GIFT OF IMPERFECTION

What a gift it would be if we were able to drop all of our desires for perfection. And I’m not just talking about some of our desires for perfection—I mean all of them. The desire to look perfect; to have perfect grades/ outcomes/ performances; to be perceived as perfect by others; to have perfect answers to questions; to be the perfect mother/ father/ spouse/ sibling; to have the perfect circumstances; to live the perfect life… Why? Because every single one of these desires creates suffering. They create unattainable, unrealistic goals that lead to constant disappointment, self-judgement, and less acceptance of your self and others. And in this world—in this reality—there is no such thing as perfect.


Perfection is the standard that will drive you mad in its pursuit. Trying to look perfect is the standard that takes positive intentions from being constructive to being extreme and destructive. “Healthy eating” escalates into extreme dieting and/or fasting. “Working out” turns into extreme, obsessive, and/or excessive exercising. Getting a quick aesthetic procedure done escalates into more intense plastic surgery. Moreover, trying to produce perfect results will leave you short every time—unless, of course, you only produce results in areas that never challenge you and are well within your domain of knowledge. Go ahead, answer 2+2 for the rest of your life. That will give you a perfect streak of results. But if you want to grow, being imperfect is a prerequisite—after all, you can’t improve or grow what’s already perfect. And as long as you’re operating under the mindset that you have to be perfect, why would you want to step into a domain that’s outside your area of knowledge and risk being imperfect?

What about wanting to be perceived as perfect by others? Wanting to be perceived as perfect by others means you have to act perfectly in a way that aligns with each of their individual perceptions of perfection and never make a mistake in that acting process. And not only is that a wasted effort (for obvious reasons) but it can be really annoying too. Why do I say that? Because when you really think about it, how do we connect as humans anyway? Is it by being the perfect person? Think about your best friends. Are they perfect? Or are they perfectly imperfect? We connect through our vulnerabilities. It’s precisely what makes us imperfect that leads us to our deepest human connections. Your best friends are the ones who have shown you their biggest weaknesses, their deepest fears, their greatest flaws, their most personal vulnerabilities, and I’m sure your best friends are the only ones who know those things about you too. People who try to be perfect are annoying because they close the door to the exact part of them that lets you in—to connect and really get to know them—when ironically, they’re probably trying to put on a perfect “front” so that other people might “like” them enough to want to connect and really get to know them.

What about wanting to be the perfect mother/ father/ spouse/ sibling? Or wanting to have perfect circumstances or the perfect life? Yeah, good luck with that. We are ALL imperfect people, making imperfect decisions, with imperfect information, under imperfect circumstances, in a wildly imperfect world. I guess, that’s one way to put it, right? Hopefully by now you can see how wanting any sliver of this to be perfect is self-destructive and wasteful. So, how then should we act? What approach would be better? …Why not try adopting the mindset of being perfectly imperfect? Try being wildly authentic in your most true form and apologetically embrace each and every one of your flaws for what they are—the uniqueness-es that make you, YOU! …The person who wouldn’t be who they are without those exact uniqueness as they come together in you. So how should you try to look? FLAW-SOME.... 

How should you try to perform? The absolute best you can with no expectations in mind and ready to recover from mistakes. How should you answer questions? Honestly and/or readily admit your ignorance. How should you live your life? With band-aids ready, lots of reading material, and people you can be vulnerable with. Not only will this be more constructive and useful, but it will lead to more authenticity and connection and less anxiety and stress. 

And that’s something that I think might help us all.

HARD TIMES WILL COME - CORONA LESSONS

Your Life Task is your career/ your creative work/ your mission/ etc., that puts to use your strengths and aptitudes and brings to life your unique visions and goals for the world. Along the way, there are going to be times when you feel incredibly rewarded and times when the journey is going to absolutely suck. The ebb and flow of any long-term pursuit is inevitable and unpredictable and it’s important that we brace ourselves for the days that we know are coming.

There will be victories along the way that will be worth celebrating and there will be failures, setbacks, struggles, challenges, and hard times that are going to require grit, focus, and a game plan. Being mindful is the key practice that will guide us along the way.

With mindfulness, we can identify moments of frustration as opportunities for growth; moments of criticism as opportunities for skin-thickening; moments of laziness as excuses — and in each of these situations, find creative ways to get back to our work. If we’re not mindful, however, we may succumb to our moods and emotional swings and steer away from our journey towards mastery.

Our time is limited and every day should be treated as a life of it’s own. If you look at every morning as rebirth and every evening as death – would the life of your day(s) be fulfilled? For, what is our life but the accumulation of our days, averaged out and judged based on how fulfilling they were individually?

Where a lot of people get it wrong is in the idea that struggle, pain, challenge, controversy, failure, etc., are all bad things. They’re not. They’re opportunities. And we need to train ourselves to see them that way. Just like we can never live a struggle-free life, so too is it true that we won’t always have struggle-free days. So brace yourself, because hard times are coming — No question about it.
 
The question is, how are you going to respond? …And do you have a plan in place to help you respond?

BLACK

🌸

This message has been shared by a dear friend Mr. Manohar Nayak. Posting here as loved the view point.

My favorite colors are: black, jet black, pitch black, pastel black, light black, faded black.

I love black. When they show me a white, I say "very nice, but does it come in black?". I am addicted to black. I own too much black.

Simply because black is such a happy color!

