What’s in it for me? Step away from denial and embrace growth!
How many times have you heard the saying “Nobody’s perfect?” Probably too many to count, if you’re like most people. Chances are you’ve said it yourself, too. Yet many of us are at war with our flaws, and try desperately to hide them.
But when you focus on concealing the things you think are wrong with yourself, you’re not able to fully be yourself. This is because your flaws aren’t things to be fixed – they’re part of who you are. Without them, you lose authenticity and the ability to connect with others. Instead of feeling “less than” because of your shortcomings, you need to own them and see them as opportunities for continued growth. These blinks are a guide to doing exactly that.
In these blinks, you’ll discover
what people and broken pottery have in common;
the one line you definitely have to cross; and
how pain can help you grow.
Your unique flaws draw people to you.
Can you imagine an object becoming more valuable after it breaks? That might sound strange, but it’s exactly what happens to pottery in the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi. Loosely translated as gold repair, Kintsukuroi is the centuries-old practice of mending broken pottery with gold. It turns otherwise worthless pieces of clay into something uniquely beautiful and worth more than the original object.
No two pieces of Kintsukuroi pottery have the same gold-filled cracks; each has allure and value because of its unique flaws. Human beings, when you think about it, aren’t that different.
The key message here is: Your unique flaws draw people to you.
Most people’s first instinct is to hide their flaws. But why? People may admire those who seem perfect, but they’re not necessarily drawn to them. They are, however, drawn to people who make mistakes and show their human side.
Back in the 1960s, social psychologist Elliot Aronson coined a term for this human tendency to feel warmly toward people who embarrass themselves. He called it the Pratfall Effect. The idea is that mistakes, such as dropping something or tripping, demonstrate a person’s vulnerability. That increases our feelings of sympathy toward them and makes them more likable in our eyes.
But if flaws increase likability, why do we have such an aversion to our own?
The answer has a lot to do with our sensitivity to both verbal and non-verbal feedback. We’re so attuned to negative feedback that we actually anticipate it; if a stranger glances at us in public, we assume it’s because we’re doing something wrong, like talking too loudly. But the stranger could simply be scanning the room!
Here’s how to stop being afraid of negative feedback: instead of trying to hide your flaws, accept them completely. Once you do, feedback simply becomes information that you can choose to learn from or ignore completely.
Plus, you should celebrate your flaws. Just like Kintsukuroi pottery, your flaws make you awesome. By owning them, you become flawsome. This means viewing your thoughts, actions, and even failures from a place of understanding, not judgment. With this outlook, you make peace with the parts of yourself that are less than perfect, rather than believing that something is wrong with you. In the following blinks, you’ll learn exactly how this is done.
To become flawsome, you need to get to a place of awareness.
The author’s friend Lucas has a helpful saying about tackling problems: “You can’t solve an internal problem with an external solution.”
Lucas knows what he’s talking about. For years, he used drugs and alcohol to deal with internal issues like unhappiness. This just created a new challenge, though – addiction. It was only when he acknowledged his deeper problems that he was finally able to heal, which then allowed him to overcome his substance abuse.
Like healing, being flawsome is an inside job. You can only get there by acknowledging and owning the reactions and behaviors that hold you back.
The key message here is: To become flawsome, you need to get to a place of awareness.
Before starting their journey into flawsomeness, most people are stuck in a below-the-line state. This is a place of blame and denial, in which they get defensive and point fingers at people around them rather than take responsibility for their role in anything negative. Not acknowledging your part in the breakdown of a relationship, for example, is classic below-the-line behavior. So is expecting other people to change rather than making the change yourself. It’s like that parable from the Bible – the one about pointing out a splinter in someone else’s eye while ignoring the log in your own.
So how do you get from there to flawsome? Well, you have to start moving from below-the-line states to above-the-line ones. An above-the-line state is all about forgiveness, awareness, curiosity, and ownership of your own issues. When you’re above the line, you realize and take responsibility for the negative ways that you respond to the world, and you also become open to accepting your flaws and learning from them. Once you do, you begin a flawsome growth process.
Now, this isn’t about becoming perfect, and it’s certainly not a linear path to leaving below-the-line states behind forever. What’s important is being aware when you’ve entered a below-the-line state and taking steps to address it. To do that, you have to adopt a few principles for the journey.
The first? Understanding your triggers.
Recognizing your triggers gives you a chance to control the way you respond to them.
Picture this: you’re in the middle of a conversation when you suddenly have an intense, negative reaction to someone’s comment. Your muscles tense up and your palms start to sweat. You might even feel a bit lightheaded. Then, before you know it, you’ve said or done something you’re less than proud of, like snapping at the other person or storming off.
If this sounds familiar, then you were more than likely responding to a trigger. Triggers are ideas or people that cause stress and provoke negative reactions. And they often get in the way of you really taking in information and learning from it.
But there’s some good news: one, you’re not alone – everyone has their own specific triggers. And two, it’s possible to manage how you react to them.
The key message here is: Recognizing your triggers gives you a chance to control the way you respond to them.
Physiological signs like sweaty palms and lightheadedness will tell you that you’re encountering a trigger before your behavior does. But if you know what your triggers are, you can get a head start on controlling your reactions even before your body sends you distress signals. To this end, it helps to understand the different kinds of triggers. Let’s look at a few.
