Stop Aiming For Perfection - Your Flaws Are Way Cooler | Kristina Mänd-Lakhiani

I'm not angry I just have very high standards I'm not upset to you being dramatic does it ring a bell I could not be depressed let me fix it let me fix my you know physiology and maybe my mood will match up to that the wrong and I'm using that of course not directly but the wrong feelings that we feel the wrong thoughts of it they think even the wrong actions that we do we push them aside we refuse to deal with them because they don't fit our picture of perfection and then that darkness in the corner keeps growing and what is in that Darkness what kind of dragons are hiding themselves there in Psychology it's called emotional leakage all these things which we don't work with which we refuse to accept because they are not the perfect vision of me the better version of me they're going to explode one moment explode when we least expect it [Music] thank you uh Welcome to our talk and I want to start it maybe you've noticed that I actually specifically asked for a very interesting song to accompany me on stage it's about being perfect it's a good song by the way but I want to ask you to just maybe take a moment and ask yourself what does it mean to be perfect and I know Perfection is usually attributed to women but actually men also have their version of perfectionism which is about being strong about being successful so we all have a version of what it means to be perfect what does it mean to be the best version of yourself when does it happen what if you are the best version of yourself right now what are you going to do for the rest of your life I'm going to be asking a lot of questions because I actually don't believe in teaching per se it might sound a little funny from coming from a co-founder of Mindvalley I believe the transformation happens through curiosity through asking questions because curiosity keeps you open for change dry raw knowledge is often useless so I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions and I hope you play along with me and you know we all as I said we all have the picture of perfection in our head because having been in personal growth and transformation for about 20 years I know that one thing that brings people here is the desire to become better to change something after all we are personal growth company right who here is trying to become a better version of yourself I'm glad to see that thank you then I have a second question for you are you ready to love yourself before you become perfect yeah let's talk about love shall we you know um I love analogies in romantic relationships when you fall in love usually you have a picture of what it means to be a perfect romantic partner or what kind of perfect romantic partner you like you want and when we fall in love we usually uh are in the process where that person that we like seems to be ticking all the right boxes and of course our hormones the mess that we are experiencing is our hormones is helping along the process and also probably the prospective lover is also behaving really well to to you know for you to like them but we take the boxes uh and everything that doesn't match the picture of perfection we either ignore it or we explain it excuse it so we keep falling in love with an idea rather than a real person of course with time home and subside our emotions subside and we see the real person for what they are with their scratched with their flaws scratches dents I like to call them dragons the person the way they really are and then we have a choice we either keep loving that person the way they are or we feel disillusioned in loving yourself there's often a very similar phenomenon we love ourselves to the point that we correspond the picture of perfection and the further we are the further the real you is from the picture of perfection the harder it is to love it we do say that we are ready to love ourselves but from early age we are taught that love has to be earned I like this I like to say that the road to health is paved with good intentions and it is truly so oftentimes it's our loving parents and I have done that too that's why I'm saying if you have a child you maybe will relate if you don't have a child you have students or someone who is in your care you might relate when a child does something good we say oh my God I'm so proud of you you're so awesome you're the best child and we give love and when the child doesn't behave it doesn't listen to Our advice makes a mistake we often withdraw love not not really but we show it this way oh you misbehaved mommy's upset and being upset part of being upset is withdrawing love and we are taught that since very early age and not surprising when we grow up we do that to ourselves of course I love myself I eat well I exercise I take care of myself I love myself but what about a party last Friday what if you didn't take care of your body what did you think of yourself were you ready to give love to yourself when you were not perfect when you were less than perfect you see we learned to go to to Huggle for our love we learn it from childhood and we do that to ourselves all our lives one thing I want to share with you is that love doesn't need to be earned and there's a difference between self-care and self-love self-care is ritualistic and it's easy to substitute self-love with self-care rather than actually essentially loving yourself caring out for yourself and seeing that self-care is the love but what if you what if you fall what if you Heir can you still love yourself so um why is it important to learn to love yourself first I believe that we carry we train the world um here I have a slide I believe that you teach the world how the world is to go is going to treat you who decides who decides if you're professional let's let's say I'm on stage who decides that I'm a professional speaker on par with everyone else who has been here is it you or is it me I've been in personal growth for 20 years I've seen countless of speakers on stage you know what makes some speaker seem like really strong good professional speaker it's what they think of themselves not the amount of books they've published not