Food poisoning, perfectionism + your outlook on life 💁♀️
My mother-in-law always says that if everything goes perfectly, you make no memories.
Well… my husband and I just returned from a weekend away in Mexico City (our first trip away from the kids ever!) and we had the most incredible two days. And then, we got food poisoning 12 hours before we had to get on our flight back home. Suffice it to say, that we will never forget this trip 🤪
My point is this: there is no such thing as perfect and the relentless pursuit of it will exhaust you more than any temporary reward could uplift you.
Instead, the quality of your life is a question of perspective and how you choose to build memories.
And think about this:
Something in your life could have technically gone perfectly when you look at it from the outside, but internally you may have been stressed and anxious the whole time.
Whereas another experience may have been filled with hurdles and challenges, but you were able to laugh about them and maintain a good feeling inside.
I often feel that in our world –a world obsessed with how things look and appear– we live our lives as if we are watching ourselves on film: from the outside in… through the eyes of an external observer.
It's hard to feel whole when our view of ourselves is split.
It's stressful and dysregulating to our nervous system when how we feel on the inside is in competition with how we try to make things look on the outside.
I'm finding more and more that having practices that return you into your own mental and physical body are crucial.
Whether that's meditation, walking, painting, lying by the backyard… it really doesn't matter as long as you have a little bit of undisturbed space where you can simply ask yourself self-inquiry questions like:
How am I really doing?
What's making me happy these days?
What's weighing on me?
What do I appreciate about myself?
Where do I want to evolve and grow?
At the end of day, you belong to YOU and the quality of your lived experience is yours to shape. You choose your outlook, your perspective, your interpretations.
How you FEEL about something on the inside, the meaning you give to the things that happen in your life always outweigh how things LOOK on the outside.
It's easy to forget that in a world obsessed with perfectionism.
So, take some time today (and every day) to be with yourself in quiet, visualize yourself returning to yourself, and know on a cellular level that the quality of your life depends on your relationship with yourself and the outlook you allow yourself to have.
Love always,
Caroline