I understand the Covid situation has bought in a sudden transformation in the way we work and live. I have heard this from a lot of women (including my experience) doing the same thing that they did before the pandemic hit. Trying to maintain home and work balance. Add to this is having everyone at home, with all boundaries becoming a blur. Still trying to give a 100% in all areas of their life!

Have you been trying to maintain that perfect balance between work-from-home and work-at-home lately due to the COVID lockdown? 

• Have you been obsessing over that your otherwise perfectly clean and tidy house is now upside down? 
• Do you feel uncomfortable due to the change in office space and home space? The perfect environment of your office to do your work is missing and hence you cannot reach your set goals? 
• Have you been trying to split your time between giving quality time to your kids and helping them with their online classes and keeping them well-fed and happy while juggling with your own time?  
• Do you feel fatigued and sometimes wanting to run away? 

As I speak to more and more women around me through my sessions, I find most of them getting overwhelmed and overworked due to the high expectations and benchmark they have set for themselves. 

From where have they developed these expectations? 

For some, it is the environment around them, for some conditioning. Some have self-imposed the balancing criteria to judge whether they are a good mother, wife, spouse, etc. This drives them to chase unrealistic levels of perfection. 

Media/social media has also being a contributing factor in setting standards for living, looking, and being perfect. The unreasonable standards of always showing what a perfect life one is living, through social media have added another stress factor. We have taken upon ourselves to look great even when we are dying inside to take that much-needed break, to be the perfect employee who is due for promotion, a businessman who has to portray that one is balanced and holding fort in challenging times for the organization. It ultimately leads to mental fatigue.  

Even I have killed a lot of plans in my head before it could take birth on paper only because it did not meet my standards of a perfectly thought out plan. Whenever there is a blur and I cannot visualize the A-Z of that plan, I would shelve it aside. Many such ideas and projects went down the drain. I sometimes feel that pain. What if I had trusted my instinct and let myself start off with that project? Maybe the map would have developed by itself. There would have been a better outcome or maybe an awesome opportunity which I missed because of my rigidity of not having a perfect plan. I did not trust the universe or anyone else to help me.  

We all have been provided with all the resources we need to sustain on this planet within us. The body, our vehicle, that we have accepted to be in, the experiences that we are undergoing, the relationships that we have, the spouse, and the children we have, are all part of the same plan. Still, we criticize ourselves, wait for that perfect moment to be happy, wait for that perfect timing in future when we can enjoy the fruits of our labor, wait for that perfect job, salary, promotion. We hinge our hopes of a perfect future rather than being aware of what we have today. The idea of perfection is subjective and contextual. 

We human beings model the paths of others wins/successes. But we won’t know or experience how they achieved it. Perfection is one of the essential masculine energy qualities and should be delicately balanced with the feminine energies of being in flow and flexibility. While controlled perfection yields awesome results, perfection leading to obsession is dangerous for one’s own emotional health. In my book “Bring out that Red Lipstick”, I have dedicated a complete chapter for this masculine energy trait and how not being in balance can tip us off. 

Whenever you think of achieving perfection in your day-to-day lives and postpone doing something, put this question out- 

“According to whom?

For whom?” 

* According to whom – Who is judging your perfection? Who is rating you for that? Whose level of perfection are you trying to achieve? Against whom will your perfect plans be pitted? (Perhaps you are trying to draw that from someone whom you idolize or consider your role model. But do you know their journey? 

* For whom – In whose eyes is this perfection important? Are you doing to achieve your own set ideas of perfection, for yourself, or to fit in with others moulds outside? 

Your journey is only yours and you write the script of that movie.

You cannot compare it with other parents or friends or colleagues who might be able to wake up at 5 and do a lot of things that perhaps you cannot do because you sleep late after finishing your chores.

• Rewrite your story to fit you and your personality. Do not wait for your story to be validated by others. 
• Open your palms and see the beauty of our life “AS-IS”  and in the NOW rather than labeling it as perfect or imperfect, right or wrong, good or bad, today or tomorrow. 
• Do not beat yourself down. Everything is available to us in the present. Just go inwards and listen to what our body is signalling and what messages is your awareness sending you. 
• Push aside labels and acknowledge and accept your being to be “Perfectly Imperfect”. Accept things as they are and see your “being” shift from a victim of perfection to being empowered. 

And finally pat your back. No deed is big or small. Everything we do leads to the next step. We all have choices.  

These are Some affirmations that I use to bring myself back from perfection syndrome: 

“I AM ENOUGH”

“I AM WHAT I AM” 

“IT IS WHAT IT IS” 

“I HAVE EVERYTHING THAT I NEED WITHIN ME” 

Say it aloud looking in the mirror, chant it like a mantra morning or evening or anytime you feel the symptoms of perfectionism creeping in.  

I have an entire chapter on Perfection and how it affects us postively & negatively in my book – Bring Out That Red Lipstick. The links are available on my website.

Do share how you are dealing with perfectionism?

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If you want to understand the masculine-feminine energies balance, you then you should definitely grab a copy of my book. I have decoded these learnings in a beautiful, clear, easy-to-implement framework in my book “Bring out that Red Lipstick”. The book is now available on Amazon in paperback & Kindle formats too.