Content triggers are information or ideas that you find unhelpful, unfair, or simply don’t agree with. Relationship triggers are about who’s sharing that information and any negative feelings you might have about them. Now, when it’s the way information is shared that prompts you to shut down and stop listening, you’re dealing with a delivery trigger. And finally, identity triggers are ideas about you that totally clash with your sense of self. For example, the author experienced one of these when a coworker described her as “intimidating,” a trait she’d never associated with herself.
Paying attention to what sets you off will allow you to start seeing patterns that can help you identify potentially triggering situations. This gives you a chance to control your reactions before things get out of hand.
To take charge of a triggering moment, start by delaying your response and focusing on your breath instead. This buys you some time to regroup and think about what you’re feeling and how you’re about to react. Use this time to consider what’s triggering you, what role you play in the situation, and whether you’ve had a similar experience before. Then ask yourself what sort of reaction will allow you to learn from the situation.
Being open to different perspectives helps us learn.
How do we know what the truth is in any given situation? The fact is, it’s a hard question to answer. Truth is complicated, and usually involves a number of different perspectives. That doesn’t stop us from believing that our perspective is the only correct one, though. In fact, many people tend to push back against any perspectives that don’t align with their own.
This behavior is harmful, however. Different perspectives are opportunities for learning and growth, and the second principle in our flawsome journey is about embracing these perspectives.
The key message here is: Being open to different perspectives helps us learn.
There are a number of reasons why we struggle to take in different perspectives. One is negatively-biased ways of thinking called cognitive distortions, which were first identified in the 1970s by psychiatrist Dr. Aaron Beck. The author likens most cognitive distortions to a very negative board of directors in our minds. Some members of this board convince us that we’re the only ones who know what’s right, while others encourage jumping to conclusions. Still others have us constantly chasing perfection, or comparing ourselves to others. Whichever director is in charge, the result is the same – we’re less likely to see the truth clearly.
Another hurdle we encounter when it comes to the truth and its many perspectives is the way we make sense of information. The meaning we attach to information is usually tinted with our own assumptions. For example, if a friend cancels dinner plans, you might assume she doesn’t want to spend time with you. But there’s nothing in simply canceling that suggests that – the negative explanation is entirely in your head.
So, with everything that stands between us and all the different perspectives available, how can you ensure that you’re always able to see and learn from them?
You can hold space for the information, for one thing. This means being completely present when you receive information and withholding judgment until you’ve had the time to understand it. By not assuming the worst when your friend cancels dinner plans, for example. By giving yourself a chance to really understand information, you open yourself up to the growth and learning that a variety of perspectives can offer.
Transformation is an ongoing journey that requires always choosing growth.
Let’s say that a group of friends plan a road trip to a city they’ve always dreamed of seeing. After weeks of discussion and preparation, they finally pack up the car and hit the road. The journey is an eventful one, full of interesting sights and even a few arguments. But eventually, the drive ends and the group arrives at their destination.
This road trip is a little like the process of becoming flawsome; it has ups and downs, and moments of learning. But there’s a big difference: while a road trip has a final destination, the flawsome process doesn’t. This is where transformation, the third and final principle, comes in.
The key message here is: Transformation is an ongoing journey that requires always choosing growth.
Transformation isn’t a destination or a single “aha!” moment. It’s more like an evolution, one we encourage by acting on and learning from the first two principles of the flawsome journey. Each time you recognize a trigger, for example, and pause to ensure that your response is above the line, you experience a small transformation. Over time, you’ll find that you’re less and less negatively affected by triggers.
Now, the truth is that you’ll likely need to go through this process over and over again before you make real progress. And each time you go through the process, it will probably be uncomfortable and maybe even painful. Take a person who always finds themselves in unhealthy relationships. Holding a mirror up to themselves and owning up to their role in choosing these relationships will probably be uncomfortable and maybe even painful. But it will also lead to valuable lessons about their behavior and eventually help them avoid repeating similar patterns in the future. To grow and transform, they have to engage with those negative feelings.
We won’t always get this right. There will be many times when we let others down, negatively impact them, or feel disappointed ourselves. And when this happens, practicing forgiveness will help us continue our transformation. In fact, think of forgiveness as a growth pill, one we can offer to other people, or take ourselves as we strive to become flawsome.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
To become flawsome, we need to understand that engaging in denial and blame puts us below the line, while being aware and accountable for our behavior pushes us above the line, where flawsomeness resides. The path from one point to the other isn’t straightforward. It’s a cyclical process that requires us to recognize our triggers and control our reactions to them, and to acknowledge that we can learn a lot when we accept that the truth has many sides to it. When we’re better equipped to handle our triggers and engage with the truth, we enter a state of constant growth and transformation.
Actionable advice:
See failure as an event, not your identity.
When you fail at something, you might feel shame and start to define yourself by the failure. Instead of acknowledging that you failed and that this happens to everyone now and again, you may say to yourself, I am a failure. Needless to say, this is a destructive approach. What you need to do is accept failure and mistakes as parts of life and see them as opportunities to learn.
Got feedback?
We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with Flawsome as the subject line and share your thoughts!
What to read next: The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brené Brown
Hungry for more advice on embracing your flaws and imperfections? In The Gifts of Imperfection, author Brené Brown explores a related topic: shame. Delving deep into how shame impacts the mind, the blinks to The Gifts of Imperfection break down ways of combating it, building courage, and developing compassion for ourselves and those around us. So check out these blinks, and start connecting with your authentic self, flaws and all, and living a more fulfilling life.