Dave Grohl - Perfection can be a Beast

Dave Grohl - Perfection can be a Beast

Author: Ian Mansell

Dave Grohl of the famous bands Foo Fighters and Nirvana says: “My mother told me ‘Don’t compare yourself with others’ and it’s the best advice I’ve ever had.”

So how does that advice work for us. Perfection really is a beast of a word. Excellence, Achievement, Mastery and Success are all benign, positive and life-enhancing pursuits - but Perfection is a beast!

Let’s look at how this comes about.

If we decide to strive for perfection in any aspect of our life, we need a way to measure our progress. We may start out admiring our initial successes, even feeling gratitude to ourselves for the talents we are uncovering in ourself.  The sense of achievement propels us to push even further and harder as we advance towards our goals. We are scoring ‘runs on the board’: our successes start to receive acclaim and soon we are chasing and sometimes achieving moments of excellence.

All well and good.

The Slippery Slope

But then the question of perfection starts to emerge, and our journey begins to darken for the first time if we decide that perfection for us means the absence of ‘mistakes’, mishaps or conflicts. This concept of Perfection sets up a dreadful rod for our back, as we have (once again) made a religion for ourself out of purity and ‘godliness’.

Now, instead of the positive journey of acknowledging and praising the excellence of our achievements, we are on the slippery slope of looking for and finding faults in our own work. We may begin to compare ourselves and measure our life and achievements against the works of celebrities and our greatest heroes.

Ego may have us feel that we are not yet being acclaimed or acknowledged for being as great as our heroes, and we begin to wonder why. We must have neglected some aspect of our skills, but we can't see for ourself what it is, so we turn to others for their opinion. Here begins our downfall:-

• By making the opinions of others more important than ourselves we lose our sense of self-loyalty.
• We lose faith in our own inner knowing and start to ignore the promptings of our sensitivity.
• We start serving masters other than ourself.

Our out-of-balance Visionary gift kicks in, endlessly replaying our errors and failings, which opens the doors to confused souls - souls who are only too keen to berate us for past incidents they are still blaming us for.

The downward spiral this produces can be especially damaging to sensitive people, and has led many to abandon promising careers and relationships to instead wallow in self-loathing and self-pity - their identity forever stamped with the words “Not Good Enough!”

How can we avoid falling into this sinkhole?

Traditionally we were told to just “harden up” and take the criticism on the chin.  In recent generations emphasis has shifted to overly praising a child’s every achievement, with the intention of building a shield of self-confidence that will make them bullet-proof. Unfortunately these structures are often built on hypocrisy and delusions which do not survive exposure to the real world. Sensitive people often end up living in bunkers of delusion, hiding from the harshness of the world. 

Living Illumination has many powerful solutions for such people.

From day one our courses emphasise self-loyalty and sincerity, and the use of the tools of communication with guidance to break from dependence on the opinions of others.

Understanding the way our gift of Vision can offer us the pictures of perfection that we are striving for must be tempered with the knowledge that we are all unique individuals climbing our own ladders of success. None of us are at the same point on the exact same ladder, and our progress needs to be viewed from the perspective of many lifetimes, not just this one. Fixating on any one picture of success can become a terrible burden to carry.

Mozart, Dickens, da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Mahatma Gandhi did not achieve their greatness overnight – many lifetimes of struggle preceded that which we know of them. Anyway: why would you want to compare your life’s work with one of these greats? Mozart was uniquely Mozart. You will be uniquely You!

Gaining Bit Picture Perspective

Living Illumination helps us to put our own lifetimes into perspective. In our string of past lifetimes there will likely have been times where our success led us into leadership roles where one ‘mistake’ caused our downfall. The resulting damage and subsequent persecution has been hard to forget, yet we have been reluctant to revisit the circumstances to seek the necessary forgiveness for ourself. Such occurrences leave us vulnerable to accusations of having made a ‘mistake’; hence any pursuit of perfection is a minefield for sensitive people who have not reviewed and reconciled the truth of their past lifetimes. With humility we must recognise that we are all flawed individuals, flawed in our own unique way, and all of us are seeking to heal and move on from those pasts, each at our own pace.

Finally, understanding the role and mechanics of confused souls is a HUGE area of understanding that Living Illumination offers us. Without its truths you will have difficulty fully resolving such problems as these.

If we are to avoid the downward spiral of perfectionism we need to know that confusion delights in seeing us unravel. The moment we open the door to self-criticism, confusion moves in to amplify our misery. If we indulge in self-pity, confusion will use other people in our environment – especially those whose opinions matter the most to us – to voice opinions that will hurt us the most. The conspiracy of confused souls to steal our energy is not just a theory: this is a real conspiracy!

You can read more about the mechanics of confusion in Kristy Kaye’s excellent books, and there are a multitude of courses available through the Living Illumination website. Learning about confusion is a life-changing experience! 

You Are Invited 

In the meantime you can attend one of the Trance Healing Clinics being held around the country for a real-time understanding of how confusion affects peoples’ lives. 

If you then decide to take it further, all the necessary training is available for you to become a Trance Healer yourself. There is no greater calling on Planet Earth at this time.

What can you do now?

1.  Take action – if your feelings are inspiring you to take action, check out our upcoming programs and one-to-one consultations at  www.livingillumination.com
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Read other articles related to this topic:

1. The Pursuit of Perfection 

2. 50 Life Affirming Affirmations 

3. How to Improve Your Mental Health - 7 Ways

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