Permission to be human

Let’s just get something out in the open right now.

I’m not perfect.

No, really. I know it’s hard to believe (well, unless you actually know me – then it’s like, “Duh!”), but I fall short of embodying the things I teach and aspire to way more often than I would like.

The problem isn’t that I’m incompetent, or that I’m a hypocrite who talks a big game but can’t deliver. The problem is…

<drumroll please>

I’m human!

That’s something that needs infinitely more acknowledgement than it currently gets. Not just for me, but for everyone.

One of my pet peeves with the personal development world is how much of the messaging is around being our “best self,” or doing something “epic.” Somehow a superlative life is the only thing to aspire to.

Too often we translate that to mean that, unless we do, we’re not OK. Our lives don’t measure up. We need to do better. We’re not “enough.”

And pardon my French, but that’s bullshit.

The reality is that each and every one of us is human, and being human is inherently a messy, imperfect affair.

The human experience is always one of ebb and flow. Sometimes we shine, sometimes we step in a pile of dog doo and track it all over the carpet. (Can you relate?) There is no static superhuman place we can camp out and reap the rewards of all our efforts to aim high.

My point?

You will always have your messy, imperfect human times. Times when you fail. Times when you’re consumed by uncertainty and doubt. Times when you lose it and have a screaming match with the endlessly looping phone tree when you call the cable company to resolve an issue. (Oh wait, that was me. I’m sure you wouldn’t do that.)

And when you do, you have a choice. Will you make it mean something it doesn’t – like that you just suck – or will you treat yourself with compassion and move on? Will you see it as proof that you don’t have what it takes, or will you ask what you can learn from the experience and do better next time? Will you beat yourself up, or will you give yourself a little extra love?

Being human will be a recurring theme in this blog. I might even have given the blog a subtitle:

How to thrive as a messy, imperfect human, surrounded by other messy, imperfect humans, in a messy, imperfect world.

Not exactly catchy, I know. But accurate.

Try this: For the next week, watch for those messy, imperfect moments. Did you lose your temper in traffic? Did you try something new and fall on your face? Did you give up when you encountered a problem instead of being curious and working through it?

After spending a week noticing those moments, pick one and ask yourself two things. First, how did you respond? And second, if the response was negative (like beating up on yourself or getting angry at yourself), what might a more helpful response have been? How could you respond differently in the future?

You’re going to keep having those human moments, again and again and again. How you relate to them, what you make them mean, and how much they limit you is up to you.

(And for the record, yes, even your effort to improve how you relate to your inevitable messy imperfection will be – you guessed it – messy and imperfect. So when it is, cut yourself some slack. Whip out a little kindness, a little compassion, take a deep breath, and move on. That’s the secret sauce.)