Embracing Imperfection to Improve Self Esteem a Strengths Based Approach

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this episode on bright and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this episode on embracing your imperfection. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. A lot of people really struggle with admitting that they have imperfections, when in fact, because we're human, we are imperfect beings. Start by becoming authentic. Explore what it means to you to be imperfect. What does that say about you if you're imperfect? What fears does it trigger? Are you afraid of rejection? From whom? Are you rejecting yourself? Why are you afraid of failure if you're imperfect? Well, guess what? We're all going to fail at some things. But I digress. Is there some danger because of your imperfections? If so, what is it? How can you protect yourself? How do you view other people who are imperfect? Think about your kids, your parents, your friends, your siblings, whomever. How do you feel about? How do you view them and how do you view their imperfections? Do you hold it against them? Do you reject them? Do you see them as failures? Who do you know that's perfect and that's a head scratcher? I haven't found anybody yet who is 100% perfect. The next step is to find your strengths. All right, we recognize that. Guess what, you're imperfect. However, that doesn't mean you're imperfect at everything. So find your strengths. What things do you bring? What qualities do you have? Recognize your weaknesses. And. And that's important. You know, I homeschooled my kids, and I am good in English. I am good in, you know, reviewing history papers and those sorts of things. I am not good when it comes to advanced math, algebra, and up. Not for me. And it was important for me to recognize that. Could I have retaught myself algebra and then taught it to the children? Yes. However, that would have taken me three times as long as it took my husband, who remembered all of that stuff. So we synergized. I recognized it was not my strength. So I said, here you do it. Recognizing your weaknesses identifies places where you can allow people to help you. And believe it or not, people who want to be your friends, people who want to be in your life are often do find it rewarding to be able to help you and decide on how you want to use your limited time and energy. You only have so much time on this planet. You only have so much time each week. In terms of your return on investment. Using your time as your investment, what is the best strategy? For example, I could mow my lawn every day or every week. That's not a problem. I actually rather enjoy it. Unfortunately, we have six acres, so mowing the lawn takes a really long time and, you know, four and a half, five hours a week is a lot to lose when I could be using it doing something else that is more productive towards my ultimate goals. I have to decide, you know, do I want to invest the time in mowing the lawn or do I want to pay somebody else so I can do something else? Recognize the circumstances. Circumstances, just like people, are often imperfect. When evaluating yourself, it's important to consider all of the facts in context and learn from them as much as possible. For example, maybe you're trying to be much more patient, yet last week you lost your temper. Okay, so let's look at the circumstances. Yes, you were imperfect at being able to maintain complete patience 100% of the time. What contributed to that? Oh, well, when we look at it, the circumstances weren't perfect either. It was late in the day, your blood sugar was low, the children were cranky. You were in line at the grocery store trying to keep them from wandering off and grabbing candy and whatever else. You had a lot of stimulation that was bombarding you all at once. So it's not really that big of a surprise that you may have gotten cranky. It's important to recognize now you can learn from that and you can say, okay, well, in the future, I know it's probably best not to take the kids to the grocery store on the way home from work, because that is just a recipe for disaster. However, again, taking into consideration the circumstance as well as the person to recognize what happened, not getting selected for a job is another situation. Maybe you are a really good employee and you think you would be the perfect person for that job, but the hiring manager doesn't see you as the right fit. It doesn't mean you're bad. It means the circumstance was not perfect for you. You are probably a very awesome employee, but it was not the right fit. Burning dinner. I've done it. I love to cook, and I pride myself on cooking dinner for the family. I used to have a neighbor that whenever she would come out, I would go over, and if I would see her, I would go over, we'd start talking, and almost inevitably, I'd lose track of time. And if dinner had I had started dinner, I would burn it. I recognized this. So, you know, around dinner time, I knew not to go out because I would end up burning dinner. But those are the circumstances. I was doing something I enjoyed. I lost track of time. Circumstances were not perfect. For monitoring dinner. The other circumstances we want to look at are when you hold yourself up to somebody else. And I encourage you to only compare yourself to yourself. Be better tomorrow than you were today. Don't compare yourself to other people. Say, well, I'm not as good as so and so, or I'm not as far along as so and so was by this point. And a lot of times we do that, but we don't take into consideration the different paths that we've both walked. I played tennis when, when I was in high school, and, you know, I worked at a tennis camp over the summer. But I certainly wasn't as good at as Chris Everett. She was a pro tennis player. She had devoted hours and hours every day for many, many years to playing tennis. So just because I had chosen to devote my time to other things and not to sole focus on tennis, of course she was better now. I had progressed in other areas that she hadn't had time to progress in. And so it's important to remember and take into consideration the path your personal circumstances, your personal resources, and your personal motivations along the way that have gotten you to be where you are. Once you've identified your strengths and your weaknesses and you're taking into consideration the imperfect circumstances make it work for you. And a lot of times we talk about