Love your imperfection
VANESSA RACE
It is never easy for an individual to "love" his own weaknesses. But the person who has trained himself to love his own inabilities will be able to love anything else in this world.
I used to be a perfectionist who expected maximum performances from everything. I wanted all things to turn out perfect and faultless, before I would allow myself to be happy. This, of course, led me to an extremely stressful life as I became frustrated with any mistakes that I believed would create flaws in my perfect life. I could not stand the tiniest mistakes, let alone major ones.
But that was not the only problem. My perfectionism not only demanded me to design my own life, but also to interfere with the others around me as well. I realised I gradually turned into an authoritarian who wanted to dictate the lives of my mother and sister. I became frustrated with my family and frustrating them, too.
Such perfectionist thinking could turn a drop of honey into a real disaster. Upon careful examination of the events, I figured that the root of the problem was my refusal to accept "imperfect me" and the imperfect people around me.
I pondered on the issue and decided not only to accept but to "love" any imperfection.
The first step for me was to examine the faults and flaws. Regarding physical appearances, I considered it a grave sin for a Eurasian to have extremely slanted eyes, especially when everyone else in my family have round eyes with double eyelids.
I said I was lucky that I did not proceed give myself double eyelids via cosmetic blepharoplasty.
These days, when I look at myself in the mirror I tell myself that slanted eyes are cute and are the new thing.
My mother also encouraged my new way of thinking, as she always saw me as the perfect daughter in every aspect.
As I was able to love myself, I began to see that other people actually appreciated my imperfections.
At a photo shoot for a magazine, I was told that my eyes were the most powerful feature of my face. The praise made me so ecstatic, even though the make-up artist just complained five minutes earlier that slanted eyes wasted eye shadow!
That doesn't bother me, because this is the imperfect me.
Appearance issue asides, I believe I was a lame person as I did not follow the news, watched television series, or went clubbing. I tended to sit quietly in a circle of hip friends and usually declined to join any trips to nightclubs. Only once in a blue moon I would surprise my friends by showing up at a club. On the other hand, I went to all the conferences related to the study of the mind and would be talking non-stop if asked about the latest brain research trend.
Previously, I wanted to hide my lameness by pretending to understand the subjects people talked about. I even attended a cocktail mixing class and was a bartender.
But once I realised that I was not being myself, I simply chose to admit my lameness and told people I would not go out, drink, follow the fashions, or discuss about the politics, as I did not even know how many political parties there were.
I said other people accepted me as I was. My friends sometimes teased me that my personality was opposite to my looks and that I could be cute at being lame.
My life would be easier and much happier if I could accept and love my imperfections rather than running away from it. I said I had learned from my own experiences and knew that no one was or could ever be perfect.
Once I changed the thinking, my life has improved tremendously.
Vanessa Race or 'Nu Dee' is a specialist in human intelligence, with a master's degree in education from Harvard University. She is the founder of Genius Creator and inventor of the genius development programme at Vanessa School.
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Next
