It seems like a contradiction to be perfect and defective. Yet we are both beautiful and perfectly flawed (2022). Our imperfections make us unique, and that’s why we are so fantastic.
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
What this means is that our beauty is subjective. What is beautiful is affected by the programming we receive from the cultural narrative. Whoever controls this programming can alter and establish values.
Who controls the programming? The advertising industry, politics, and organized religion are the sources of propaganda and negative programming. The ideas and standards they promote become the standards of acceptable and desired appearance and behavior within the culture.
Perfectionism is the unhealthy quest to attain an arbitrary standard. (1) When you are on this treadmill, you never reach the goal; if you do, you lose it. It prevents you from seeing how wonderful you are. It stifles happiness because you know it won’t last even when you reach it.
What is perfect for you is your personal best. Your personal best is different from society’s unattainable perfectionistic standards.
The propaganda from the cultural folklore overrides our original sense of self-worth. If you don’t fit the mold of the culture, then you are devalued. People strive to meet the standards of appearance and behavior by purchasing what the culture tells them they need.
However, many sages, psychologists, and freethinkers tell us not to believe the programming. We should reject most of it because it focuses on the negative aspects of selling us solutions.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” ― Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
“If I wait until I become perfect before I love myself, I will waste my whole life. I am already perfect right here and right now. I am perfect exactly as I am.” ― Louise Hay
“Who you are, in truth, who everyone is, is whole and perfect and beautiful. And if that can be recognized, then it is possible that self-torture can stop!” ― Gangaji
Now you begin to see why you may not feel you have value. How can we regain a more healthy perspective of our self-worth? Is it possible to believe we are already perfect? Perfectionism is the enemy of our personal best. (2)
Beautiful and Perfectly Flawed 2022
Our families do the best they can from their level of consciousness. No one has a perfect childhood. They have lived their lives subject to the social conditioning of religion and advertising. It tells us we are all dysfunctional, broken, and imperfect. They use this approach to make us act out of fear, anger, or shame. As a result, we believe we are ill-equipped to handle the many life challenges unless we buy what they sell.
“I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” ― Augusten Burroughs
“I don’t know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving.” ― John Green
“Nobody’s perfect. I’m perfectly flawed.” ― Amy Lee
“We are perfect in our imperfection.” ― Megan McCafferty
Everyone has flaws and imperfections, even those considered beautiful, intelligent, genius, talented, exceptional, or extraordinary. It may be possible to reach perfection or excellence, but it is only temporary. Name any famous sports figure, and you see success and failure.
Everyone eventually uncovers some deficiency, fault, or blemish. Sorry to say it, but our bodies are all designed to end in total system failure. But perhaps this is another lesson in the experiment of living. So, we are already beautiful and perfectly flawed 2022. That’s part of our design.
You Are Already Perfect
We may be defective, yet somehow we can experience blissful joy, happiness, and love. We are capable of supreme acts of compassion, kindness, and friendliness. Even with our poorly designed broken-down apparatus, we can fathom the depths of pure consciousness.
You and I can embrace the absolute pure consciousness from which we came and to which we will go. We can become warriors of light confronting injustice and prejudice with compassion. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so let yourself see your beauty.
“Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter the silence of the heart.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
“You are already perfect, only you don’t know it. Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders.” ― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Knowing yourself means learning to accept, trust, and support yourself. Accepting yourself is difficult. We are harder on ourselves than we need to be. We judge ourselves and sabotage our thinking with unrealistic social and personal standards. Learn to express your needs and thoughts in positive ways.
Do things that build confidence, and celebrate all the benchmarks you meet toward your goals. It could be as simple as making your bed every day. If you do it two days in a row, that builds confidence in doing other things.
Self-acceptance starts with reframing your negative thought distortions into positive ones. Instead of saying I’ll never be able to lose weight, say I’m not at my target weight yet. Then, focus on the positives. The above example is a type of affirmation that can help replace the negative thinking that comes from the culture’s negative stereotypes.
Self-trust is knowing you can make the right choices. Everyone makes mistakes and fails, but that doesn’t mean we are a good person. Remember, we are perfect in our flaws. Learn from these opportunities so you can make better choices next time.
