5 Perfectly Imperfect Traits of Humanness and How to Manage Them
Perfectly Imperfect- Humanness
We are all perfectly imperfect in our humanness. This stretches to the most enlightened people that we seek out for inspiration and spiritual guidance to the most brutally unaware people that can teach us something more about ourselves. We are all designed to make mistakes, to judge, to expect, and to fear. Humanness is the experience of every characteristic or trait that is born from our ego.
A greater knowledge and understanding of yourself leads you toward acceptance. As my personal statement, I know that I am highly spiritual, emotional and empathetic. I am an extremely deep feeling creature. I feel anger, I feel the depths of sorrow and the sharpest blades of lack… does this make me any less spiritual because I allow myself to feel these things? Does this make me less spiritually aware because I express my emotions, swear and curse at times? No, it does not. See, spirituality is not a road to perfection paved in pure white light. It is a road toward the utter uniqueness of who you fundamentally are. Like a full-on bear-hug of your faults, flaws, quirks and everything that makes you beautifully human. How can you utilize them with love to become greater through them, for yourself and others?
Empathy
Empathy is one of the greatest elemental gifts of our soul’s nature. We all have the ability to feel deep empathy and compassion when we lead from our heart. The ability to feel from someone else’s perspective and experience of life, the capacity to place your self in the heart of another so that you may understand them, and in turn, know yourself better through them is what being human is all about.
“Empathy speaks to us in silent moments. It tells us that each soul is worthy, loved and honoured. We only ever need to face our own shadows, our own pain… and to be our own mirror.”- Christine Evangelou
Empathy is what connects us as the souls and sentient beings that we quintessentially are. When we understand ourselves better, we naturally instill within us a higher love and understanding for those around us and the world we live in. It is our very human experiences and life lessons of loss, pain, grief, lack and failure that place us in the conditions that we need in order to bloom these flowers of empathy, compassion, love and understanding. Our negatively deemed traits are not something that we can eradicate, but something to be humbled by. Something that can lead us back toward the voice of our heart and soul, and that is GROWTH.
Here are 5 (in most cases negatively perceived) traits of our humanness and how to manage them:
1. Fear
Don’t deny your fears or pretend you don’t have them- we all feel fear. Our fears will always direct us to something within that we need to transform or transcend. All we need to do is expose and question what we fear so that we can discover what lays beneath. How do we do this? We eject our fears from the darkness when we open our heart to the vulnerabilities of our human nature. Befriend your fears, sit with them, get to know them. It is only through understanding our fears that we can revolutionize them.
We find our courage in those inspired moments when we trust and lead from our heart. Being fearless is not to be reckless. It is a deeper trust that sprouts from your heart space on what you intuitively feel is right for you. Inevitably, it is often what you fear mostly that you will be challenged to overcome because this is how you evolve and transform. You practice the art of becoming as you tentatively break out of the cocoon and find your wings to fly.
Our fears are often birthed through a resistance to change but the beauty of change is essentially the only permanent thing we have. Ultimately, we cannot continue to avoid or resist it without stunting our way forward in some respect. Show your vulnerability and admit your fears so that you can move through them. Therein lies your strength.
2. Envy and Jealousy
It is natural to feel envious of others when you feel a deep sense of lack within yourself. The seeds of envy are born from an ingrained sense of lack- a misconception of your own inherent value. Envy and jealousy will continue to spiral through you if they remain unchecked. Don’t allow the swords of comparison to penetrate so deeply into your heart. There is a purpose for you and everyone around you and each is beautiful in their own right.
Acceptance of what we feel enables us to take action to free ourselves from the damage and inner destruction that envy and jealousy can cause. Remove your focus on the people around you and redirect it to you. Learn to lovingly build yourself up instead of break yourself down. And what of the person that you feel envious of? Who is to say that their life is something you would want for yourself if you knew the absolute truth of it? What others see at first glance is not the whole story. We all have our own pain and challenges that external eyes may never see because we protect and hide it so well.
Focus on you and your own journey- that is the true gift you have to offer this universe. You being you in all your blessed power, passion and purpose. No life is “perfect” or without its share of heartache, failure and pain.
3. Lack
We are born as wholehearted human beings that truly lack nothing. We are always enough. Lack is something that infiltrates us over time as we struggle to find our way past the challenges and difficult circumstances that life brings toward us. Overcoming a deep sense of lack requires an extensive search into your soul to rediscover truth and love for all that you are. Regardless of external measures, people, places, conditions or opinions. Practice self love and learn to value your individuality, your heart, and all you have to give. If we remain looped into a mindset of lack and the weight of feeling “imperfect” then we perpetuate cycles of sorrow that highlight our diminished sense of self worth.
