Category: Inspiration

Aus addiction to perfection: “To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognise humanity.” – Marion Woodmann

Perfectionism is a soul-crushing, life sucking, joy-flattening -ism.

When someone I date or work for tells me they’re a perfectionist – I run.

I didn’t always. Following its agenda when I was younger, I developed an eating disorder, an exercise addiction, shame for not being the perfect human being, shame for not being beautiful enough, shame, shame and maybe shame.

Perfectionism runs deep and since it has infected so many of us, we don’t question it often enough.

It deprives us of our humanity and denies us the celebration and light-heartedness we seek. It ridicules the colourful mistakes and natural flaws we contain as a human being. When we follow perfectionistic standards, anything other than perfect must be compensated with lying, harder work, better behaviour, better moral standards and still – this is the hell of it – won’t be good enough because “good enough” isn’t perfect.

It isn’t all bad, I suppose.

Perfectionism has brought us the technical evolution we see today but it has also stripped us of natural, compassionate human interaction with others and ourselves. Our focus isn’t the human being, but their mistakes and as a result we treat them coldly, kinda like we treat the internet when it stops working for a minute.

Within perfectionism – our work conversations sound cold and empty because any trace of human character is seen as “unprofessional”. In our relationships we hold each other to ridiculous standards that we cannot fulfil and must eventually disappoint. Our body will never the way it should be, it’ll always need tweaking and changing to finally please us perfectly.

It goes without saying that this monster needs to be caught and put in its place.

For this we need to shift in our priorities: Humanity, joy, feeling and compassion over perfectionism, appearance and control.

We have to change from mind-only- to mind-body connection.

This has to be a choice each of us can make.

Here is a way to practice this shift:

1. Notice when perfectionism shows up.
2. Where in your body does it show up? How does it feel when it shows up? (For example: a tightening of the throat, a cramping of the heart etc.)
3. Sit with it for a moment while accessing curiosity and compassion.
4. Then take it out of your body and put it in front of you (You can set up a chair in front of you and let it “sit” there).
5. Then ask it the following questions: What are you protecting me from? What do you think happens if this does not turn out to be perfect? What is the worst case? (Let all answers arise naturally, you can receive the answers) What has to happen in order for it to loosen its grip? When you’re done asking and listening thank it and let it return to where it wants to return to. Maybe the same spot or it wants to take a different shape or place.
6. Then ask yourself: What would bring me joy in this moment?
7. Go and do that – full permission!

How come perfectionism has such power? Because its driving force is the most cunning: fear.

The fear to be seen as a flawed human being. The fear to be cancelled, to count as unprofessional, to receive the stamp of “not good enough”, to remain unloved and invisible.

It’s not easy to withdraw from this monster, not easy to break up with its agenda because it promises are sweet. “Once I’m perfect, I’ll be whole” “Once I’m perfect, I’ll be loved/famous/successful/beautiful.” “Once I’m perfect I am … (fill in your own).”

But the standards in all areas of our life are commonly too high. We have set the bar beyond reach and without the enormously loaded benefits that “perfect” claims to fulfil there would be no motivation in anyone to reach them.

Perfectionism is the enemy of bigger dreams and true connection: We don’t start unless it’s guaranteed to be perfect and we don’t finish unless it’s perfect; we can’t love unless they’re perfect, we can’t be loved unless we’re perfect.

It’s a loss. All in all.

So besides shifting priorities, we have to fall in love with the process, with the mistakes and flaws we, our work and other contain.

For this you can ask yourself:

1. Where do I hold on to the outcome that I can’t enjoy the process?
2. Where am I holding off because I am afraid it/I won’t be good enough?
3. Where am I trying to appear perfect instead of revealing what I really think/feel or how I really am?

Since nothing is entirely bad, so does perfectionism have its place. Seen for what it is, consciously directed and framed within healthy boundaries it can provide us with the necessary drive to finish our projects and be proud of them without being burnt out.

That being said, in my opinion, it has no place in relationships, appearance, or body-image or art or dance or processes that involve the soul. This is a mask we should all refuse to wear. From now on.

Here’s the catch: Should we take it off we’ll feel vulnerable, exposed and open. We can see this as the good sign it is. This is the only way we choose the soul of humanity, the health of our body and the pleasure of our joy over approval, hiding and impossible standards.

How does perfectionsim limit your expansion?

With love,

Jenny Felicitas

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We’ve created an immense fear of guilt to a point where our relationships suffer because of it.

We’re desperately trying to eradicate our conscience from our life that we cannot use it for better purposes and better relationships.