eliminating symptoms. Like for somebody who has ADD or adhd, we talk about trying to eliminate their hyperactivity. In some cases, people choose to embrace their hyperactivity. They have a lot of energy and they can get a lot of things done. They enjoy moving around, so they use that energy in order to get more physical things done. And it's important to recognize that sometimes you need to work with your particular traits instead of trying to eliminate them or work against them. How can you make it work for you? Inflexibility or insistence on sameness. We see this in people who are on the autism spectrum. We also see this in people with obsessive compulsive personality disorder. But these are the people who keep us on track. These are the people who remind us that we have these obligations. So these are the people that help rein in the others who tend to be more spontaneous. It can work. They may be the people who keep the keep the home operation just chugging along. People with obsessive compulsive personality tend to be perfectionists and see things as right and wrong. And they don't put in a lot of feeling in whether it's right or wrong. It's not what's going to make everybody Happiest, it's this is the way it is in the manual or this is what the law says. It's either right or it's wrong. And that can provide some parameters or some perspective to synergize with somebody who thinks more in terms of what's going to make everybody happy. So the person who thinks about right and wrong says, okay, this is the window we have. These are the options. And then we can talk about what is the best option of our choices that are technically right. Talkative people, extroverts tend to be great for working a room. They tend to be great in sales, they tend to be great for helping people feel comfortable in situations. And that's wonderful because people who are more introverted, more reserved, are better listeners and they have a lot of difficulty coming out of their shell. So talkative people tend to function better at holiday parties and maybe even as supervisors where they can teach and train and mentor. Whereas reserved people, introverts, tend to do better where they can listen and take things in. You have people who think in terms of details and they really get bogged down in the details of how something's going to happen. And, and then you've got people who are big picture people who want, who have difficulty focusing on all the minutia. Like they see this vacation they're going to, but they have difficulty focusing on all the stuff they need to do to get ready for the vacation. You have people who prefer to do and not spend so much time thinking, you know, they're the ones who are going to say, all right, let's get going. And then you have the people who are the thinkers who say, hold on a minute, let's think about this. Let's make sure we've got a good vision. They work well together. The visionary makes sure that you have direction and the doer makes sure you eventually get going. Pragmatism or compassion, Some people choose, prefer things that are practical and they don't think as much. Again, in terms of what's going to make everybody happy. It's practical to do this at this point in time. Whereas the compassion driven person might be driven to make others happy. We need both. And then the spontaneous or the time driven. Spontaneous people help us adjust. When your car gets a flat, when something unexpected happens, the spontaneous person can adapt really easily. The more structured time driven person helps keep spontaneous people on track for things and they don't respond as well to last minute changes or unexpected events. It's good to have both types of people on your team. Synergize and connect. When you embrace your imperfections, you are recognizing that everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Oh, my gosh. I am like this person. And guess what? This person that I view as awesome as a mentor, guess what? They're imperfect too. So in some ways, they're like me. You know, neither one of us is perfect, so it helps us see connection. Many people find it easier to connect with someone who doesn't profess to be perfect. It's not as intimidating. We see somebody who's real, who's fallible. In fact, many people feel closer, more connected to another person when they can help that person. A lot of times we put off asking people for help because we don't want to impose. In reality, when we ask people to help, often, you know, as long as you're not abusing it, oftentimes they feel honored and they feel more connected with you because you trusted them to ask them for help. It takes all kinds of people to make the world work, which is where synergy comes in. We can't all be eyes or hands. We can't all be structured. We can't all be, you know, well, if we were all the same, things wouldn't work. There wouldn't be the diversity that we have. Synergy capitalizes on different people's strengths to more effectively accomplish something. Like I mentioned a couple slides ago, talkative people are great in social situations, and reserved people tend to flourish when they work on independent projects. So a reserved person may write the report and the talkative person may present the report. The reserved person often listens and hears and picks up a lot, and they notice things, and then they can comment on them. The talkative person may not notice as much because they are busy communicating. People who see the details synergize really well with people who see the big picture because they help each other get everything together. We'll stick with that vacation metaphor that I used. The big picture person identifies where you're going on vacation, what week you're going, and how you're getting there. The details person remembers the sunscreen and to call for medication, refills and all those other things. The doer and the thinker. The thinker encourages you to consider your options and get the information. The doer is the one who often sets the deadline and says, okay, we've got enough information now. We need to actually do something. We can't just sit here and ponder all day long. It's important. Once you have these ideas and you understand nobody's perfect and you understand that you can use your strengths to synergize your strengths, complement other people's weaknesses and vice versa. Then move on to developing other. Compassion. Compassion is an awareness of the suffering of another and the wish to relieve