A Martyr at Work: perfection serves no purpose

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been in competition with myself: do more, be more, do better, be better.  

Be the best you can be.  

What’s wrong with that one might ask? 

While it felt good for a while and I got a lot of recognition for it – being the reliable one who could always do anything I was asked to do and to a high quality, I’ve come to realise that it’s just not it. It is like a beast that is always hungry for more, no matter how many times a day I feed it, it keeps coming to the feeding station. It has got to a point where it is becoming not worth the trade-off of sacrificing my body and my connection to something I know is much bigger and far grander than the physical me and something that is in truth my greatest ‘craving’. For what? Just to get something done, tick things off a list and feel safe.  

What is this ‘safety’ that does anything but keep us ‘safe’? I have a PhD in learning that perfection is a hefty wall of protection that is very easy to hide behind. When we make everything that we do ‘perfect’ (whatever that looks like) and get attached to the picture perfect, we leave no gaps for anyone to offer their observations and even to criticise or disagree with us. And by doing that we build artificial borders around us with “no entry” signs and we cut ourselves off even more from people: people whose reflections we need and who also need our reflection to evolve and grow.  We simply cannot be or do without others. 

Yet, this is how most of the world lives. So many of us are lost in work, shopping, netflix, gossip, other people’s lives, complaining… it’s a long list. Waiting for the high of the next fleeting holiday to get us through to the next 6 months, or cup of tea and piece of cake, or task to tick off a list to get us through the day.. all are the same drug of reward, just different flavours.  

I might convince myself that I am reflecting some kind of superwoman to my team and the office with my can-do work ethic, but if I am driven and my body is hard, for being in drive is not our body’s natural modus operandi and it puts the body in a state of hardness much like when we are standing out in the freezing cold with inadequate clothing, and if I’m exhausted and silently resentful, they can still feel it. There is nothing that cannot be felt by another, there is only a choice to feel what’s going on under the physicality or not. And no matter how long I might believe I am staying under the radar – which includes my thoughts and the inner state of my body – no one is inspired by a lie, no matter how artfully and beautifully I might dress it up.  

I reached a crunch point the other day where I got to feel the drive and hardness of how I’d been working and pushing my body. When I overload myself with work and tasks and leave no space for these things let alone anything else, my body feels compressed and I feel joyless and disconnected. I feel out of sync and rhythm with myself, and irritated. There is a feeling of far greater density in my body with no space left for God to work alongside me while I’m doing what I’m doing, and no matter how hard I might try I can’t feel the depth of the magnificence of what we are all intrinsically connected to. Life feels very one dimensional and there is nothing to write about, or say. Rather than stop and allow myself to feel all of that, so that I can offer myself an opportunity to change the unpleasant state, often I will want to bury myself further into the numbness by working more, eating more … finding anything I can to distract myself.  No wonder the saying: we are our own worst enemy. 

But yesterday was different.  

I just allowed myself to accept where I was at and how I felt in my body, to feel how this cuts me off from that deeper knowing of myself and connecting with others, and to move differently. To pay attention to every single movement and bring focus to making it gentle. This super simple process instantly made me feel lighter and more inspired by what’s possible, and mostly that I wasn’t a bad person for having lost myself in overdrive. 

What I also got to feel was that as we refine our choices for how we are and how we move, the choices that aren’t aligned to that same gentle, tender and delicate quality really stand out and feel so much worse than what we  might have previously considered to be abusive.  

And there again is another choice: to react and judge the choice as ‘bad’, or to see it as an opportunity to learn and come out the other end much wiser and to treasure ourselves more. This is precisely how we continuously raise our standards in relationships with others across the board for what is and what is not allowed so that ultimately one day we all treat ourselves and our bodies as the sacred temples that they truly are. 

“Women must rekindle their own rhythms within society and not let society demand of them what is not natural to their body.”

Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings & Revelations,  p526 

By B, UK  

For further inspiration.. 

Choosing function or true focus: how does this support us as we go about our day? The profoundness of self-care at all times.

What happens when we connect to our qualities and commit to making them our foundation for how we live in every moment of our day?

My Dream Job as a Bra Advisor – Reflections on Working in the Service Industry

by Shevon Simon, UK 

Small changes in the workplace and no more tears at the toilet!

I stopped working long hours, which left me feeling exhausted. I began to notice when my body would feel that it had come to a place of ‘enough’ work and slowly, slowly I chose to listen to this and stop working, rather than push through. This left me with more space in the evenings to be with myself rather than driving myself with work. As a result I felt more vital on the following day and consequently, more productive in lesser hours – a ‘win win’ situation for myself, my organisation, my clients and my colleagues!

My Dream Job as a Bra Advisor – Reflections on Nurturing in the Service Industry

by Shevon Simon, UK

From a very young age I’ve always wanted to serve. Serve humanity and help. I couldn’t wait to work, not only for the financial gain but to put my skills and willingness to the test. I began my first job at 16 in a shoe shop. I did well, as I always wanted to provide people with the best experience. I was honest, never sold them anything they didn’t really want just to get a sale, and I was one of the top sales people. I was soon inspired to move onto a company who paid their staff more and treated them better.

Dentistry Part 1 – When a Woman chooses her Profession over and above Herself

by Rachel Mascord, Australia 

Twenty-two years ago I entered dental practice.

Dentistry proved to be a very challenging career for me for many years. My relationship with it degenerated to the point that for years I hated going to work. I woke every morning dreading the day ahead and longed to escape. In trying to deliver perfection constantly…I lost connection to an understanding that true care and tenderness were possible – and an essential part of this field of work. 

Moreover, I had no sense that there could be tremendous value in the quality I brought to my work by simply ‘being the real me’.

BEING A WOMAN IN DENTISTRY

I was a fairly bright young woman with a natural tendency to care for others. My self-confidence was very low, so I entered into my dental studies needing that qualification to bring me that confidence. I believed that in getting my degree I would have true value to bring to the world. I falsely thought dentistry would give me a sense of ‘worth’ and ‘importance’.

In The Company Of Women

by JK, UK

Whilst working recently I have been feeling just how lovely it is working with women, and how different my experiences are nowadays.

In my early days at work in the 1980’s, I worked in a number of different offices and environments with women. At that time I often observed bitchiness amongst one or two of the women, with one woman talking behind another’s back, for instance. Sometimes there were huddles of women gossiping about another woman, sometimes there were just silent facial expressions, door slamming and awkward moments amongst the women. In one particular group of women where I worked they even went so far as to ‘send one of the woman to Coventry’ – a phrase that described when all of the other women ganged up and totally ignored the one woman, not even speaking to her when she spoke – just a blank stony silence – a kind of ‘freezing out’ of that one woman.