Imperfection

I've got three Brené Brown's books up next to read. The first is The Gifts of Imperfection.  I've been pretty open that I struggle with my perfectionist tendencies. In the book, Brené shows so much compassion toward her reader by sharing her own stories of shame, fear and struggle very openly. More importantly, she shares a validated method for living a wholehearted life where we learn to love our imperfections.

Brené is the oldest sibling in her family.  I am too. I'm also the oldest grandchild on one-side of my family. Like Brené, this turned into trying to be the older, perfect sibling. I still struggle with this many days. I feel a lot of shame if something doesn't go right and I tend to bottle that in from my family.

The silly thing  is, like fear, shame's kryptonite is being exposed to the light. It can't survive after we've let everyone see it.   So I struggle when I don't do something perfectly, then don't tell my family and then probably second guess myself on other things that I am thinking about doing. It's a cycle of shame. 

It's simple to break though. You just need to talk about it. I've been practicing my courage (speaking from the heart) muscle and each time that I talk about my shame it loses strength.