it. When people do not share your strengths, have compassion for them. Knowing that being imperfect can be very hard sometimes. Instead of being critical of someone who doesn't, you know, do high level calculus as well as you do, have compassion for them, Recognizing that that particular class may be really difficult for them. Whereas, you know, English 101 may be really difficult for you. Recognize and enhance the strengths they do have. A lot of times people when they don't share the same strengths, they often share complementary strengths. So recognizing and enhancing, embracing, noticing the strengths they do have can make them feel more empowered. And use your skills to help without judgment. If you're helping somebody, learn math. If you're helping somebody, you know, switch out a light switch or fix their oven or whatever it is that you're using your strengths to do, show them. Without the attitude of I can't believe you don't know this. You wouldn't want somebody to treat you like that. It's important to develop other compassion and empower them, encourage them, and also compassionately remind them that nobody's perfect. Now I start with other compassion because a lot of times it's easier for us to have compassion for other people and than it is for ourselves, which is really kind of interesting. A lot of people have difficulty cutting themselves some slack, having compassion for themselves. Self compassion is an awareness of your own suffering and the wish to relieve it. Not every day you're going to get up in the morning and it's going to be what I call an A day. Some days you're not feeling it. How can you have compassion for yourself on days when you didn't sleep well or you wake up and you're sick or you're in pain? How can you have compassion for yourself? Recognizing it's probably not going to be your best day. You will have mistakes even in the things that you do well. How can you have compassion for yourself when you screw something up? You know, I told you that I love cooking, but sometimes I lose track of time and I burn the food. That's, you know, really unfortunate sometimes. I remember one time I pulled it out of the oven and I just started to laugh and I'm like, well, I should really screw that one up. Guess we're going out to dinner. Having compassion with myself, recognizing that, yeah, I screwed up. Yes, I need to figure out how not to do this in the future, but dwelling on it and beating myself up for making a mistake, for being imperfect is not a good use of my energy. A better use is to fix the problem. Go out to dinner and learn from it. Start setting an alarm or not going outside and talking to sue right before dinner. You will encounter things that require strengths or characteristics you do not have. How can you have compassion for yourself instead of telling yourself, well, I should know how to do this. People don't know everything. We need to just get that under our. In our heads. We need to recognize that you are not going to know how to do everything. YouTube is great. You can go on YouTube and learn how to do a lot of things, but you may not know how to do everything. There are some things that you're not good at. I am awful at putting together detailed furniture. You know, Ikea and I don't get along very well. I don't have the patience. When I open up a box and there's 72 different parts, I've got to figure out what they are and where they go. It just overwhelms me. My daughter, on the other hand, loves it. She can do it without thinking twice. I recognize not my strength, it is hers. So I synergize. Instead of sitting there beating my head into the wall and being miserable trying to get it done, I pay her to do it. You only have so much time and energy. Part of being human is recognizing that we are all imperfect. You can choose how you respond to imperfection in yourself and others. You can either change it, for example, you know, going back to burning dinner. I can learn to set an alarm on my watch to remind me to go check on something instead of, you know, forgetting about it. I can change how I feel about it. I can embrace it and say, well, you know, I'm just going to burn dinner sometimes. Probably not something I'd say, but. Or you could let it go and decide that it's not something worth your energy to try to change. Or you could do nothing and continue to suffer. You can do nothing and still feel bad about it. Now, the last option doesn't really seem very empowering or logical to me, but it's your choice. You have the option. No action is a choice. How would it impact your mood, your physical health, and your relationships if you embraced your imperfection? And that's something to really think about. Because when we see ourselves as imperfect and when we fight, fight against that imperfection, we are telling ourselves that we're not good enough. We are Amplifying that inner critic that we have, which tends to make us feel anxious, we start feeling bad about ourself. You know, our self esteem gets lower, which often leads to tension. And it can impair your immunity. It can impair your ability to sleep because you're stressed out, you're shooting yourself to death. And when you are in a bad mood and you're not sleeping well or you're in pain, a lot of times it has a negative impact on your relationships. Going back to that first slide and the reason I put that first slide there, on authenticity. It's important to start out by looking at what you believe about being imperfect. If you are imperfect, which you know again, hint, you probably are. I am. We're human. We're imperfect beings. Being imperfect, what does that mean to you? What were you taught? What have you been told that being imperfect means? With that being said. So if you believe that being imperfect means being not worthy of love, maybe you think that. All right, let's test that belief. Look at your child. If your child is imperfect, does that mean that they are not worthy of love? My guess is you're saying, of course not. Well, don't hold yourself to some unreasonable standard when you're not holding anybody else to it. Recognizing that we all have our strengths and that's what makes the world go round. This episode was produced by Mr. Charles Snipes and presented by Dr. Donnelly Snipes. They can be contacted at 1633 West Main Street, Suite 902, Lebanon, Tennessee 37087 or by email at supportocsnipes.com More Tools for Living a mentally and physically healthy life can be found@docsnipes.com YouTube.