We live and work in a world where creating success and perfection is encouraged. When we strive for such, life becomes hard and tiring, and we inevitably begin to believe we’re substandard because we can’t quite meet all of those expectations.
So often we’re chasing the carrot, and from a young age society encourages us to believe that when we get that carrot, everything will be amazing, and all our problems will disappear. It’s a strange state of affairs and one that doesn’t afford us much time to feel at one with ourselves; we’re always having to chase and look ahead.
But what if we changed the narrative, and realised that being human is to try stuff and fail, to work through challenges, to bring less than successful things or situations into our lives and learn from them, to be messy, to make mistakes, to feel momentary highs, to feel a bit beige and bland here and there.
What if actually being human isn’t about a constant striving, but more a constant being. What if we embraced ourselves warts and all, and identified the new things we’d like to try and create not necessarily as a way to prove our success, but as a way to experience more of what life has to offer.
When I embrace the fact that the things that aren’t quite perfect in my life are actually ok, and are part of being human I relax into being me. And when I relax into being me I feel less anxious, less stressed, more forgiving and compassionate of myself.
The ‘being’ approach is a much nicer and easier way to navigate through life. Rather than striving and aiming for success and perfection, it’s simply about accepting ourselves as being human.
Sending love, Hannah