Image of Perfection - Part 1

By Kevin Murray

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

Starting as babies, we look up and out to see how we are doing. We look for the reflection in our parents and caregivers to see “how it is going.” We are completely dependent, so it makes sense that we are looking “out there” to get our needs met. If we see smiling, loving faces, we are good. All is well. At some point along the way, we see or hear something not so pleasant and harmonious. There may be some upset. We look up into the same face, but it is not happy and smiling. Something is not right. This happens throughout our young lives. And it continues today. Along with the unsmiling face we may also receive some words: NO, don’t be that way, you can’t do that, who do you think you are? - and we also receive an emotional download along with these words. The emotional message is “you’re not okay just the way you are.” And we receive that message. And we don’t like the feelings generated inside us that correspond to that message - it simply doesn’t feel good.

So, we adapt. We learn to modify our behavior to keep the happy faces coming, and reduce the frequency of the not-happy faces. Or we go for the not-happy faces if that’s all we can get. This is what we all do. This is not a problem. But there is a big side effect. We learn to become something that we are not, something less than authentic. We try to reach some level of “how we should be.” But this is based on what someone else thinks we should be. More challenging, is that we get conflicted messages of how we should be from Mom, Dad, Teacher, Brother, Sister, Preacher, etc. But we do our best to be enough in light of all these opinions.

From an adult point-of-view we see how silly it would be to try to please all of these different expectations. But as young people, we do create an aggregate of these expectations - the Image of Perfection.

There are two major ways we modify our behavior as children in reaction to these outside influences. One is to do our best to be what we are told. The other is to rebel and go the opposite way. It’s all about hooking the attention on the outside. Both ways will get attention; and any attention is better than no attention. When we are trying to meet the expectations of this aggregate image, we are not being our selves, no matter the result on the outside.

An interesting thing happens along the way however. We no longer need the outside influences to tell us or remind us how to be. We internalize these voices primarily by believing them. If we don’t believe them, they aren’t part of our makeup. But once we believe them, they are hard-wired into our self view and self expression.

If we never have a chance to see that these voices are now operating internally and independently, we are run by them. We find ourselves living by a standard that is based in outside opinions that we have agreed to, whether or not they are actually true. We may be “successful” by outside standards, but we may also feel a creeping feeling of dissatisfaction. Being “good enough” for them and living according to this is really selling ourselves short. We can be so much more and enjoy life so much more by questioning these voices and opinions and then deciding for ourselves how to live into our own values with our own unique expression.

How do we begin this shift to take back our own attention and live life on our terms? That’s Part 2.

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