The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control

Paradoxically, the people who trust themselves the most are usually the people who have betrayed themselves the most profoundly, but then made the decision to walk themselves home—inch by inch—to their authentic selves.

People who trust themselves trust themselves because they’re honest with themselves. More specifically, they’re honest about what they need to restrict themselves from or altogether avoid. We think that the more we trust ourselves, the fewer boundaries we’ll need; the opposite is true. The people who trust themselves the most are the ones who honor

We all have very good reasons not to trust ourselves. We’ve all betrayed ourselves badly, repeatedly, shamefully, and knowingly. Show me someone who hasn’t abandoned themselves, and I will show you a child. As we grow into adults, our world opens and we make mistakes. Ignoring your own needs and deserting yourself is a universal mistake.

Trusting yourself looks like finding the courage to override the constant temptations to minimize the small but meaningful steps you’re taking to honor your intuition. Trusting yourself looks like depersonalizing setbacks. Trusting yourself looks like realizing that just because the thing you felt so certain about changed, that doesn’t mean you wer

When you don’t trust yourself, you’re waiting to catch yourself in a mistake so you can pounce on your own certainty about how unworthy of trust you are. You get petty. You become fixated on your mistakes, and you keep a tally of those mistakes. In contrast, when you notice you’ve been numbing out all week beyond a level you’re comfortable with and

Perfectionism represents the natural, innate, and healthy human impulse to align with our whole, complete selves. A restored perfectionist understands that it’s not that you long for some external thing or for yourself to be perfect, it’s that you long to feel whole and to help others feel whole.

We put such pressure on ourselves to know exactly who we are and what we want in every moment; it’s okay for some things to be fuzzy. People who identify with having “so many issues” are often just people who don’t have immediate or perfect closure on the ever-evolving experience of being human.

Some people find themselves by already knowing who they are, then moving towards that. Other people find themselves by knowing who they’re not, then moving away from that. Many of us work our whole lives at a combination of the two.

Control encourages restriction; power encourages freedom. Control is petty; power is generous. Control micromanages; power inspires. Control manipulates; power influences. Control is myopic—you have to plan everything one precise move at a time. Power is visionary—it affords you the great luxury of taking leaps of faith. Power is the upgrade.