I’ve had quite a few conversations lately about where clients are “going wrong”, or where they have character flaws, or where they are deficient, or lacking or incomplete. So, let me get one thing straight here and now.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You are not deficient.
You are not defective.
You do not need fixing.
And the faster you get that and stop looking for your faults, the quicker you will be able to get where you want to get. The faster you can let go of the idea that if you just fix that imperfection and stop yourself doing this “wrong” thing all will be well, the faster you can start to focus on what you have got going for you, and it’s a lot more than you think.
All of us have gifts, talents, special characteristics that make us awesome and uniquely suited to creating our most wonderful lives. But instead of seeking those things that make us special and using them, we instead focus on all the things we do wrong. All the things that make us flawed and inferior.
Enough!
The main thing making you flawed and inferior is thinking that there is something wrong with you – something to fix. There isn’t. Sure, you may want to change some behaviours. Sure, you may want to learn new skills or to do things that don’t come naturally to you, but do it from a place of knowing that you are fabulous as you are.
For example, I am fabulous AND I am not a natural finisher. I’m more about starting – I have all these wonderful creative ideas I want to play with…and finishing off projects is a total drag to me. But it’s got to be done…so how do I do it? Do I try beating myself up for not finishing? I tried that. For years. It didn’t help me to finish a damn thing – but it did help me feel shit about myself. Which, it turns out, isn’t helpful to get you finishing! Well, who’d’a thunk?
So I let go of the idea that me not being a natural finisher was a fatal flaw of mine, and worked out how to do it anyway…with my personality, with my desire to start shit, with my creative, idea-ridden scatter-brain. I wrote about it here: “Finishing isn’t glamourous or fun, it’s just necessary“. Once I stopped beating myself up for not finishing, I started to finish. (It’s also not so hard once you stop resisting it…just saying.)
There are other examples where your desire to do it differently to the norm is simply because a different way is right for you. Stop thinking it’s you that is the problem. Maybe your wisdom is asserting itself and showing you there’s a better way for you? Nowhere is this more clear than in business. You build your business by networking. Or writing. Or having lunch. Or asking for referrals. Or having a snazzy website. Or having the best social media in the land.
Or all of the above.
Or none of the above!
I know people who have built their business using these techniques…and I know people who’ve driven themselves crazy trying to do all of them…things they hate and they’re not good at. Stop. Check in with yourself. Are you feeling ‘bad’ because you’re not doing something? Perhaps it’s because that thing is not for you, not because there’s something wrong with you.
It bears repeating:
There is nothing wrong with you.
You are not defective.
You are not deficient.
You do not need fixing.
All you need to “fix” is the thought that you are somehow less than another. You’re not. You have gifts and talents and strengths that you are ignoring by trying to make yourself into some kind of homogo-person. Stepford Wives are fiction, so let’s stop trying to emulate them. Science can come up with robots that all do the exact same thing…but humans get to do it any way we like – using all of our qualities and quirks and characteristics.
The good and the bad. The socially acceptable and the weird. We get to use it all to create a wonderful life. So, just for today, if you were to drop the idea that you’re doing anything wrong, what might change in your life? If, just for today, you let go of any thoughts of imperfection or shortcoming, what might you do differently? If you trusted yourself to know what’s right for you, what might happen?
I’ll tell you one thing, it’s a lot more fun than constantly beating yourself up for not being perfect – that’s a fight you’ll never win, a fight that will never end, because perfection is not real. So stop fighting yourself, and accept the truth:
There is nothing wrong with you.
You do not need fixing.
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