Shattering the perfection illusion: embrace your authenticity

Ever caught yourself trying to live your life like a curated Instagram gallery, each 'perfect' moment on display? This episode is dedicated to why we need to start tearing down that gallery wall.

Like Mekiya Outini said on Tuesday's episode, the actual trauma is telling ourselves that life is perfect. Nothing is perfect! Yet, all external signals from society have taught us that to be valuable and worthy,  we have to be perfect.

This is a complete lie.

It's a lie that I have struggled with this myself – this striving to be perfect. At times, I have definitely wrapped my own self worth into the version of myself I wished I was, instead of simply accepting myself exactly as I am.

That's why I take time in this episode to pull a thread from Mekiya's comment and unravel the concept of radical responsibility and how it can lead to genuine liberation.

The cracks in our personal veneer are essential to our story's beauty, and I hope this episode invites you to breathe through the bounds of perfectionism and let your imperfect beauty shine.

Nothing in nature is perfect. In fact, it's the imperfections that make every flower gorgeous.

Journaling questions for this episode:

• Where might I be trying to fill in a hole? 
• Where can I let nature be, exactly as it's intended to exist? 
• Where in my life can I let myself love one of those little "natural holes" in my life, exactly as it is?

Listen to this episode to hear:

• How taking radical responsibility for where you are can help you let go of perfectionism.
• Why your imperfections are a masterpiece.
• How to embrace the beauty of your life, exactly as it is.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Chihuly Garden and Glass in Seattle, WA
• YouTube video showing a bit about Chihuly's creative process

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jenless, the podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I'm your host, jen, and today we're going to talk about why your idealic life might be the biggest lie you're telling yourself every day. I'm your host, steven. Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:35

I'm so curious if the title of this episode drew your attention, like what's she talking about? Because this episode is calling out to a very specific kind of person and you might already, in the title of this episode, feel seen, you might feel called out, you might feel triggered, you might feel like this is absolutely not me and maybe this episode isn't for you. Or maybe you'll gain something for yourself an understanding of other people in your lives, or maybe some other deeper understanding for yourself in hearing my story and hearing my reflections on Ito and Makaya's story from Tuesday's episode, because indeed, this is a Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread pulling out a little piece out of the episode where we dived in with Ito and Makaya Uttini, the two of them two very different upbringings. Ito grew up in Morocco incredibly, incredibly difficult, challenging upbringing. She lived homeless for six years. She was blinded by her own family member. Just everything that she's been through is pretty much unbelievable to most of us who live what we might feel like a charmed life, what we might feel like an idealic life, which is how Makaya, her husband, spent most of his life believing that his life was idealic. It was so different from her life and really, throughout our conversation, what became apparent and what he ended on one of the things that Makaya shared was that he was having a lot of trouble telling his own story. He didn't seem to think that he had anything interesting to share. There was nothing interesting about himself. He couldn't see himself writing about himself, speaking about himself, going on podcasts and talking, because there really was nothing that interesting about his story.

Speaker 1: 2:41

I myself can relate to this because I was like well, I had great parents, I had a great upbringing, I've got great siblings, I lived a very nice it was lower middle class life. Sure, it comes with all of the problems of the middle class. Growing up on the south side of Wichita, I got all of that, but there was nothing that really. It's like I haven't been through Edo's kind of struggle. That's not the life that I have lived. I look at her life and I'm so inspired by her, but also, oh my gosh, I have not been through those things. Why would I ever get up on a stage and share something with people? Why would I start a podcast? Why would I tell my stories, the things that I'm going through in my weekly email? Who gives a rat's ass about my stories? There's nothing special here.

Speaker 1: 3:35

What Makaya realized was that actually, he is a human being who has struggles. He's had trauma. His upbringing was not as perfect as he was mentally painting the picture for himself. He was actually living in his words. He was telling himself a lie every day by telling himself that his life was idyllic, because indeed, nobody's is.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Life is interesting. Life is weird. We have weird thoughts in our heads. We go through weird experiences. Our parents are trying their best, but they're doing weird shit. We all are. We're making weird connections in our relationships. We're telling ourselves stories that aren't true about the other people in our lives. That's impacting us day in and day out.

Speaker 1: 4:23

How interesting and fascinating is that? Don't we need to be talking about this more and more? That's what I'm all about. It's like let's talk about this weird crap that we're saying to ourselves. Let's talk about these things that happened to us. God, that was horrible. That was horrible that thing that that teacher did when you raised your hand and she made you feel like shit. That's fucking horrible.

