues of safety and danger.
When we're little, and we're trying to make sense of our experiences, we develop beliefs about how to stay safe and fit in. And we adapt our behavior to reflect those beliefs.
For me, that was believing I had to be perfect and not let anyone down.
That started out looking like:
Don't do anything bad that might hurt Mom. Be a good guest so your friend's parents won't mind having you around. Excelling at something gets you noticed and praised, and that feels good so keep doing that.
And by my 30's it looked like:
Make sure you don't sound dumb so they will like you and want to work with you. Don't mess up in that meeting or else everyone will find out you're not good enough to be here. If that brief isn't perfect, you will let your CEO down.
The underlying belief was that I had to be perfect in order to be safe and belong. That belief was valid because of my experience, but just because a belief is valid doesn't mean it's true.
From where I am today, I can see thinking I had to be perfect pushed me to work hard and persevere in my younger years, but by my late-30's that belief was no longer serving me. My stress was costing me the ability to be fully present with family and friends, robbing me of joy because I was always consumed with worry, and I was suffering from near-daily, debilitating tension headaches.
How did I break free? I made the decision that something had to change. I couldn't keep bracing for the worst all the time. I had this deep inner knowing that the way I was living was not the way God intended me to live.
There comes a time when we all have a great reckoning with what we've believed about ourselves and our place in this world. We have to take an honest look at ourselves and examine whether the old beliefs, patterns and tendencies still serve us. And chances are that as you're reading this, you, too, have the sense that they don't, you just don't know where to start creating change.
Coaching gave me a place to examine my beliefs in the light of God's love. It helped me understand who I am and why I am who I am so that I could then build courage and clarity to choose a new way forward. I was liberated from beliefs that no longer served me and finally felt empowered to live the life God created me for.
It's holy work, and now I'm helping other women find freedom from perfectionism, people pleasing and not-enoughness.
You don't have to go on this journey alone. All you have to do is click here or hit reply, and we'll get a call on the books. One call will grow your hope and get you moving toward doing life in a new way as the woman God created you to be.
Comments