the millions of people have helped it's actually how they feel you wear your opinion about yourself like clothing women will relate to that I do not know if men have that but maybe tell me a woman if you relate to that sometimes we wear really sexy underwear nobody can see it but we feel like a queen I do not know what men do for that but I know that people don't even have to see anything different in you but you feel different and the world takes you different I believe that we train the world how to how to treat us so self-love is really about you know teaching the world to love you too you cannot expect the world to accept you to love you to respect you unless you learn to do that to yourself and of course this talk wouldn't be my talk if I didn't make you do a little bit of mental exercise are you guys ready for that good I want you to close your eyes for a moment close your eyes take a deep breath as you exhale relax physically feel how relaxed you are relax your face your eyes put a little smile on your face it helps to relax physically take another deep breath as you exhale just remind yourself that you're in a safe place you're safe and now I want you to bring to your memory last time when you maybe were less than perfect maybe you made a mistake maybe you lashed out at someone that you love maybe you weren't fair maybe you failed maybe you um you know maybe maybe somebody criticized you you don't you didn't like how you showed up maybe you felt shame bring up that moment remember it recreate it what did you feel in that moment [Music] maybe you felt shame maybe felt irritation even anger with yourself whatever it was and I'll think of the self-talk you had in that moment what did you say to yourself for example I just learned riding a bike and sometimes when I go on a bike I still fail and then I tell myself God you still haven't learned it after all this time what was your self-talk remind yourself for your self-talk did you ask yourself what's wrong with you why are you so clumsy why are you so stupid remind yourself of that self-talk take a deep breath as you exhale relax now I want you to open your eyes and I want you to write down your self-talk in your diary right now take it or your notebook take a clean page and just write it down it doesn't have to be long [Music] you can just write down a few sentences [Music] okay my friends I want to ask you now to put aside your self-talk and close your eyes once again closing eyes really helps actually we can't talk when we close our eyes apparently because we can't read I want you to close the eyes again and take a deep breath and exhale and just relax you don't need to be social and giggle and keep it in just relax and reflect on what you just heard how did it feel hearing your own self-talk being told back to you now imagine you saying this thing not to a relative stranger but to someone that you really love talking like this to someone that you really love maybe it's your child your lover your partner your parent imagine that person who really loves you or who you really love saying this to you not just your exercise partner today but someone that you really love imagine this being said to you by a person who is supposed to love you unconditionally when you're perfect and when you are imperfect imagine this being said to you by the only person whose love you can reasonably ask for I'm talking about you I can tell you one thing it's very easy to stop being mean to yourself let's make a decision to stop being mean to yourself and to stop talking to yourself like you're your worst enemy it's a very easy to decide to be your cheerleader your own cheerleader your biggest fan your biggest support would you talk like that to someone that you truly love would you be so mean for such nonsense to someone that you really love take a deep breath and breathe out and as you breathe out relax that part of the body which you feel tense in right now if it's in your chest or your stomach just tell yourself relax physically and breathe physical relaxation allows us to let go of our emotions it is fine it's your choice only your choice to to be nice to yourself take another deep breath as you exhale relax and when you're ready you can come back I will go quite fast I'm sorry I would like to make it into meditation about self-love but this was just an exercise to reflect on how we truly treat ourselves and then we say that we love ourselves and we replace love with just taking care of our bodies so because we are so obsessed with being perfect we learn to negotiate for our own love because we think that we deserve love only when we are perfect and none else but that would be half the problem the other half of the problem is that our obsession with perfectionism creates the dark side the dark side that we come to heal afterwards how does it happen you know we have this picture of perfection I'm supposed to be like this and every time I'm not like this I feel uncomfortable well it's called cognitive dissonance whenever we feel cognitive dissonance we don't know what to do with these things these strange feelings emotions so we push them aside we sweep them under the rug we we push them in the darkest corner of our psyche hoping that they're going to disappear it's very easy to you know to recreate such moments for example as a person who is supposedly very enlightened and educated and probably patient I shouldn't dislike this human being it's not me being you know it's not me being so low as disliking someone I'm just concerned about you I'm not angry I just have very high standards I'm not upset you being dramatic does it ring a bell I could not be depressed let me fix it let me fix my you know physiology and maybe my mood will match up to that the wrong and I'm using that of course not directly but the wrong feelings that we feel the wrong thoughts of it they think even the wrong actions that we do we push them aside we refuse to deal with them because they don't fit our picture of perfection and then that darkness in the corner keeps growing and what is in the darkness what kind of dragons are hiding themselves there what do you do with them do you think they're going to disappear