perfectionism

When your outside isn’t matching your inside

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

Is it just me, or does it feel like the phrase “imposter syndrome” is getting confused and over-used? To clarify, I want to explore what it’s like to feel like you’re faking it. Maybe people assume you know what you’re doing, but you secretly fear that you don’t. 

First Things First: Being New is Normal

If you’re new at whatever you’re doing and feel like an imposter, then you’re probably an honest person on the right track. When we’re first learning anything, it’s all skills practice. We follow what we’ve been taught and practice the tools handed down by those more experienced than us. Over time, we integrate what we’ve learned into our own personality and style until it becomes our own. Everybody gets there by mucking it up along the way. 

Imposter Syndrome is for Everyone

Imposter syndrome doesn’t just affect newbies though. Everyone has days or weeks, even years, where they’re just off. Sometimes it may feel like we’re acting out an old version of ourselves; the autopilot works but doesn’t feel true. Certainly deeper inquiries deserve attention here, but growth isn’t only about change. Growth is also accepting the impostor feeling when it arises, without analysis. Winging it with whatever we’ve got, it’s possible to even enjoy wondering and wandering for a while.

Feedback Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Sometimes we may feel like a fraud because of our collective infatuation with feedback. Likes, followers, comments, shares–maybe these forms of acknowledgment boost self-esteem for a moment when we get them, but they’re always fleeting. Does all this feedback (or obvious lack thereof) really help us? One might wonder if it actually keeps us more distracted by how we appear to others, rather than helping us cultivate and honor what’s true inside.

The “What Other People Think Of Me” Trap

Taking it a step further, whose opinion really matters so much anyway? Aren’t we all just people? We’re born innocent and fragile, and we die when our time comes. All the external standards of how a professional, parent, or person are supposed to be are culturally determined, a passing trend in a long history of changing expectations. What’s “best” is always evolving. When we open to healing around the ancestral and conditioned pressures to fit in, trying to measure up becomes less compelling.

The Five Stars We Really Need

It’s not about being a competent professional, a good mom, a successful entrepreneur, or a happy person anyway. It’s not about the roles we play or what we seem like to others at all. It’s about what we’re genuinely sharing. We can decide our current best is good enough–not because it’s the best ever, but because it’s ours. We need our own approval, a five star “I see what you’re doing and how you’re growing, and I think it’s awesome” rating. We won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But that’s OK, there are plenty of other teas to drink.

The truth is you can only be an imposter if you’re trying to be something you’re not. Rather than trying to impersonate your best self, what if you had radical permission to exist and be? We’re all just learning and living here anyway, might as well go a little easy on ourselves and each other.

With love,

Julia Aziz

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PS–If you’re needing support to go deeper as you unwind patterns of feeling inauthentic and not enough, please do check out my individual counseling services and the women’s group program.

When you don’t like to mess up or make mistakes

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

Do you worry about things you said or did and how other people may perceive you?

Do you battle niggling feelings of not being good enough? 

If you resonate with the term “perfectionist,” “people pleaser,” or “impostor syndrome,” you’re most likely a highly conscientious, caring individual with an acute sensitivity to nuance. You may also struggle with an inner tension that won’t let loose, a guard and self-critic whispering “sour nothings” that something is wrong with you. On the outside, all may look manicured and pretty. On the inside, trying to maintain control and tame creativity can be an exhausting drain of energy. 

One way to break out of the inner prison is the practice of making imperfect. You might say, who needs practice making mistakes; we do that all the time easily enough, right? But I’m talking about practicing welcoming those mistakes, embracing messiness, and loving fallibility. It goes against the grain for those who grew up finding their value in giving people what they wanted. We give lip service to fostering a “growth mindset,” but we’re not taught how to emotionally integrate failure and keep moving forward when everything goes sideways. That’s OK though; sometimes the best learning comes from stumbling through.

I’d like to share a prayer I worked with almost daily for a long time. It originated in something I read and eventually evolved into something more my own. I invite you to edit the words as needed to bring the most genuine relief and freedom to you too: 

You know who is not a perfectionist? Nature. It’s not our nature, nor is it in nature, to have everything line up just so, for all eternity. Find the most beautiful symmetrical flower you can, and there will likely be just one little tear. Some tiny “flaw” that makes it slightly different from its neighbors. Yet wow, isn’t nature filled with such fantastically intricate patterns? Take a closer look at that flower, and you’ll see the awesome beauty of her just being herself.

May you be imperfectly, beautifully whole, and gloriously you,

Julia Aziz

🌝🌜🌚🌛🌝

Sidebar on the word “prayer”

If you’re not used to praying, or if the word “prayer” brings up religious trauma or resistance, know that it doesn’t matter if you are praying to something or not. I think of the phrase Baruch Hashem from my own tradition, meaning “Blessed is the Name.” I like it because it captures the non-nameable aspect of divinity–I translate Baruch Hashem as “What an amazing wonder this all is, whatever you want to call whatever it is you’re calling.” How could our limited language capture the essence of interconnection and everything we can’t perceive/don’t understand as a tiny person in a vast universe? So it’s OK, we don’t need intellectual understanding of what we’re doing here. What matters is we keep expressing from the heart. We keep opening to ourselves, to each other, and to all of life as is.

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