Transcription
Well, hello everyone, and welcome to this broadcast. Mark DeJesus here. What I would like to do in this broadcast is talk to the perfectionist heart. And I want to talk to you about the need to experience nurture. And I pray that this episode will be a nurturing episode to the heart of a perfectionist, and many of those who are just learning to be nurtured in their healing and freedom journey.
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So, all right, let's talk about perfectionism quickly because you have many videos on that, and we have to get to the heart of what a perfectionist needs. And a perfectionist needs unconditional love, needs nurture, needs areas of emotions that have been neglected, haven't been tended to. We have such a vast sea of people that our hearts are crying out for unconditional love, for nurture, for comfort, to be reminded that we're okay, and we can stand and land, and we're welcomed, we're received in.
And what has happened in our life is we have come under the influence of a mindset of "just right, but never enough." And that's what perfectionism does. Keeps us in that constant bondage. And as you become more and more aware of perfectionistic tendencies in your life, many of you can see where you have religious perfectionism, how you relate to God, and how you, how you operate your daily habits, and how you approach, how you stand with God is heavily driven by this "just right, but never enough" cycle. How you relate to other people, and how you do relationships, how you interact with your work, how you interact with your parenting, but most of all, how you react and relate to yourself.
And what I want to do is give you some things, some tools, some practical applications of some things you could begin saying to yourself, reminding yourself to actually practice the habit, or the art, or the experience of what it means to be nurtured. Now, imperfectionism, you have this inner critic that's constantly screaming out to you. Sometimes it's high volume, sometimes it's low volume, but it's just always trying to disrupt your healing and freedom journey. So it leaves you living under pressure, a lot of self-pressure. And that pressure, pressure, pressure builds up. So there's a lot of anger, there's self-anger that can go into depression, it can go into obsessive-compulsive.
And here's the thing, perfectionism reveals your need for love. And when perfectionists need love the most, is actually where you become very hard on yourself. And that leads to depressive kind of symptoms, and then despair. We pull that despair switch, and we just start spiraling. Right when you find yourself spiraling, that's a great time to take a time out and go, "Wait. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. What I actually need is nurture."
And what we then lead to is, "Well, there's no one here to nurture me. Where is everyone?" Right? Like, where are the people in my life? Mother, father, sister, brother, friend, a mentor? I feel all alone. And so many just feel so alone.
Now, it's not, I'm not going to give you these pat answers, and I'm going to give you these things about how to fix all that because it's not about that right now. Right here, right now, it's about you looking at yourself with a different perspective. Because the more we spiral and despair, the more we're actually hating on ourselves, and we are inflicting pain, and we're being abusive towards ourselves by just continuing to feed the fuel of that animosity toward itself.
Nurture will teach you to actually relate to yourself from a standpoint of comfort. And I realized that I had to learn how to comfort myself so that I could recognize when God's comforting presence is available. Now, he's always here, he's always available. But there's certain moments where I believe God's nurturing comfort is, is being extended in dynamic ways, but we have no reference for it. And I realized that I needed to practice a nurturing response to myself so that when God's nurture arrives, I see it. When it arrives, I welcome it, I embrace it.
And so, this is, this is very much a brother from another mother kind of broadcast in the sense of, I want to be a brother and just extend nurture toward your heart today. And if you'd like to take a next step and go, "I want to, I want to learn more about this." My wife and I had a series of discussions we did, and it's called "Restoring the Power of Nurture." It's an audio course, it's on my training site. You can get a hold of that and begin starting today to just recognize how lack of nurture has affected you, how you can be more nurturing, and what that means for your life and for your journey.
But today, what I want to get into is, these are some things that are very nurturing that you can begin saying to yourself, reminding yourself. And many of them are things a loving father would say, a loving mother would say. And so, in the midst of your mental health journey, anxiety, depression, in your addictions, in your OCD, your perfectionism, as you begin to welcome some more nurturing language in your life and in your journey. Some of this you may actually speak to yourself and say to yourself. I encourage you, don't do it like a militant soldier, like, "Come on, you know?" That's, that's not the place for this right now. This is more the comforting language that your heart needs, and your heart is longing for, and you're looking for.
And you may want to take this and write these down and have these be journaling reminders to anchor yourself back into the language of God's love for you. So the first one I want to share with you is something that is very, very nurturing, and many of us need in our, in our journey. It's the phrase, "Take your time. Slow down. You're learning things for your heart and your emotions. Many things you never got before. You're learning things that we're not equipped in your life, they weren't given to you. There's neglect, there's trauma and drama in your life you're trying to work and navigate through."
A father, when he's teaching his son a new habit or trade or practice, one of the things they often do in nervousness is the son will try to do it too fast, push the lawnmower too fast, or saw too fast. Or I even notice with my son, there's, there's, there's many times I say to him, "Son, we're going to work smarter, not harder, and do it this way." And many times it involves slowing down. A mother will say to her daughter, "It's okay. It's okay. Calm down. Take a breath as we learn this practice together, as we learn a new habit or or some type of skill that we're going to go about."