Speaker 1: 4:45

We act like we shouldn't feel bad about that, that we shouldn't have results from that, that we shouldn't have some kind of trauma from that because the rest of our life was fine or my life was so good that in and of itself, that belief like telling ourselves these things and trying to basically just like whitewash our own trauma, like gaslighting ourselves. It's whitewashing even the word picturing Don Sawyer and his fence. But in Makaya's words, what was most traumatic is that I believed I had lived an idealic life and I was telling myself that lie every day. The actual trauma is lying to ourselves about how wonderful everything is and that lie keeps us stuck as fuck. That lie right there, telling ourselves that it's great when actually it's not, when actually like full of ups and downs.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And you know we're trying to just make make the top of the ocean nice and smooth while simultaneously like making it Ripley underneath, which is the opposite of how the ocean is supposed to be. It's supposed to be nice and smooth underneath and Ripley up on top like it's okay, it's messy, life is messy. We get to let life be messy. We get to admit to ourselves that it's not perfect. But for so long I was trying to paint the perfect picture on top, literally trying to paint the perfect picture on top of people's heads. I did hair for 12 years, trying to paint everybody perfect, trying to paint myself perfect simultaneously so that nobody knows the trauma that I actually feel underneath. And I'm actually not only painting the surface for everybody else to see. I'm actually got another layer underneath that that I'm painting for myself, so that I can hide it and hide it, and hide it and hide it.

Speaker 1: 6:41

And what happens after you paint? Have you ever lived in a house where somebody painted over wallpaper 16 different layers? What eventually starts to happen? That wallpaper starts to peel up, it gets real crackly, it gets real ugly and everything becomes revealed in this huge mess. This huge mess, all these paint chips everywhere. It's a whole freaking mess and somebody's got to come in and clean it up and you've got to hire a cleaning crew and so you get your hypnotherapist and your therapist and your coaches and podcasts, breathwork, all of the things to come and clean up the mess that we've been trying to cover up for so long.

Speaker 1: 7:19

What I want you to know is there is no shame. There is no shame in the healing game. There is no shame in the self development game. It's perfect. This is the mess that you're supposed to be living right now. If you're right there, if you're like God damn it, what she's describing is actually me. Yeah, hey, me too, guess what. We're human and we've been taught that we're supposed to be perfect and we've been taught that we're supposed to be feel blessed for everything that we have which is true is true but not feel blessed and just pretend that all the stress isn't there. You can be both blessed and stressed at the same time. It all gets to exist and we get to have compassion, and we get to have grace, and we get to care for ourselves and we get to love this mess that we're living, and that is the most beautiful thing, that's what makes life so wonderful and so magical, because you're not actually the mess Like what you are is that sparkly ball of magic, light, that light that you can feel.

Speaker 1: 8:28

If you did listen to Tuesday's episode, I feel like there's this lightness, there's this aliveness that is happening in the relationship with Edo and Makaya. They're just, they're having fun together, they're laughing. We were laughing about chicken butts and eggs and when she was a kid she once tried to stick an egg. She was really curious and she tried to stick an egg back in a chicken's butt. And so we're just laughing and having fun. That was our light, like we were just having fun. That's what we really really are.

Speaker 1: 8:55

All of these other things that we're talking about, all of these things we get tethered to all of the layers of paint. That's part of life, but it's not who you are. Your story is all of those beautiful experiences that you've had, all of those hard experiences that you've had, the fact that you tried to paint the picture. That's simply just part of your story and there's nothing wrong with it. It's all wonderful, it's all perfect, it's all exactly as it's meant to be. Where you stand today, it is exactly what it is. It's one of my mom's favorite phrases. It is what it is. It is. I was in a yoga class a couple of weeks ago and the facilitator said Ah so, and I've heard that said by other meditators and yogis and I never really fully knew what it means. But ah so, and what she said was it means it is that it is what it is. It is that all that we have been through so it is. We give so much meaning to all of the things, especially to the hard things, and we often don't see that those hard things have brought so much beauty into our lives and so much magic.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Edwin Mackay's story. They end up in Kansas City, missouri, of all places. She grew up on the streets of Morocco, making her way as a blind woman and getting herself educated, just striving and trying and moving forward. It ends up getting this scholarship that brings her to the US. They meet in Arkansas of all places, move to Missouri. She could not have written the story for herself. It is the story that she wrote.

