Do you want to know what's on the other side of perfection?

This article addresses one of the core tenets of Rebellious Leadership for women. Over three months, my flagship program brings a group of women together to step into this paradigm so they can feel more freedom and regain agency over their own experience.

Rebellious Leader core tenet: A Rebellious Leader has relaxed away from perfection and has nurtured a sense of self-compassion. 

My toddler’s working on zippers. Figuring out how to align the two pieces together, how to maneuver even the tiniest pulls on his pajamas. Learning that he has to pull the fabric taut to get the zipper to move. I want to encourage him through to his prideful declaration. “Momma, I did it.”

In a recent celebration of zipper success, I caught myself saying “That’s perfect.” As the words rolled out of my mouth, my heart softened.

It seems so small - equating perfection with the completion of pulling a zipper. But perfection is tricky. Over the last 8 years of supporting women, I’ve seen the degree to which perfection stifles potential. Perfection is like a cloak that sits atop your experience. It’s the root of binary thinking. And the suggestion that there’s a right way to do something. The pursuit of perfection is a major roadblock to women being the leaders they know they are in their hearts.
 

The early imprint of perfection

You pick up perfection in thousands of small experiences as little ones. It's baked into how you’re praised. What’s modeled to you. How you’re directed by those around you. Much like my son and his zipper success. This imprint impacts all little ones, but the cloak for girls and women is heavier.

For us, perfection is not only about how we complete tasks, but about how we look and navigate the world. The window of what’s acceptable in these domains is narrow, making it inevitable that you’ll fall short. I'd argue it's narrower for women.
 

Moving beyond perfectionism

You’ll spend some of your life striving to adjust yourself to please those narrow windows. I’ve seen that play out for me and the thousands of women I’ve connected with through my work. The allure of that approach is strong because we all want to belong in the places we live and work. And belonging comes from fitting into those narrow windows. That's what we're promised.

But that promise never comes because those standards are impossible to meet. There is no achievable perfect. After decades of effort you’ll reach a reckoning point. You’ll feel the costs of manipulating yourself to fit. And the exhaustion of still not being there, wherever there is. Are you there?

Freedom comes when you rebel against those standards by relaxing away from them. No longer allowing them to be the goal toward which you are pushing yourself towards.

Once you make that choice, something beyond social norms comes into the foreground. It's you. And the possibility of centering yourself in how you lead your life. There's an opportunity to discover what it means to set and adhere to your own standards.
 

The importance of that milestone

When you navigate the road that includes you, you'll feel how radical an act it is. For a while you'll feel more alone. Keep going. The pressure to abandon yourself and adhere will be strong. It'll feel like that's what everyone ahead of you is doing. Toeing the line. Your inner critic will remind you that you're in uncharted territory. They'll get loud with predictable messages.

It is crucial that you don't fall into the trap of treating yourself harshly. Learn that the most promising thing to control is how you treat yourself. The path of releasing perfection is not personal. Its roots are systemic. There is nothing wrong with you for how long you’ve oriented yourself trying to be perfect. You'll need to remember that to unlock self-compassion. To soften the harshness.

You, like most women, have followed society's directions to conform. But you don’t have to keep following them. There’s still time to choose to rebel against the perfection demanded by the world.

Find a group of women to commune with over this same dilemma. They'll stand as a reminder of why it’s so hard to deviate from societal expectations. They’ll ease the loneliness of the choice ahead of you. They’ll remind you why rebelling against perfection is critical for the world you want to create.
 

Call for reflection:

In what part of your life or career do you long to relax away from perfection?

Shine On, 

Alicia

(Image by Zulian Firmansyah via Unsplash)