I am starting to realise that guilt is serving a purpose if we use it well and not let it use us.

But what amount of guilt is healthy and lets us remain in integrity with who we are?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that too much guilt is paralysing and very unhealthy. It can cause us to tolerate what we should not be tolerating because we cannot see things clearly.

Guilt gains a lot of power if we allow it to. This is the exact reason that we’ve created this movement of demonizing guilt. We’ve started to be activists against guilt turned it into an enemy that is unpredictable and HUGE.

Yet, by fighting guilt and shutting it out all together we cannot hear it and its valuable feedback to us.

In order to be in thriving relationship with ourselves, with others and the world at large we actually need guilt.

Deflecting guilt is destructive to all relationships because we cannot own the behaviour that might be hurtful for others. We will keep projecting.

The trick is to remain conscious in meeting guilt face to face. We can learn how to let it teach us what we need to know in order to be the loving human beings that we are.

The requirements to master guilt and utilize it for our purposes are the following.

1. You want to be a responsible person and are willing to change behaviour that doesn’t reflect who you want to be in your relationships.
2. You want to face your shadows.
3. You want to hear the truth about the impact you’re having but you also know whose opinion you value.
4. You want to be in a conscious relationship and evolve in them and not use your relationships to fill a whole.
5. You learn to differentiate between you and the voice of guilt so you can take an objective role and take the aspects that are valuable and useful and leave out the blame and shame of it.

Imagine this: You have a date at a restaurant with your partner and you come in late. Your inbuilt guilt will let you know that this is not ok.

Deflecting guilt would look like this:

Guilt will tell you that an apology is in order. You are unwilling to face the guilt. You will be involved with yourself and try to convince your partner that this wasn’t your fault and she/he shouldn’t be mad because (insert excuse here). You even convince yourself that you don’t have to really feel sorry. You want to be right rather than sorry. You cannot see the boundary that you have crossed. It’s kind of a “Sorry but…” attitude and it’s focused on yourself.

Being consumed by guilt looks like this:

Guilt will let you know it’s not ok and you agree and hand it all your power. You come in and are already beating up on yourself feeling like a victim to your circumstances. You keep apologizing and cannot arrive in the moment or be present for your partner who waited. Maybe you tolerate your partner judging you harshly saying things like “You always do this, you’re no good. Grow up” etc.

It’s kind of a -“Yes, I deserve punishment if not from you then from me.” attitude.

As you can see both will not strengthen the connection in the relationship but cause separation instead.

So what’s the best way to utilize guilt? How can we let it serve us?

Let’s look at the scenario again.

You are late and you feel guilty.

Owning guilt looks like this:

You know that being on time is your responsibility and you blew it. You know how to separate yourself from the guilt voice that will now be activated. It doesn’t touch your worth as a person, it touches your behaviour. You think about your partner who had to wait for you and the boundaries you cross by being late. You understand that this was not ok but things like that happen. You come in and you see your partner and his or her mood more than your own. You apologize accordingly and sincerely and wait and hold space for the emotions of your partner to come up and show themselves to you. You respond only to that. You allow for your partner to be mad for some time but you do not allow him or her to cross your personal boundaries either.

The attitude is more “I am so sorry I am late, I know it has crossed your boundaries and I understand that you’re upset, how can I make it up to you?” This enhances connection and trust and allows mistakes to happen and guilt to remind you that you can do better.

As you see mastering guilt is an internal job and it’s based on the 1-5 requirements. If you don’t want any of those you will not look guilt in the eye properly, you will not be able to use it to strengthen connection and trust in your relationships. You will not see your own shit.

What is your relationship to guilt currently and how would you like to shape it?

I am blessed to be living in a highly sensitive body which allows me to sense things others might not be aware of. On the flipside it also means my senses are easily overstimulated if I don’t protect or look after myself.

I am immediately reminded when I make poor choices.

In the early years of my life, I had very poor nutrition, didn’t work out and had bad sleeping patterns. I fed of bad movies and TV shows and barely read a thing.

I basically didn’t do anything to nourish my body, mind or soul.

The result was a (very) painful gut issue, an unhealthy relationship with food (me and food didn’t relate at all), bad irritated skin, and what I was most afraid of: ridiculous mood swings (PMS and beyond) which destroyed many relationships and had the biggest impact on the one with myself.

Until I finally took responsibility for my health and well-being and started educating myself.

I went to university to study nutrition and read everything labelled as healthy that I could get my hands on (it’s a lot of information out there let me tell you).