Supporting yourself takes practice. Use the proven techniques of reframing, positive affirmations, and expressing yourself honestly.
“If I were to tell you that your life is already perfect, whole, and complete just as it is, you would think I was crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless.” ― Joko Beck
Realize the perfect lives we see in the media are a distortion of reality. We know false perfection is the standard given by the culture.
The dominant cultural narratives don’t want you to know you are already perfect. Otherwise, they could not sell you useless things and ideas you don’t want. So, we must learn to see ourselves as Beings of light. We must hold on to the beauty that is our essence. We must learn to shut out the opinions of the culture.
It is our imperfections that make us unique and wonderful. Accepting ourselves is the key to freedom from harmful social standards. So, we must learn to see ourselves in our mind’s eye. Repeat the mantra, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Don’t look at yourself through a culture’s eyes. Learn how to live it as a unique person.
Embracing Our True Nature
What we need to do is learn to embrace our original nature. We need to embrace the contrasting elements of life. We may be imperfect, but we are all still amazing! We must learn to see that we are already perfect because we are defective, beautiful, and perfectly flawed (2022).
How do you embrace the parts you dislike?
1) Self-Acceptance
It all starts with self-acceptance. When I accept myself just as I am, many things are possible. If we can acknowledge the full range of emotions helps us see the beauty in life.
Opening ourselves to all of our emotions is scary because we use drugs to keep our emotions in check. We do this so we can work. These drugs keep us from feeling negative emotions. However, it also keeps us from feeling positive ones too.
That’s the problem. The short-term use of medication becomes an addiction, which prevents us from living the wholeness of life. We cannot achieve wholeness unless we can accept our emotions.
“Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.” ― George R.R. Martin
2) Practice Self-Compassion
The answer is to practice both self-compassion and self-care. These are nurturing and healing activities that make the journey more enjoyable. Then we can return to our original state of innocence, which exists even before we are born.
“The authentic hero is flawed. The genuine test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles – preferably of his own making – in order to triumph.” ― Garth Stein
3) Eliminate Negative Programming
Here is where the hard inner work begins. After we identify the problem, we need to fix it. There are two approaches. It’s a good strategy to remove one thing at a time. It takes longer, but this method is less painful. The second method is eliminating everything that delivers the negative programming, but that’s like jumping into the deep end when you don’t know how to swim.
What are the sources of negative programming? Organized religions, especially those of the Abrahamic tree, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Together, they perpetrate the most horrible acts against humanity and nature. They are directly responsible for everything from wars and genocide to racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination, even genital mutilation.
In some cultures, you can’t remove yourself from the effects of organized religion without being subject to persecution up to and including public torture and execution. It should be a clue to the true intent behind these loving religions. So, one must learn to look indoctrinated while rejecting mythology and superstition.
The second source is media advertising. It’s hard to avoid, so you must learn how to manage it.
Final Thoughts
We are defective and perfectly flawed, but these make us unique. We are already perfect. And so we must view ourselves with our mind’s eye. Embracing our nature, we can see the value and beauty of who we are. In doing so, we behold our inner beauty. For beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
“The way to have the life we want is to receive more deeply the life we have. Sometimes we keep our own life at arm’s length, thinking we’ll wait until circumstances improve before giving it all we’ve got. But life is just a reflection of consciousness, so it’s never going to give any more to us than we give to it. Don’t wait for a perfect life; breath in the life that’s already perfect.” ― Marianne Williamson
Self-acceptance, self-trust, and self-compassion are the tools against the negative messages of an unhealthy culture.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. We have lost it, or we have never had it; and, because we do not know how to judge anything, we have been led here and pushed there, beaten up, driven, politically, religiously, and socially. We don’t know, but it is difficult to say we don’t know.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
We must learn to realize that whoever we are that we are “exactly” who we should be. We may have some defective parts, but we are already perfect. We are whole in the here and now. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so learn to live in the essence of your beauty, beautiful and perfectly flawed (2022).
References
(1) Your Best Life: Perfectionism—The Bane of Happiness.
(2) Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
