6 Ways to become more human

A number of years ago I did some management training at my previous workplace.  We had to do a test and determine our style, then do a series of exercises to get us all riled up, then do the test again and see what our extreme style is.  I started off quite high in the Perfectionist category.  Once riled up, I was off the Perfectionist scale.  The facilitator asked me if I’d found the two spelling errors in the booklet to which I replied I’d found three.  

I can sometimes get stuck in trying to get things perfectly right before sharing it or completing it.  This can sometime lead to delays, procrastination and huge amounts of frustration.  I have got a little better over the years of realising that I’m not going to get everything perfect every time and that sometimes it is better to do something slightly less than perfect, but good enough.  However, there are still occasions, especially when aggravated by something, that I’ll strive for perfection or go into way more detail that I need to, or challenge things more vociferously. I do still sometimes need to recognise sometimes that good enough is good enough.

Life is not perfect, life is messy, and podcast fave Tonya Leigh recommends we learn to embrace that messiness. Whether its about a work project, relationships, weight, finances etc.  It can’t all be perfect all the time. We need to acknowledge the lessons we can learn from imperfection, and not be shamed by what we see as our own faults. It’s being human.

TL said that she has more fun now that she embraces her humanness and not resisting who she is.  The people who judge her for perceived faults are not ready to learn from her lessons or not a good fit to her needs. By embracing her own humanness she can embrace others people’s as well.

If we were to embrace more of our humanness if would make life easier.  TL suggested:

• You’re not going to feel great all of the time, you’re not going to feel joyful, excited or passionate.  The more you fight those feelings the more you are not going to notice when you do feel joy, excitement and passion.  You need both to be able to experience the other.  The more you embrace the feelings of misery the less power is has over you. The resisting of negative emotions keeps them sticking around because they have something to teach you.
• You are going to make mistakes.  Sometimes you can be so afraid of making mistakes you don’t even try, not realising the only way to get to where you want to be is through making mistakes and learning. Embracing that part of the human experience is to make mistakes but learn and grow.
• You are going to doubt yourself.  Just because you can be, or appear to be confident it doesn’t mean you don’t have doubts.  Confidence is about having the doubt but believing in yourself.  Prove yourself wrong, that you can do it, will do it, committed.  If its something you’ve never done before or been before, your doubt will ask if you really want to do it, but to overcome that doubt you need to see whether you can.
• You are going to act in ways you’re not proud of.  There will be times you don’t like how you showed up, how you spoke to someone, how you treated someone. If you don’t experience those thoughts and feelings, you are not going to show you how to change that in the next experience. You tend to spend so much time beating yourself up over something instead of embracing what happened and learning what that experience has taught you.
• You are going to disappoint people.  And they are going to disappoint you too.  You can fight it or embrace it.  You do the best you can with the tools you have and sometimes for other people that’s not enough. You don’t need to suffer because of that though.  Accept it happened and offer yourself compassion and to the other person and determine the root cause.
• You are going to have your heart broken. It is true to some extent that no one can break your heart, its only your thoughts and feelings that can do that, but you are human and you are going to feel hurt. When you resist having your heart broken, you also resist having your heart delighted.

By embracing our humanness we become better humans; not be fighting or resisting it. Instead of trying to be perfect all the time, we should become more human and embrace all of the human experience, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Its our flaws that make us beautiful, interesting, different, and adds complexity to our lives.  You don’t have to be perfect in order for people to love you, or to be accepted.