Wisdom in Your Flaws
There’s a subtle but key difference between fixing yourself and returning to your wholeness. Healthy, sustainable inner work is about a radical reclamation of Self. Because beneath the icky parts that you try to fix, there is a true Self in its wholeness.
Women have so much motivation to grow and develop. We are the leaders of the self-development world. But too often, it comes at a cost because we approach change as a process of correcting what is “wrong” with us.
There was never anything wrong with you. There was never anything that needed to be fixed, and nothing was ever broken. At your core, you are whole and perfect. What you judge as “flawed” is a result of your fully-functioning body adapting to life-long conditioning and trauma that’ve impacted how you show up in the world. You’ve developed conditioned tendencies and habituated patterns (we all do)–a fancy way of saying that your “flaws” are self-protective mechanisms. You’re a work-of-art human being.
These self-protective patterns show up in myriad ways. Flashes of anger. Withdrawing and disengaging. The inner critic who chastises you. Avoidance. The self-distracting habits that show up exactly when you need to focus. The stories about how you’ll never have what you want. The shutdown exactly when you need to speak up for yourself. Blaming others for your problems. Blaming yourself.
Even your most regretful moments of how you behave–actions taken or not taken–always boil down to an involuntary nervous system response. It’s the wisdom of your mind-body trying to keep you safe and defending the parts of you that feel threatened. And it is precisely from this lens of self-protecting tendencies, that you can begin to have awareness and understanding for your patterns, so that you can gift yourself with compassion and bring in more flexibility and choice in how you want to respond to life’s never ending obstacle course.
“When critical self-concepts prevent us from seeing the beauty in ourselves, we lose connection with the divine energy that is our source.”
Marshall Rosenberg
Returning to Wholeness
Reclaiming your Self is a process of slowly but surely undoing the patterns that limit and hinder you in achieving what you want in life. It’s a journey in making the unconscious consciousness, befriending the emotional body, and dropping in to the spiritual Self.
If you suffer from perfectionism, overextending yourself, foregoing pleasure for practicality, or getting stuck in your head–welcome to being a woman in the 21st century. You’re not flawed. Even when you neglect your emotional and physical needs. Even when you don’t show up for loved ones. Even when you overanalyze or become overly emotional. Even when you become checked out and withdrawn. Even when you “overreact” with anger. Even when you’re so anxious you can’t function or show up in the way you want to.
Period.
Point blank.
End of story.
We’re evolutionary creatures who’ve made it this far in history because we could adapt to what it takes to survive. And to put it bluntly, the brain is an ancient system that hasn’t evolved in a long time, and it’s lazy–always trying to conserve energy, so these pesky habituated patterns stick around because it’s too much work for the conscious mind to change–unless you do the inner work.
You are an incredibly multifaceted, magnificent creature, who was meant to shine. Your life’s work isn’t to stay stuck in your patterns, but to unfurl as your true Self day by day. There is nothing more satisfying than discovering who you really are beneath the anxiety, anger, or shut down–beneath the stories of “I’m not good enough” and beyond the inner (asshole) critic who wants to keep you right where you are in your comfort zone. There’s nothing that will light you up more than an embodied transformation and dropping in to what your creative unconscious mind has to share with you in its infinite wisdom. There’s nothing more fulfilling than getting to know your Higher Self, who wants to take you on a journey of present moment awakening.
You can feel different, do what you want, and create the life you want. You unconscious mind knows how to take you where you want to go in life. Your emotional body has an inherent, knowing and longing to feel safe and be regulated, despite how your self-protective patterns show up in your life. The body and mind are more malleable and discoverable than you think. Your true Self is waiting for you.
You are not your anxiety. You are not your avoidance. You are not your compulsion to control. You are not your workaholism.
If you want the treasures of life…
- True love
- Radiant joy from head to toe
- The courage to take leaps of faith in your career or relationships
- A confidence in your body
- Moment-to-moment presence like a gawd
- Access to your fullest range of emotions (without the shame for feeling them)
…then reclaiming your true Self is the guaranteed path to have it all. Despite the inevitable emotional pains of life that will come your way.
Mind Body Practice
- How much confidence do you have that you can create change in your life?
- What is stopping you from being the person you want to be?
- If you could narrow down the obstacles that are getting in between you and your goals, how many of them are personal hurdles (i.e. “flaws”)?
- How might these “shortcomings” be trying to protect you?
De-shaming your flaws is a power unto itself. So often we focus on changing our habits from a place of deep shame. If you can start by removing the shame, that is also a habit change. The next time you judge your patterns, lovingly tell yourself, “It’s okay to be this way. I am not a deficient or defective person for having this habit. I refuse to shame myself for being a human being in my own journey, unfolding in my own timeline.”
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