In addition to the training of mind and body, I did high intensity workouts on a daily basis.

I ate (very) strictly clean and in regular Intervals, my whole body changed rapidly and I became obsessed with improving my “health”.

But I took the whole self-work too far, meaning I was not working on being healthy anymore, instead I was working on being perfect.

That had created extreme tension within myself and drained my energy to a point of a full stop. I was after something that doesn’t exist and I wasn’t aware of it.

As my body and mind were highly overstimulated by all the information (transformation/obsession), I didn’t know at all how to eat or be anymore.

I was completely lost.

I was smoking marijuana almost every day, only so I could get a break from the prison (meaning no pleasure aloud) I had created.

Whenever the relaxation kicked in, I binge ate to a point of feeling sick and ashamed (which felt better than my own control).

An injury forced me to stop working out which was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The collapse of my “healthy” life that I had worked so hard for and that I had desperately wanted to maintain, triggered the greatest longing I’ve ever felt.

More than ever before I just wanted to be safe and strong again. As my body couldn’t provide any longer what I was in need of, there was absolutely nothing to hold onto.

Lying in bed, feeling depressed and in no condition to do anything. I was puzzled. How could that happen to me? When did I loose control?

After all, I knew so much didn’t I?

Not knowing that the problem wasn’t me or my lack of discpline.

The core of my unhappiness was a part of me I had totally neglected – my inner child, the realm of feelings, fun and creativity.

But before I could really embrace all of my past and feelings more time passed.

After some time of trying to recover mentally and physically with conventional methods, I found myself intuitively guided to the spiritual realm of my being.

I never believed myself to be spiritual nor did I ever come in contact with it before. I actually judged it as hocus pocus and weird.

I started yoga and meditation and began to be interested in teachings of several enlightened masters.

I felt so calm listening to their perception on life and I found comfort in the tone of their voice. They seemed to be content with being unsure. They were happy no matter what. What was their secret?

And with that I had found a new quest.

Again I wasn’t saved from my old controlling mind as I was still working on being perfect. This time spiritually.

At first this had worsened my conditions, not only were ups and downs still present but strained me more than ever before.

Meditation opens you up so much and provides so much energy, it was hard for me to handle, as I went into it without instruction. So again, I found myself at a point of a near breakdown.

I stopped just in time.

Slowly, but consistently after cutting down work hours and reducing meditation, yoga and social events, I started to balance my life again.

What my friends tried to tell me all along, I had to fully realise by living it: too much of anything is not good for anyone (that includes things that are supposed to be good for you).

After this accessed energy had settled, it all started to make sense to me. Not in a way of “oh, yeah, I get it”

More like: “OHH MYY GOD. How could I possibly miss this?”

I realised that I was measuring my sense of self-worth by the degree of discipline I managed to hold (perfection meant perfect worth) when in fact, I am worthy now without having to do or prove the tiniest thing.

I had to go through all this intense pain, into the extremes and impermanence of my health state only to discover that I am more than my body and mind.

I was the Safety I was longing for and I had to realise that no self-improvement nor body-image can be in any way sustainable (let alone enjoyable) without sincerely loving and accepting myself – just the way I am.

This meant embracing my inner child.

When I began to really see and love my inner child, nothing else mattered (relatively spoken, of course). I embraced emotion again and gave them top priority.

I stopped trying to know, stopped trying be right which is key to self-love.

Every (health) rule I follow now, is approved by me, born out of the intention to do best for my body, mind and soul.

I am considering the effects on every area of my Being as well as the effects on others and the world. This kind of responsibility is true pleasure for me.

Trusting in my abilities as my own health coach and respecting my body are the keys to the intuitive nutrition I choose today.

Since I have sincerely started listening to my body AND integrated emotions, healthy food choices began to come naturally ( as you know now it did not happen overnight).

Here’s my simple but meaningful take away:

If you want to self-improve don’t forget to love yourself more.

Actually, start with that intention only and everything else will fall into place.

This journey isn’t always easy or likeable as you’ll discover the depth of your hidden fears (which you often want to compensate with food and more control). Yet, I can reassure you, that going inward for answers is the only adventure that satisfies your appetite and it’s so worth it because YOU my dear, are so worth it.

Health is never complete when happiness and pleasure are absent, so it is important to remember you deserve to feel loved and blessed and cherished and most of all happy all the time. No matter your habits, shape or level of discipline.

I no longer follow rules of punishment whenever I slip. No one should because, well, it doesn’t work! It never will.

Let’s break the restriction cycles! All of them!

We are abundant beings we need no restriction. We need pleasure!

