On being a perfect person

Let me preface this post by saying that this isn’t actually about being a perfect person, in fact it’s quite the opposite.

It’s been quite some time since I blogged here and the main reason for that is that I haven’t felt that I’ve had anything new or interesting to talk about.

I’ve always had some value that tells me that if I’m not offering some kind of real value in what I say or write, I’d rather just not talk for the sake of talking. I once had someone tell me that when they first met me they thought I was a really shy person but as time went on, they realised that I mostly tend to say things when I’ve genuinely got something worth saying. Some might disagree with that statement but as a rule I’ve noticed it to be generally true.

The past year or so has been a real turning point for me. Not only in terms of my own development as a person but in my life, the friends I have, the people I live with, the places I’ve worked and the learning’s that I’ve been gathering.

This post then is in many ways, a letter to myself. I also hope by posting this here, other people can perhaps glean something of interest to them that either resonates or just gives a new perspective on how things might be.

Over the last 7 years I’ve put a lot of time and effort into learning as many new things as I’ve felt I can and as some of you who already know me will know, much of that time has been spent with the aim of figuring out what this whole life thing is all about. To give you the heads up on my conclusions, I’ve not got a scoobies!

In part, this conclusion has really opened my eyes to many of the real wonders of being here on this planet and what it means to have a good life. Having taken time to learn about how my own mind might work, studying NLP, Hypnosis, Magick and other types of personal development, I have a few things to say that I hope will be easily recognised by many people on a similar life mission.

The first and most poignant point is that no-one is perfect. For me this learning is something I have to continually remind myself of. Whatever I’ve done and however I’ve done it, I’ve always wanted to be the very best. The hardest part of that learning is that it’s just not always possible. Let me justify this slightly because I know many of you who have studied some form of linguistics will be asking “best according to who”, “best at what specifically”, “how would you even know if you were the best?”.

Since I did my first NLP practitioner course when I was 19 I’ve been trained by and seen a lot of people who also want to achieve very similar goals to myself. The problem I’ve found most pervasive is that many of these people, including myself at times, have jumped on the “fake it till you make it” bandwagon and spent way too much time and energy trying to convince one another that we ARE amazing at NLP or that we DO have all the answers. I know it’s the popular thing right now to bash NLP and I’m not going to jump on that bandwagon either so if you’re wondering where this is going….read on!

In the world of NLP Trainer Land, it’s seen by many as a prerequisite to helping other people learn…to be an authority figure and build a certain level of personal power as part of the overall plausibility of what’s being taught. I think at times this way of operating has some real benefits. We need only look at many of the people who are new to NLP and you can quite literally see how they shift and change through their first few courses and a lot of that changes comes from believing entirely in the trainer teaching them.

They do say that “the meaning of your communication is the response that you get” and so it’s seems quite apt to take people from point A to point B in whatever way necessary.

There is another way that I’ve seen some of the greatest trainers teach. It goes along the lines of “Here’s some ideas, lets see how they work for you”.

I really admire this way of teaching and if I do ever decide to teach some things to a few people will definitely be one of the core ideas that I’ll be working from. The real benefit and power I’ve learned from studying all of these things and a lot of ideas I’ve had shared with me from some of my great friends is that sometimes, some things, work for some people, and sometimes….they just don’t.

In some ways this king of goes against one of the core philosophies of the NLP world in that “If it’s possible for them, it’s possible for me”. It’s a nice place to live your life from and many of the things I’ve had the pleasure of doing in my own life have come from this kind of thinking. I also think it’s worth people knowing that it’s actually not really true.

It’s one thing to use beliefs as a basis for living and being a certain way, and it’s another to fall for the idea that any of these beliefs are real in some less-than-abstract sense.

It’s all to easy to get caught up in the idea that as people who have studied certain ways in which people think, organise their beliefs, values etc, that we should somehow be able to become a kind of super-human species with powerful techniques to change the world.

The truth is , everyone on the planet can already be the person who changes the world. They can already be someone who makes a difference in the lives of others..and…and the same time…we’re not perfect. People are people and no matter how much training they’ve had we all have our down periods, we all have things in our lives that aren’t “sorted” and we all have the ability to make our own and the lives of others that little bit nicer.

Learning NLP, learning Hypnosis, learning Magick…learning many things in life are only a part of being more of who you really are. I don’t want this to sound too philosophical but the point I want to put across is that all of these things are just ideas, just ways to move life in certain ways and just ways to expand everything you could potentially be.

Let’s not get caught up in what we all think is the truth. Instead, how about we look at these ideas and realise that when we need to work from them to get some result, that can be one way of getting there.

The real truth   is that no one person has all the answers to everything. No trainer, no guru, no shaman…no-one has everything sorted out. If they did they’d probably be the most boring person on the planet. The beauty and wonder that comes part and parcel of being a human being on this beautiful planet is that in some regard, we’re all slightly messed up. To me, that’s the real significance of being alive. If everything is perfect, you’re probably dead in some way or another.

I hope that this message really does offer up a new way of looking at things for some people. I’ve fallen into the trap myself of thinking I SHOULD be the best at everything and that my life SHOULD be sorted because of all the things I’ve studied and practiced. The richness of life is only equaled by our ability to recognise it in some way and to live our lives around the idea that there’s always room to improve, but sometimes, it’s nice just being who you are.

No-one is perfect and because of that, we’re all perfect in our own way. Let’s remember that and use it to aim our lives in the direction we want. We don’t all need to be gurus, we don’t all need to pretend like we have the ultimate answers in life, we don’t all need to “fake it till we make it”.

It’s just an idea : )

Jamie x