Harsh life lessons continue to repeat until we can look at ourselves stripped back and standing emotionally naked in a pool of our own love. Illuminate yourself by focusing on something within that you can give. Kindness, compassion and understanding cost nothing and have the ability to warm your heart with fullness. First you need to extend these to yourself.
The voids that you feel within cannot be filled by another person, a better job or more money. Only you can create a sense of fullness within you. Don’t keep trying to escape your heart. You cannot keep placing a band aid over your emotional wounds. You need to delve deeply into your heart-space to mend. Through healing you rediscover all the beauty you are truly made of. Consider that perhaps life is not about achieving happiness- but the profoundness of growth.
“We are so scared to fail that we fail to try, we are so fearful of being seen that we hide our heart behind a fake smile, we are so anxious of change that we close the door to it…and yet all these thoughts and emotions can be used as tools to reinforce our strength and individual impact upon the world. We move toward an enlightened way of being when we guide ourselves from a place of lack toward a place of fullness, and from a place of comfort to a place of growth.” – Christine Evangelou/Rocks Into Roses
4. Worry and Anxiety
Our ego serves to protect us and keep us in a state of comfort and familiarity. The risk of the unknown and anything that is even slightly uncertain has the ability to cause us worry and anxiety. We naturally fear the unknown, what is on the other side? More pain, more failure, more loss? You can lose yourself in overthought. Faith and trust in who we are is what strengthens our inner dynamics of intuition and spiritual purpose. That faith and trust is something we move toward by embracing the uncertainty that our ego steers us away from through worry. When we lead from our heart we quieten our mind and hush those worries and anxieties.
Spending time alone, exercising, or simply doing something that you enjoy helps to ground you and tap you back into your heart-space. Focus on anything around you that is solid- something you can feel, see, touch, or hear. Remember, worries and anxieties are generally illusions that our mind fearfully creates to keep us safe. Worst case scenarios and overthinking do not move us forward. But highlighting truth, what’s real and standing strong in the present time does.
What we focus upon is what we will notice more of. Rather than ruminating over the perceived harm the unknown can bring, re-frame your thinking to the wonder of possibility and all it may contain. Life is a mystery. We may never figure it out but we can be mindful of our thought patterns so that we can discern a greater flow with what’s in store.
5. Judgement and Expectations
William Shakespeare wrote “Expectation is the root of all heartache”… and he was right. There is little more damaging to us than failed expectations and busted illusions of what we had erected in our minds eye. When expectations are knocked, so are we. It’s often not the reality of life that harms us… just the expectation of it to be a certain way. We ache to fulfill our needs the way in which we want them to be met. But life is not like that. Life will not pander to our expectations. Life catapults us into life- every bit of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is a full and messy experience and it is never what we envision it to be. Perhaps if we give things a chance, give ourselves a chance, then maybe we can find the beauty within it.
When we judge harshly, we place ourselves and others on a pedestal that we, and they, are most certainly going to be chucked off. Because what sits on that pedestal is not real… it’s a fantasy of something we expect. Rather than build upon your expectations and judgements of yourself and others- focus on standards instead. A standard is something of integrity that is born from what is real and true within you. A standard is something that you reach after many failed expectations and broken dreams. Hold yourself to a standard of higher love, value, self worth, and purpose.
Can we ever be judgement or expectation free? Perhaps not. But we can take the time to be more fluid and flexible in what we expect for ourselves and others. We are all just doing the best we can with the knowledge, wisdom and experience we have at that time. And that is totally OK. As Maya Angelou wisely said “When you know better, do better”.
More love and understanding…
Rather than deny our humanness…we should embrace it. It is what we refute, box away and bury deeply in our emotional graves that has the potential to cause greater conflict within us. Self awareness bursts through the bubbles of our own thinking so that we may learn to appreciate and understand our imbalances, faults and flaws in order to transcend them. Your ego is not the bad guy. How you respond and take action from your spiritual compass humbles and tames your egoistic tendencies and human imperfections.
“Reflection offers a retrospective exploration, a way to figure out how everything fits and connects now on your journey- and being done so without regret or remorse. Reflection is the birthplace of discernment, an insightful and awakening place that grants you to keep what you need and smartly sift away the rest.” – Christine Evangelou/Stardust and Star Jumps
Thank you for reading! Please share this article to a perfectly imperfect friend and check out Rocks Into Roses: Life Lessons for Inspiration and Personal Growth for more soul support and guidance! Chrissy 🙂
Categorised as: Life Coaching and Mentoring, Personal Growth and Spirituality