Addressing Flaws: The Water’s Fine

Address your flaws.

All of them. Even the ones you know about but don’t really like to think about. The parts of you that you’re ashamed of, or scared of or worried about. You need to do it. And it’s not easy work. Not even a little bit of it is easy. But it is simple. And all you have to do begin is be honest with yourself. Really honest with yourself. You have to admit that there are parts of you that are unadjusted and problematic.

The thing about our modern idea of self-care is that we’re all in some way broken. That’s what the Instagram gurus and money-grabbers tell us. We’re all broken and we all need to heal.

I personally find this to be patronising, and mostly I find it to be complete bullshit.

Look at it this way:

There isn’t a person alive or who has ever lived that was born or existed without flaws. Not a single person. You can’t name one. We all have them. Being flawed is part of the program. So to suggest that a person is broken because they have flaws is that say that a car is broken because it has wheels – the flaws are part of what makes you, you.

So I’m not saying you have to fix your flaws or change yourself, not unless you’re unhappy of course. What I’m saying is to find your blind spots. Find the parts of you that you aren’t nurturing because you don’t like how it makes you feel. If you can bring all the dark parts of you into the light you’ll soon find that these flaws aren’t as big and scary as you believe they are. They are simply parts of you that you have historically neglected because the potential emotional weight seemed too heavy.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. And it’s not something you’ll really believe until you do it for yourself.

Addressing your flaws will make you more fulfilled and happy – not less.

When you address and accept your flaws you get to a place where you know yourself fully – or at least far more than you ever did before. Because before you look upon the flawed points of your character you only ever know the parts of you that you like by default. And this isn’t a full picture.

Looking your flaws dead on and accepting every aspect of who you are allows you to become more self-compassionate. It helps you to understand who you are and in turn allows you to understand what will make you happy.

And additional bonus prize: You will no longer be affected by the negative words of people who don not know you. When you know who you aare and what your flaws are, there is nothing anyone can say that you do not already know and accept. It’s a serious hack!

Something to think about this week.

Be good,

Daragh