The Energy of Perfectionism

Like so many people navigating life in today’s online culture, I’ve noticed my attachment to perfectionism is potentially the biggest underlying energy that keeps me feeling self-confined.

Many years ago I decided I was going to teach myself to knit (yes - teach myself, not learn from a seasoned knitter). When I went to the yarn store, an employee came over to see if I needed help. A healthy response might have been, “yes, I’ve never knit before”, but do you want to know what I did instead?

I pretended I was an experienced knitter! I said I was looking for something very specific and left the store fairly hastily without buying what I needed! Looking back, this seems absurd to me. I am not someone who fakes it till I make it; I like to have a level of skill and capability before sticking any sort of feather in my cap. But for some reason I couldn’t admit I was a newbie who needed help

Of course there are many, many aspects of self that activated my response in this scenario, but if I focus on one, it’s perfectionism and the fears that feed perfectionism. While my beliefs, experiences, and attachments to perfectionism have shifted quite a bit since then, it is still one of my greatest forms of protection. Perhaps you can relate?

Much like glass, perfectionism is a hard and brittle energy. It does have supportive qualities (it can help us feel safe and provide a place of incubation for growth), but if we stay behind it for too long, we create partitions that block us.

These energetic partitions not only keep us from sharing our uniqueness & creativity with those around us, but they also internally separate us from ourselves! So, how do we release these energies, like perfectionism, and free ourselves? Firstly, when I speak of “releasing”, “healing”, or “clearing”, what I truly mean is freeing. Freeing the energy from being a block to being in the flow.

We are all uniquely gifted, so any energy that we view as a shadow is really an out-of-balance gift or is energy concealing that gift. So, “freeing” energy is learning to understand and appreciate this part of yourself - organizing it within your mind, heart, body, and energy field. In time, you will learn to work with it in more balanced ways.

So, for March, I am intending to work on dismantling some of my perfectionism energy and I invite you to join me by participating in an Energy Organization Challenge. You can focus on any energy that keeps you feeling stuck. The challenge holds 25 days of simple meditations, exercises, and prompts for self-reflection to help you start organizing and harmonizing your own energy field.

Are you feeling confined by old patterns, beliefs, or fears?

RECLAIM YOUR FREEDOM.