Ode to being less perfect

When everything has to be better, faster and more beautiful, our life in its current state will actually never seem good enough. So how can we be kinder to ourselves and how can things be less perfect?

These days, it seems increasingly difficult to be kind to yourself, to not desire too much and to dare to be less perfect. How did that happen? Belgian doctor and mindfulness trainer David Dewulf has been studying this question for years. “Our entire society is driven by wanting more. Everything always has to be bigger and better,” he says. “We are aiming for perfection and it is never enough. This pushes us to ask even more of ourselves, and that makes it hard to be loving and friendly.”

According to Dewulf, we are living the American Dream. “We want to buy a better house, drive the right car and earn more money,” he says. “We want to be happy, but we can always do better. It makes us very critical of ourselves and then we try even harder to do our best. I know several very rich people who are deeply unhappy. People who are constantly chasing riches are unhappy by definition, because they are focusing on what they don’t have yet. The fast pace of our society is also a problem. How friendly can we be to our children — and to ourselves — if we are always in a hurry? And how often does doing things in a hurry actually make that much of a difference? Almost never, but still we keep rushing and pushing ourselves to do more and more.” So, how do we make it easier for ourselves and each other?

It starts with self-compassion

To explain what self-compassion entails exactly, Dewulf compares it with the concept of ‘self-esteem’. “Self-esteem means: I am good if I am first or the most beautiful or the smartest or best in class. This might work for a while, but sooner or later someone else is going to catch up, and your self-esteem will collapse. It’s only ever possible for one person to be number one, so you end up being each other’s rivals.”

And then there’s self-compassion. While self-esteem says, ‘I’m okay when I’m okay’, self-compassion says, ‘I’m okay even when I’m not okay’. “That’s the point,” says Dewulf. “Will I allow myself to make mistakes, to be vulnerable? Will I allow myself to have needs, to admit that I need recognition? Can I be okay just as I am, without always having to do something?”

So, what can self-compassion do for you? “Self-compassion can break the pattern of continual striving and of constantly being hard on ourselves,” explains Dewulf. “When we have a loving outlook, we stop squeezing that last bit of life out of ourselves to reach that little bit higher, and we stop judging ourselves when we don’t succeed.”

According to Dewulf, self-compassion means that you can choose to love yourself and to love life. It also means that you are there for your whole self, including your pain, imperfections and troubles. “The basic idea is: Nothing can improve the current moment, because it is perfect and has everything in it that we need to be happy. We have nowhere else we need to be.”