just because we use the oysterich method we put the head in the sand and then they will be gone it doesn't work like that in Psychology it's called emotional leakage all these things which we don't work with which we refuse to accept because they are not the perfect vision of me the better version of me they're going to explode one moment explode when we least expect it and when it's least appropriate so obsession with perfectionism creates the dark side and then we come and we need to heal it I was about 40 years old when I came to a very simple conclusion I cannot shame myself out of being myself just because I feel shame just because I'm mean to myself doesn't change the essence of what I am I am what I am so the point is actually not to eradicate your imperfections but to find peace with them and those who have been in my previous talk you know that I have a little passion for uh for Marvel movies so I'll stick to my traditions and I'll show you a little bit of a Marvel movie again a tiny bit so it's going to be X-Men again first class who have you guys have seen X-Men yay they have a wonderful character there Mystique she's blue and scaly and she can take any shape so what she does is she takes the shape of a beautiful blonde woman played by Jennifer Lawrence and that's how she appears through half the movie so this is a little episode which I think is absolutely genius and I believe it's going to be cut out of my speech again in the official video if you're using half your concentration to look normal and you're only half paying attention to whatever else you do just pointing out something that could save your life [Music] you want Society to accept you you can't even accept yourself it's literally this little episode but he says in the beginning I know the voice was a little off if you are using half of your concentration to look normal you're only paying half attention to what matters if you're using all your concentration to look something that the society wants you to be like that your peers want you to be like that maybe you want yourself to be like you're taking this energy away from something that might matter that might save your life so you know I've been teaching self-love for quite a lot of for quite a few years now and one of the most common uh objections that I hear is but isn't moderate level of self-criticism healthy we think that we criticize ourselves out of vast intentions because we want to be better right so you have to criticize yourself you have to be objective realistic so there are two ways to raise children and I love comparing self-love to loving children because I believe that the most natural and the easiest way for us to experience unconditional love is when you have your children and if you are more or less sane parent because I've seen parents who don't love their children but imagine and if you don't have children maybe you have pets plants whatever you love unconditionally there are two ways to raise children I was born in Soviet Union I was actually full-on in Soviet Union and Soviet Union was known for enforcement methods so if you know Sports you know that Soviet Sports were quite quite high standard we Soviet Union had a lot of Olympic champions and how it worked it was very simple there was an institution called Olympic reserves they took they plucked really young kids they took them into the Olympic reserves and they something is making sound is it okay so they plucked young kids they took them to the Olympic reserves and they built Olympians and when I was four years old it was 81. they came and they picked me in kindergarten for the Olympic reserves for gymnastics because I was I had a great potential and I swear to you this is probably one of the earliest memories I have in my life this training they forced me into split right away it was a mincing machine because they were creating Olympians so I cried and I begged my mom never to take me to that training again so the next year when they came and they picked me up for figure skating because obviously I had potential my mom said no we've tried already so you might say I was a failure because I was I didn't last the mincing machine so I didn't become an Olympian I became a speaker instead thank you I was a failure in sports to the point that when I studied in school I had straight AIDS and everything except physical education I still struggle with sports it's a trauma I'm carrying for the rest of my life so when we talk about punishment hard work discipline sacrifices as the only way to success it is because we judge by the very few who have survived and we disregard the waste material which I am in sports I'm the waste material and there's a lot of waste material if you've seen Soviet Olympic sports there were people who broke and they were discarded and we idealized the we idealized punishment hard criticism being hard on yourself as the only way to success because we only look at people who have succeeded but most of us won't be at that level most of us in one level or another will be a waste material there's another way to raise children through encouragement oh my God you're doing so well it's so cool do you want to try higher you fell never mind I still love you you failed I still love you because failure is not the reason to not love you actually encouragement also produces champions I do not know I haven't checked the statistics more or less but one thing I know for sure it produce it doesn't produce waste material and it's wake uh sorry I got passionate I forgot what I was supposed to do what I want to tell you guys I want to beg you to stop fixing yourself because fixing implies that you're broken which you're not I suggest that if you approach to becoming better you approach from the point of view of healing not fixing you're not wrong you're not broken nothing is wrong with you nothing is wrong with any one of us maybe except Putin he's the only exception sorry had to throw it in but you guys are not broken and you don't need fixing you might need healing on your own terms when you're ready for that healing assumes that you are human and you have had Human Experience and that's why I'm such a proponent of encouragement