“My prayer is God give me permission to do this imperfectly, and allow me to be of service.”
-Laverne Cox in a recent podcast interview with Brene Brown
This quote from Laverne Cox, an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a prime-time Emmy award, reminds all of us that, regardless of how others perceive us, we can show up in our imperfection and be of service to others.
Committing to imperfection is a commitment to growth and emergence.
Perfection on the other hand keeps us stuck.
For the first few years as a business owner, I was caught up in this idea that everything I put out in the world had to be perfect.
I would read and reread every facebook post before sharing.
I had to get the fancy design just right.
And I couldn’t possibly let anyone see that I was still trying to figure everything out.
That perfectionism kept me from launching programs.
It kept me from being vulnerable with my community.
And it kept me from serving people who needed my support.
So I released it.
Because imperfection allows me to show up and be of service.
It gives me space to grow without unrealistic expectations.
And it gets me out of that bullshit cycle of avoiding my own magnificence because I’m scared of failing.
Imperfection liberates us from inaction.
But the current mainstream culture has taught us that perfection is the only path to success, acceptance, and validation.
So we become obsessed.
We show up small, in hopes of preventing someone, anyone from (**gasp) noticing our imperfections.
But you weren’t born to play small…
When you aren’t holding yourself to the standard of perfection, you give yourself space to figure out who you are, what matters to you, and what you want your unique contribution to be.
This is why I’ve made embodying imperfection one of the foundations of my spiritual practice.
Each day when I wake up, I make a personal commitment to allow myself to take messy imperfect action.
Because I wasn’t born to be squeezed into a checkbox marked “perfection”
And neither were you.
It’s a hard pill to swallow, but our collective obsession with perfection is literally killing people and killing the planet.
Every moment we don’t take action is another moment where patriarchal capitalism wins.
This is why I am committed to imperfection as a spiritual practice, but also as a business strategy…
Because if we wait for perfection, we will be waiting forever.
And we don’t have time to wait for forever.
So let this email, and this quote from Laverne Cox, be an invitation into your own imperfection.
And ask yourself: How can imperfection liberate me and activate my ability to be of service?
Please feel free to reply to this email and let me know what comes up, I would love to hear.
Love + Liberation
Lauren Elizaebth