Now that we know what it takes to be healthy, let us take responsibility and set the intention now to be as healthy as never before. Let’s have the courage to do our best and the grace to accept that our best will differ from day to day (yes, bad days are totally fine).

But above all let us choose LOVE first!

Thank you for taking the time.

Love,

Jen

Singing has transformed my life and the way I am in the world. I would go as far as to say it might even be better than therapy.

When I grew up I used to sing A LOT. However, I was laughed at and told that my voice was annoying.

In addition, I was traumatized by TV shows in which the contestants are ridiculed for showing up with an average voice.

Yes, I loved singing but I became terrified to be heard.

I’ve learned that if you’re not good at something you shouldn’t pursue it, I mean, what’s the point if you won’t make money of it?

Fast forward to today: Every Friday morning I take singing lessons. It started out with the intention to read poetry to a small audience. I thought that no one would want to train my voice to sing because there was no hope.

I suspect that this was a pretext from my soul to get me enrolled and start singing again.

My teacher Lily is amazingly intuitive and highly knowledgeable. She naturally has deep love and respect for the Voice which she talks about as if it was the most sacred thing in the world. My soul awakens in each session.

When I start singing, Lily knows exactly in what mood I am in, what my voice needs and sums up my whole inner life situation just by listening to my first tone.

Lily has taught me how to work WITH what’s here instead of AGAINST it.

She never tries to change my voice but see what’s possible at any given day, never asking too much and never too little. She accepts my moods and knows how to turn fatigue into growth of muscle.

She knows how to balance out my edges and I never leave a session the way I came without ever talking about my private life.

She does it all in a very practical way.

What you basically do is you train your muscles to carry your voice.

Training the whole vocal system to communicate and work in harmony again. I am always surprised how a simple twist in breath, posture, angle of my tongue etc. is bringing forth a whole new facet of my voice.

What I’m most fascinated by are the parallels to my inner journey which are undeniable. Here’s just one example of how my voice reflects my patterns:

I am at a stage of rapid growth at the moment. I am seeing parts of my personality in action that I didn’t even know existed, this is a great sign of expansion. But sometimes I catch a bit of my limited mind and I shrink back into familiar territory because I don’t identify these wonderful personality traits as me yet. Does this sound familiar?

And it’s the same with my voice. I sometime hit a note that I wasn’t able to catch before and I surprise myself so much that it’s causing me to tighten and shrink into the smaller voice I know. I am afraid of just letting go and trusting my newly trained muscles to carry my voice consistently. It’s basically a constant balance between training the muscles and then surrendering to them.

I am learning through singing that as I train my muscles – spiritually, mentally, emotionally, vocally- I will always discover new traits and new notes and to be able to use them on a consistent basis I simply have to identify them as me.

I guess this is a recommendation letter for you to take singing classes. When you train your voice, you train your soul.

Love,

Jen

Dear fear/resistance,

I used to fear you, fight you and run away from you.

Then I tried to prove to you that I am stronger, smarter and more awake than you. I am, don’t get me wrong.

The thing is just today I am realising that I am much more than that, too. I am more than what I am in relationship to you.

I no longer need to compare myself to how well I do not letting you run my life. This does not determine my worth, my strength, my identity.

I no longer need to prove to you who I am. You know, I know.

So I want to stop the fight with you.

Because to experience “more” of me, I need you. I hate to admit it, but you are actually a very important part of me.

I know you will be here forever.

So the question is how do we want to live together?

I guess I want to put some ground rules in place. Things you need to know.

1. I want to live my life – I know that you won’t change but I will. I will not follow your way blindly. I will get stronger and stronger every time you stand in my way.
2. I know that you don’t want to bring me down but make me stronger. I know you serve me and I want to stay grateful to you for this (in an exceptional way).
3. I am not my mother. You are the same in her as you are in me but I have tools she didn’t have
4. In case it’s not clear enough yet: You are part of me and that’s cool.
5. In the moments you show up, I will always hate you and I will feel smaller than you. I am learning and I am doing my best to stay centred or come back to myself if I don’t.
6. You’re the cause of all my discomfort. I know there are things more important than feeling comfortable. And on the other side of you is the comfort that I really want.
7. I want to walk the path of least resistance which means I want as little contact with you as possible.
8. I decided to follow my soul and she is bigger than you, please understand this. She will always win.

With this letter I honour you. I choose you like you have chosen me.

Dear fear, I am curious what our new start will bring.

I am stronger than ever before and I know that you know this.

Don’t worry, you are in good hands.