Ruth Clare

The perils of perfectionism

No matter who you are, life is going to leave you with cracks and scars. But this doesn’t have to be all bad. Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

But for a long time I didn’t see it that way. I am now a professional speaker, but before that I was an actor, which suited me fine. If I was performing, speaking another person’s words, no one could blame me if they didn’t like what they heard.

Perfectionism is a form of fear
I was afraid of sharing who I was, speaking my truth or being my true self because I feared others would find me lacking. I was a chronic perfectionist, convinced that striving to do everything “right” all the time was the only safe way to live. I thought admitting to my scars or showing my vulnerablity would make people would look down on me or think of me as damaged goods.

So I white-knuckled my way through life, pretending. I strapped on my emotional armour, trying to be perfect so people wouldn’t see my struggles. What I didn’t realise was that this armour was stopping me from ever feeling real connection.

The pain of hiding your true self
When we keep our true selves hidden, trying to paper over our cracks so people won’t see them, we often feel lonely and isolated. When we never take the risk of sharing, we never receive the gift of knowing that many other people are feeling exactly the same way.

We all have scars and cracks. All you have to do is look at the number of people reaching out for mental health support at the moment to see just how many of us are in distress. Yet we keep our pain to ourselves because we don’t want to be a burden to others, and because we feel ashamed.

Don’t hide your imperfection
I think it is far wiser to take a Kintsugi approach to our cracks. Kintsugi is a Japanese artform that takes broken pottery and glues it back together using a lacquer infused with gold. It is about celebrating, rather than hiding, the breaks, highlighting them with gold instead of trying to cover them up.

Because there is gold in our cracks. Pain can become compassion. Vulnerability begets strength. Confusion can drive our thirst to understand ourselves and others and the world around us. All we lacked growing up can make us neverendingly grateful for everything we have in our lives now.

Self-compassion eases perfectionism
When we go through periods of struggle we often tell ourselves this means we are flawed and damaged and inadequate and unacceptable. We look at other people and think they are doing everything so much better than we are. These feelings of being unworthy and unlovable can be so overwhelming they keep us isolated and stop us from reaching out to others.

But sometimes the compassionate perspective of another is just the thing we need so we can start to see ourselves as sparkling golden pieces of Japanese art rather than a broken plate.

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Ruth Clare is an award-winning author, TEDx and motivational keynote speaker, professional actor, qualified scientist and authenticity, resilience and change expert who learned by necessity, first to survive, then to thrive. Ruth weaves research and hard-won lessons with powerful, relatable stories from her lived experience overcoming adversity, to help others find the courage to own the stories that are holding them back so they can rewrite their lives. With a rare knack for distilling the neuroscience and psychology of human behaviour into simple ideas and practical strategies, Ruth shows people how to embrace uncertainty, stay hopeful when times are tough and harness their potential for growth and change. Ruth’s TEDx talk, The Pain of Hiding Your True Self, has had over half a million views.