Giving up can set you free!
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Giving up has become one of the most reviled things we can do. We’re taught that we must continue to fight until we’re exhausted. After that, we have to muster up the strength to fight some more. We’re taught that we can overcome anything as long as we relentlessly attack it with everything we have.
When it comes to injustice and enacting change in the world, this is a great mentality. But when it comes to how we perceive ourselves, it can be extremely damaging.
The idea that we simply need to keep fighting to improve who we are has many of us waging an unnecessary war against ourselves.
For better or worse, we seem to constantly try to change who or what we are.
- We’re too nice.
- We’re not good looking enough.
- We’re not tall enough.
- We don’t have the perfect smile.
- We don’t have the perfect beach body.
We end up resenting ourselves and expending a lot of energy in the process.
- We hate our legs.
- We hate our hair.
- We hate our laugh.
- We hate the way we look in the mirror.
- We hate the way we look in a bathing suit.
We hate who we are because someone told us that’s not who we should be.
We don’t fit into the narrow definition of ‘perfect’ that was created by someone in a boardroom who wants to make us feel inadequate, so we have to buy their product or subscribe to their service.
The idea of perfection surrounds us. Perfectionism permeates our culture. If we’re not careful, the quest for perfection can suffocate us. Or, more likely, we can suffocate ourselves trying to attain someone else’s manufactured idea of who we should be.
This is not an out. This is not an excuse. This is not in defense of giving up prematurely.
There are many things we can change about ourselves, and in many cases the desire to change is a worthy goal. When we’ve exhausted every option, and we’re still not who or what we think we want to be, it might be time to accept what we cannot change.
This is about recognizing all this fighting and struggling to no avail can end up making us unhappier than the imperfection we were fighting against in the first place.
Life doesn’t have to be this way.
By giving up, whatever imperfection we were fighting no longer holds any power over us. We’ve freed ourselves to move on so we can focus on more important things. We’re no longer furiously struggling to change something that probably didn’t need to be changed in the first place.
Just imagine how much we could accomplish if, instead of fighting against our imperfections, we channeled our energy toward something more constructive?
So many people are fighting tooth and nail, only to end up miserable.
We continue to push the boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll back down. Over and over again.
We are not Sisyphus.
We don’t have to roll the boulder of self-resentment up that hill until we drive ourselves crazy.
We’re so much better than that. We have the power to move beyond our imperfections that ultimately harm no one, but leave us feeling like we’re not good enough.
That’s the greatest trick society ever played on the individual. Getting them to believe they’re not good enough.
If we only bought Product X for four easy payments of $24.99, we would magically become good enough. If we only had washboard abs, we would be accepted. Deep down, we know this isn’t true, but that’s tough to remember in the face of the pressure for perfection that we’re exposed to on a daily basis.
We can tap into the power of giving up.
We can stop expending energy to change something that doesn’t need to be changed. We can shift our focus to more important things.
Giving up does not always make you a quitter. Sometimes, it can set you free. There are more important things in life than having the perfect beach body.
Once we realize that, our possibilities are truly limitless.
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