rather than punishment in personal growth and transformation of kindness and compassion rather than harsh criticism imagine if um if you could put all your effort in your life into things that matter you know when I was in school I was a perfect straight A student so I might not bring this example to the point but you probably will relate when my mom went to school she was told oh Christina is doing well in all those subjects but here she's not doing so well maybe she should put more effort into things that she doesn't like imagine if they said Christina is doing so well and she really loves physics what if she puts more effort into something she really loves it's called the green Mark and the red marker technique red marker is when you're pointed to your flaws to things you have to fix to become better to become perfect green marker is when you are pointed to the things where you're good at right now imagine if in your life rather than pretending to be a perfect version of Something pleasing the world pleasing your peers pleasing yourself you could actually let it all be and focus on the things that matter that actually you love that you're good at you know uh I want to share of course I told you that this talk is about imperfection as a superpower right the power of imperfection and so far what I've been talking about is you know how to accept yourself with your dragons actually to really master that you have to turn your dragons into your strengths your flaws into your strengths and that might be the hard job so I want to share a story of a friend who unfortunately had passed already Sean Stevenson he was a psychotherapist a really brilliant speaker one of the best speakers I've ever seen on stage and she he was born with a very rare genetic condition his bones were breaking so obviously all the time he like he couldn't even put on a jacket without breaking a bone so obviously his life was hard and he had a lot of really hard moments so I can't tell his story for him unfortunately but this phrase that you see on the screen right now it comes from his mother in one of those moments where Sean was feeling a victim asking himself what's wrong with me why is it happening to me his mom turned to him and said Sean are you going to make it your curse or your blessing we all have our dragons are we going to keep them as our curse are we going to turn them to the our blessing I have an odd you know I have an odd accent so odd that I have people walk out of my meditation saying they can't take me I've had so many insecurities about speaking I'm obstinate as hell I've taken trainings of public speaking with the best speakers on planet Earth because well I am a co-founder of Mind value I have this opportunity yet I can't force myself to be another speaker or another speaker B because I'm obstinate you know if you've been to my first last session you know how I see the world I see it anatomically split into pieces and then you know I create connections and causalities when I sit at the back of the room looking at the speakers on this stage best speakers in the world for the past 20 years I've been doing that I can see what's going on on stage yet I come on stage and I am myself and I know what to do I just refuse I'm obstinate I'm emotional I'm too much in my head over analytics these are all my dragons and I feel so conscious about them and then once I was about to go on stage it was a very important event I had 800 people in room for me it's a lot and I remember I was so nervous I forgot how to breathe so I actually went outside to get some more oxygen so that I could breathe and get myself together and then this woman passes by and she comes to me and she says oh my God it's you Christina your talk is the one that I expect the most because when I hear you talk I feel as if I'm talking to myself my relatability the fact that I don't have a best-selling book yet or a lot of accolades my odd accent my overthinking my emotionalness emotionalness and at that moment I suddenly realized that all those flaws and all those dragons all the things that I'm ashamed of that make me feel less than or actually would give me the value can you just accept that the things that make you cringe and feel uncomfortable about yourself are the things that make you you imagine the world with perfect people around if everyone was perfect like a Stepford Wife what would we have to learn from that and it's not about learning it's you failing and and overcoming is what what gives you the lessons in life though what teaches you to solve problems and I'm not talking just about speaking on stage can you turn your dragons into your friends and to see that they're not your curse they can't be they can become your blessing if you allow yourself That's What I Call loving yourself unconditionally That's What I Call self-love not the healthy eating I'm sorry and I am for health eating and not exercising and walking and meditating this is all good that's important you don't charge your phone out of love for this device you charge it for survival you take care of yourself to survive loving is something different loving is your relationship even if your battery is flat can you still love yourself before you're perfect so the last thing I want to leave you with and I have about 15 minutes which we'll use for question and answer is that the world doesn't need your perfection nobody needs your perfection what is there to see in perfection the world needs the real you and your first obligation is to learn to love and accept yourself the way you are to see the value in what you are because then you have that value to give to the world thank you [Applause]

Channel: Mindvalley Talks

Views: 11,277

Keywords: mindvalley, ted talk, self love, self healing, self care, mental health, emotional wellbeing, mindfulness, meditation, self acceptance, personal growth, self compassion, inner peace, stress reduction, healing journey, self discovery, self worth, self esteem, positive affirmations, self improvement, wellness routines, self care rituals, holistic healing, self care tips

Id: T6ofeNeN_W0

Length: 31min 38sec (1898 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023