Speaker 1: 10:56

It's maybe not idealic. What is idealic, and actually the whole lie. The truth is that none of it is. It simply is the story that it is and we get to make the meaning that we want to make out of it. We get to take responsibility for our life, take responsibility for owning the story that we have lived. It's such a powerful shift when we do that, when we fully. She's the second person in this season, I suppose since January, who has said those words. It's really about taking radical responsibility for where you are right now and owning the truth of it.

Speaker 1: 11:45

So what are we scared to look at? What are we painting? What are we painting over? And trying to attend that it's perfect, because nothing is perfect and we're really not happy when we pretend that it is. I'm talking to myself as much as anybody, because this is one of my things that I find myself trying to fix things and trying to make things look really beautiful, trying to paint on the perfect highlights. But there's no perfect way to do anything. We simply get to make choice by choice by choice, and we get to let them be wrong, because we're not making. We are making a masterpiece, but we're not going to be able to control it.

Speaker 1: 12:31

I was watching. We went up to Seattle last summer and went to the Chihuly Garden, the Chihuly Glass Garden. I don't know if you know who Chihuly is, but he makes these really spectacular glass masterpieces, these huge chandeliers, and sometimes they almost look like a Christmas tree and they're made out of these really weird shaped. You'll have to look him up. Chihuly, c-h-u-h-i-l-y, I believe, is how you spell his name. So if you want to look him up and look up how he puts his stuff together, because we were even like, wow, how does he know what to put where? How does he know all of the glass pieces to make? We watch this video of how he makes this stuff.

Speaker 1: 13:18

He doesn't, he just has a general idea and he makes all of these things. He was calling them like weebles and bebops and, oh, grab the long horned bill blob. They're like all of these different shapes and then he just creative directs a team who just goes and just puts them here and there until it creates this thing that just looks so magical. And that's what we're doing with our lives. But if we try to perfect it, if we tried to create it just right, if he tried really hard to make all of these little things that he creates, these glass pieces, if he tried to put them in the perfect place, it would never come out the majestic way that his pieces come out. We have to let the pieces want to go where they go. We have to let nature take its course. And he was even saying to one of his people as they were.

Speaker 1: 14:13

He was creative, directing them and he was like no, no, no, nature would leave a hole there. Nature would leave a hole there, but we don't want the holes to be there, right? We want to pretend that it's idealic. We want to paint over those holes. We want to fill them in. That's not how it works. That's not how a beautiful life is created. We get to let life unfold as it does.

Speaker 1: 14:39

So I invite you today to ask yourself where might I be trying to fill in a hole? Where can I allow nature to be exactly what it's intended to be? Where in my life can I invite a natural hole to simply be there, to love it for exactly what it is? So, if it feels good to you, as we do every Thursday, I'm going to invite you to do a little bit of mindful breathing with me, some mindful presence and acceptance of all that is beautiful in your life, all that is natural, taking a nice big inhale If you're in a place where you can, closing down your eyes, placing a hand on your heart, maybe the other hand on your belly, just noticing your breath, noticing the rise and fall of the hand on your belly, the rise and the fall of your hand on your chest and, when you're ready, beginning to bring a little bit more rise of the belly, bringing more air in through the nose, helping that belly to expand a little bit further with each breath, maybe now beginning to feel that it's not just the front of the belly that it is expanding, but also the sides, back, body, noticing how the belly is expanding all the way around 360 degrees.

Speaker 1: 17:17

And if you can't feel that, that's okay too. Just noticing the breath when you're ready, releasing any effort with the breath and coming back to your natural breath and go of any control. Just noticing the natural rise and fall of your breath, accepting your body to move and to breathe exactly as it is moving and breathing in this moment, nourishing you, supporting you, keeping you alive moment by moment, breath by breath, inviting yourself, moving forward today to accept all that is in the same way that we accept our breath exactly as it is when you're ready, fluttering your eyes open, maybe placing your hands in your lap, maybe giving them a shake, if that feels good. Just coming back into the present. Thank you so much for this opportunity to breathe with you, to take a moment of presence and acceptance.

Speaker 1: 19:11

There was something beautiful that you gained from this episode. I encourage you to share it with a friend. You can take a little screenshot of the episode itself. Share it on social media with all of your friends. If you tag me, I'm untetheredjen on Instagram and I will always re-share your post if you do. Thanks again, so much for listening. It means the world to me that you would you just keep shining your magical uniform light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time. Bye.