By Nicola Salter
Owning your flaws
You are raw, flawed and very powerful. You have a beautiful brilliance, and yet I suspect, there are times when you don’t see this. Your focus can be on all that you are not when you are having a ‘down day’. Or the need to constantly prove that you can spin many plates, and live up to the dream of being a woman who can do it all. Perhaps you compare yourself to others, feel the need to ‘fit in’ rather than belong. Even worse, make choices for yourself that society expects of you.
And yet you know, deep down, you want to follow your own path, dance to your own beat and allow your beautiful accomplished, empowered and expressive true self to show up, flaws and all.
Owning your sovereignty over your flaws, accepting those parts that you don’t feel are good enough, allowing them to show up and be curious about them, shapes you and allows you to grow as a person.
Your flaws are growth opportunities. Developing a sense of humor as you master the art of facing and embracing your flaws (remember everyone has them we are all in this together) as you put up a mirror to reflect why you are behaving a certain way and why. These flaws didn’t happen overnight, they have come from your life experiences, or stories you have told yourself over the years, and you developed them as a form of escape, or survival to avoid getting hurt, being disappointed, rejected, abandoned. The list is endless.
What does a flaw look like, well here are a few. You might:
- Procrastinate
- Talk negatively
- Day dream and don’t put your dreams into action
- Don’t admit to having flaws
- Spend time with the wrong tribe who judge or criticize you
- Don’t appreciate others
- Judge and criticize
- Demascluinize your male partner
- Don’t want to take risks
- Avoid standing up for what you believe in
- Feel you don’t deserve
- Need immediate gratification constantly
Do any of these sound familiar? I am sure you can think of others.
REFLECTION
Be honest and identify one flaw that you feel you have without feeling guilty about it. How do you want to take this beautiful flaw and shape it into an opportunity to grow? How will you hold yourself accountable to do this?
We often misalign with the wrong versions of ourselves. Rather than putting our focus on what we are good at and our strengths, we love to associate with what we are not good at, this can be a survival mechanism for us to feel safe, not to adventure out into the unknown and have a new experience in case we fail.
Using your flaws and negative beliefs as feedback
Your beliefs, positive or negative, help you make sense of your surroundings in a quick and efficient manner, since it is impossible for our brain to process all the information that comes to us in detail. To revise what you believe to be true about yourself and your flaws you need to be willing to look outside of your comfort zone and current belief system.
How you hold onto your flaws as a safety blanket becomes how you operate and make choices at work and in personal relationships (e.g. I am not smart enough to take that promotion). This leads to errors in your judgement about situations since you are operating from a flawed belief system, with a misplaced idea of who you really are, who you think we are, rather than who you truly are.
The fear of making a change for yourself – are you in the flow of being in struggle or in potential?
Which one are you? What are your control issues? Do you spend time feeling more comfortable in struggle, moaning about it and not doing anything to improve the situation? Or, are you in flow with the potential of who you are about to become, looking at your flaws and developing a growth mindset to learn from your mistakes, taking your flaws and growing from them.
Our flaws will have us repeating the same patterns of behavior over and again. For example, we can take things personally and feel triggered, upset and resentful if someone judges us. If this pattern is continued and this flaw isn’t investigated (staying curious about yourself is a wonderful way to discover self-awareness) we begin to burnout, get overwhelmed, as we keep trying to do the same thing, having the same reaction and expecting a different result.
Anxiety, burnout, feeling overwhelmed and panic can be some of the side effects of ignoring change in our lives. These emotions show up to tell us that our mind and body wants to let go. Anxiety is your friend, it wants you to develop a new pattern in your life, releasing the old ways of reacting and beating yourself up. It is your security system telling you that its time for a change.
Nothing is permanent
Just as the world continuously changes, so do you. What was once a flaw a few years ago for you, may have worked itself out with life experiences you have had. Neuroplasticity means building a mental muscle by challenging your mind and giving it new experiences. Moving away from draining negative emotions and thoughts and replacing them with renewing feelings and thoughts. Your brain will learn and adapt when you give it either a positive or negative experience, it doesn’t know the difference, therefore you can choose to tell your brain whatever you wish.
Your current thinking is the state of your future self
What you think and feel today, whether positive or negative, will shape your future. You are creating your future by what you are thinking and how you are reacting and behaving today.
Envision your future self how you want her to be, living and enjoying life. Now align her with who you are today and what thoughts and feelings you can change about yourself that will reconnect you with your future, capable, confident adult self.
