Perfection, Living in Your Head, & The Angst of Forgetting to Bring Your Body Along

Pre-P.S. You're reading day ten of my 32 days of insights, inspiration, and instigation. (Very informal title). Get the full scoop here. ✨

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When you wake up from an allergy-induced 10-hour sleep and realize yesterday's email had two typos, one of which is in the first sentence...

You have the choice to:

1. Ridicule yourself by saying things like, "How the hell did you not catch that? You're so stupid."
2. Recognize your mistake and let it go.
3. Thank the writing gods for gifting you with a hit of inspiration, take a highlighter to the mistake, and write a supremely meta email about your typo.

Obviously, I'm choosing option three.

Perfectionism is having a moment

The desire for perfection and how it can end up helping or hurting us is a subconscious pattern with a societal spotlight.

As humans, we inherently compare ourselves to others. So in a world that perpetuates establishing our worth based on those comparisons, it's easy to want to look perfect.

Never mind that your brain makes perfection a moving target that changes faster than social media companies change their algorithms.

When I see people talking about perfectionism, they most often reference our mindsets around perfection.

But if you get trapped in perfection loops, it's not just in your head.

Mindset work is necessary but not sufficient.

Most people walk around living in their heads, utterly clueless about the sensations in their bodies.

A past boyfriend used to tell me frequently (with growing annoyance), "You're doing that weird breathing thing again."

I guess there were times I'd completely stop breathing in a rhythmic pattern and then end up doing slight gasps for air that grated his ears like nails on a chalkboard.

I've managed to stop that (I think).

Now, I often find myself randomly pinching my neck when I'm stressed as if pulling on the vein will increase the blood flow to my brain.

I firmly believe in rewriting our old stories so those voices that sound like Professor Umbridge in our heads can finally pipe down, and we can let situations go.

BUT if we only focus on the mind, we're ignoring a critical part of the letting go process—the body.

Letting go is about allowing things to flow through you instead of letting them hit you as if you were a 100-foot-thick brick wall.

Addressing the story mentally while forgetting it also gets stored in our bodies sets us up to wonder why the hell we're unable to move on from things.

Getting good at this means flexing your interoception muscles.

When I first reread yesterday's email, the familiar stories of perfection piped up.

Because of my N.L.P. training, I knew not to make meaning from those thoughts.

Instead of "Oh wow, there's a glaring typo, you're a terrible writer." it was "Oh wow, there's a glaring typo."

That's it. It didn't need to mean more.

That's where most people stop.

It's even where many coaches who talk about rewriting stories stop.

But you also have to rewire the stories, or you're just will-powering your way through personal growth, which begins to feel exhausting.

Rewiring the stories involves your body.

Don't leave your body behind

Beyond our thoughts, we benefit from becoming aware of what's happening in our bodies.

In the case of the typo, I quickly stopped myself from making it mean anything, but I also noticed my breath hitch, my hands tense, and a light freezing sensation come over me.

Past versions of me may have been stuck in "the freeze" all day.

Instead, I moved.

I got up, moved my hips, shook my arms for 30 seconds, and then sat back down, clear to work (aka write this email).

If situations hit our bodies like a wall and can't flow through us, that's when we find ourselves in a conflict that lasts for days or feeling off because we've cut off our momentum from its life source.

Instead, we can pay attention, make it mentionable (talking to yourself makes you cool, not crazy, in this corner of the internet), and move so we can move on.

When you want to grow through something instead of just going through something, it helps to stop suffocating yourself by only living in your head.

Speaking from experience.

Happy Sunday,

xx, Alyssa

P.S. If you missed yesterday's email, you can read it here. It warmed my heart to write it (despite the typo).

P.P.S. Since our brains are wired to read things like this image, it's my guess you didn't even notice the typo, and now I've gone and put a giant highlighter to it.

But hey, email content doesn't fall from trees. I mine my life for it. 😂

P.P.P.S. Jessica Maguire's resources on nervous system awareness are 🏆.

(I'm not an affiliate. I've been sharing what I'm learning from her course with all my friends, so I thought I'd share it with you too).

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