This message shows you the whitest of whites: *Black.*

 
|| you can't block black ||

|| black says: 'i don't bother you, you don't bother me' ||

|| classy is the original black; and black is the new black ||

|| black is modest and coolest, yet aggressive; black is lazy and easy, yet mysterious ||

|| black is not sad, black is poetic; black is not empty, black is ever filled ||

|| to me, a black cat crossing my path signifies that the animal is going somewhere ||

|| blacklist, blackmail, blackout, black humor, black death, black hole, black magic.. are all white lies ||

|| i will stop wearing black when they make a darker color ||

|| most colorful minds wear black ||

|| my thinking is not black, I think in black ||

|| last but not the least, i see black light ||

BIRTHDAY

🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂 🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿🍂🌿

IT IS JUST "LABOR OF LOVE" FOR PARENTS

B I R T H D A Y S, to my mind, are best celebrated with those who have brought you to this world; your parents.

They think the world of you and the occasion has great significance for them. I say this from personal experience; I feel the world when it comes to the birthdays of my children. And the chain continues...

I remember my parents this day with gratitude for all their love, care and the hard work in bringing me up and making me what I am. I owe my whole existence to them.

On my birthday, today, I bow my head in reverence and gratitude to the memory of my parents.

Yeah, THAT person

Being in a meaningful relationship is something we all long for. I think we all want that special somebody who can appreciate us for who we are—not how we look; somebody that makes us laugh and comforts us when we cry; somebody who appreciates our quirks and loves our imperfections; somebody who treats us the same whether we’re at our best or at our worst; somebody that gets us excited and somebody we find ourselves naturally drawn to; somebody that doesn’t hold us back but gets us to where we want to be quicker; somebody that we would call our best friend and lover. Yeah, that person.
But I also think that there is far too much pressure to get into a relationship far too fast. Like being single is a bad thing? …It becomes an obsession for way too many people way too early in their lives – as if you get bonus points for getting in a relationship as early in your life as possible! My question is this: What should we really be obsessing overlooking at the grand scheme of things: Getting in a relationship now and figuring out the rest later? Or figuring out the rest now and getting in a relationship when the time’s right?  I would argue the latter.

I think too many people put their focus in the wrong place. What I tend to see happens far too often is people trying really hard to get in a relationship (to the point of it being their only obsession) for the sake of being in a relationship… and one of several things tend to happen:
– They get in a relationship with somebody who is not right for them just for the sake of being in a relationship… and then have bad relationship experiences.
– They start changing who they are to become somebody they’re not in order to impress somebody they want to be with.
– They get lust confused with love and make rash decisions which end up dramatically changing their lives like having a baby.
– They get involved with somebody who is not good for them and takes them down the wrong path – deteriorating their life.
– They start to lose sight of their passions, long-term goals, and ambitions and never fulfill the true potential of what they are capable of achieving.
– They burn bridges with the people around them who they really care about by forgetting/ ignoring/ ditching them and obsessing over their relationship.
– They settle for somebody who is just an “okay” match, stay with them for a decent amount of time, realize that they’re not the best match, but end up being stuck with them because they don’t know how to get out of it or break it off – leaving them together out of fear of hurting the other person, being single again after being in a relationship for so long, or scared of what other people might think.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that relationships are bad and that you should avoid getting in them. In fact, getting into meaningful relationships is one of the most important and significant things that can happen to a person throughout their lifetime. Finding a person that genuinely connects with you and the entirety of who you are can be unmatched by anything else that happens to you throughout your lifetime.

Source - The internet (I don't recall where I had read the above article, but it touched me and taught me a lot. Made me look in a different direction and gave me a different perspective.)

GOD'S PURPOSE

God wants you to know that God has an important purpose for you, and made everything possible for you to succeed.

That's not to say it's an easy purpose, or a convenient one. It might very well seem hard or even impossible, but it only looks that way. The truth is that one day you will look back and see how all the pieces fit together. And how your life has been a complete and utter success.

TWO HALVES

Today I am reminded of what enlightened me a few years back.. and lead me into the memory lane - An old lady who used to sit opposite a Masjid near Milan subway in Mumbai.

🌸

*Giving is living.* Give someone a smile to hang on to, give a hand to hold on to; give a shoulder to cry on, give a reason to lean on..

Moving on from there:

Charity. Just a good food for thought.

*A small charity is no big deal. It's a basic human duty.* Do it individually. One for one, one on one, ends up helping one and all. (Don't donate to NGO and wash your hands off, you be a one-man / one-woman NGO yourself and make the difference!)

I see this thus:

This world is divided broadly into 2 categories.

No, not male and female; not rich and poor; not 'ucch' and 'neech'; not 'harijan' and 'girijan'; not even Hindu and Muslim... *it's just the 'haves' and 'have-nots'.*

*Two halves.*

Haves and have-nots are not necessarily the rich and the poor.  Haves are resourceful, viable, feasible and utilitarians. Have-nots are downtrodden, helpless, suppressed and needy.
*They both co-exist and co-exit.*

And hence,

Goodness of a 'have' is to GIVE so that a 'have-not' can LIVE. Godliness of a 'have-not' is to BLESS so that a 'have' can feel the BLISS.

If every 'have' takes care of one 'have-not', each of the have-nots is taken care of. And there by, half the world is taken care of.

And the other half?

It can count its blessings.

😊
Isn't it then, a win-win situation?

Pick one. Make one. Today itself. His/her tomorrow is not far away. It's in your closed palms. Just open it. And hand it over. 🌻

"We are not born as humans, we are born to be humans."

Let's be.
🙏

The above write up is shared by a dear friend of mine Mr. Manohar Nayak - Bombay.