Perfectionism: March 2024 Reflection
This month I have been thinking about the ways that perfectionism shows up in my work and my way of thinking. As I have been working with organizations to talk about unlearning white supremacy characteristics and shifting to more racial equity practices, I (as we all should) have been thinking about how I am building this practice of unlearning and shifting in my own life and work. I have been trying to think about what helps and invites me to release my grip on something as unattainable and exhausting as perfection.
In this season, my answer is collaboration. When I am working with others and we discuss how we will share the load, what our roles and responsibilities are, when it's safe enough to name our strengths and our challenges or insecurities, I then give myself permission to take off the hero cape. Leaning into collaboration reminds me that I don’t have to think of all the things, have all the right answers, notice and address all the things. It reminds me that the work of equity and justice is a shared responsibility, and even then, we won’t get it all right. Like relationships, it is cultivated over time. We are simultaneously being transformed by those around us just as much as we are by the work that we do.
So I am now able to remind myself that when I lift up perfection as an idol, I miss out on true opportunities of collaboration, and my body stays in survival mode longer than I’d like. So I must consciously choose a different path. This release of perfection allows me to return to myself as human. As a Black woman doing racial equity work, I get to remind myself that I am not responsible for fixing what society has systematically designed for my perpetual exclusion and oppression. I will not and cannot hold this work alone. My posture is with instead of for.
Reflection Question/Prompt
As we close this month out, I encourage you to think about how perfectionism shows up in your experiences and what invites you to release some of that.
(A reminder to be self-compassionate in your reflection; “no one has ever been shamed into liberation”.)