And for so many of us, we're learning heart healing. And I want to say to you, as your brother, "Slow down and take your time." I know at first, slowing down can feel excruciating to the perfectionist. They actually need that message. Slow down, take your time, because taking your time allows you to be present in the moment, to take in what's happening, whether you're just sitting there looking at the trees, going for a walk, or you're in the middle of learning something, or you're working on something. I find I remind myself constantly, whether I'm mowing the lawn or writing a book, "Take your time."
Because as I take my time, each moment becomes more powerful, more meaningful. And actually, our speed of life actually makes us inefficient. It makes us, what we produce, actually not the a-level of excellence that our perfectionism strives for, right? Because how to pressure and pressure, pressure living, it, it produces burnout, and it doesn't produce the true fruit that's available for our life, for our journey. So that's one thing I want you to say to yourself.
Another thing I want to remind you of is the statement that, "You're loved for who you are." And this requires a really big pause because what perfectionism stole from me is it communicated, "I am not loved for who I am. I am only loved for my preaching, teaching, my ability to produce great results, to wow people. And outside of that, there's no love." So it created a massive amount of pressure, and it caused me to live out of that role. And so then it wants to infiltrate every part of my life, whether it's what I do for work, how I parent, even how I conduct myself in marriage. It puts this weight upon me.
And as I began to let this off, layer by layer, it helped me to actually heal and enter into a new level of grieving in my life because I realized I came under the belief that I'm not just loved for who I am. And God loves you because he loves you. He loves you because he loves you because he loves you because he loves you because he loves you. And unconditional love is so foreign to us in the world of perfectionism. We've distanced ourselves so much from that. We always feel that we have to be loved because of things that we do. And, and getting things just right. You're not loved because you get things right. You're not loved because you're a good Christian. You're not loved because you do good things. Although good, doing good things are great, you're loved right where you are.
And we need a nurturing reminder of that because that's what nurture brings. It says, "Slow down. Take your time. Take a deep breath. You're loved right now." So let's welcome that love.
In the midst of the healing, nurture that I found in my life and journey, there was a turning point, a very significant turning point. And that was when I learned to embrace my flaws, weaknesses, mistakes instead of running from them, hiding from them, trying to fix them, which shame teaches us, right? To just put a protective mechanism over all of it. I look at everything I battle with, and instead of this panic reaction, "I got to do something about it, get away from it, make it feel better," I instead noticed it with a new lens and said, "It's time to start learning how to be more accepting of myself."
I'm in my journey, and perfectionists are so hard on themselves. They will actually see this as loving acceptance means compromise. You're compromising, your standards are going to be lower. It could even get into religious perfectionism. It says, "Then that means you're going to say sin's okay." And those statements simply reveal we actually have been so, so removed from the power of what God's love brings into our lives that we see this through a black and white lens, that love means we just overlook sin and pay attention, pretend like it's not even there. We don't realize love arrives in the midst of sin to embrace you. God is loving me right now.
And so what you need, and what I need today, is a hug and embrace. In all your spiraling and all your struggling, you think you need to be fixed so then you could feel better. But trust me, you'll chase another one, another one, another one. And this "just right, but never enough" will follow you for the rest of your life until we cross the threshold that says, "No, I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna say okay to love. I'm gonna say okay to this hug."
Now, I can, I can speak about the need for a hug, right? But you have to welcome it. You have to be ready for it and say yes to it. Because so many of us, someone has to hug us, and we get all goofy, right? We do the golf pat. "Oh, thank you, thank you very much. Okay, translation: hurry up and get this over with." You know, the golf not the golf clapped, the the pat on the back. I was using a golf club. It's not really a golf pad, more like the the quick pack. "Okay, okay, let's move on, let's move on." Right, right. "Okay, I'm uncomfortable with this." Right? Or we deflect it. "Now, I appreciate you." You know, and when you're hugged, embrace hug.
And many of you, in a practical way, when someone gives you a genuine hug, you may have to consciously say, "I received this for what it is. And God, thank you for an opportunity to be hugged." And this is going to sound so silly to perfectionists, silly, silly, silly. And as I say it, it's gonna get this fought in you that goes, "This is so silly." You may even need to just take your arms like this and just take a deep breath and give yourself an embrace. You know, I talk about ministering to yourself because many of us don't even know like what that looks like. And so our, our times alone, our devotional experience, or whatever you want to call them, they, they become so unfruitful because we don't know how to look at ourselves with love and with grace.
And so sometimes just doing this as a simple act of, "God, I say yes to the love that you have for me. I'm going to stop resisting it. I'm going to stop saying, 'Yeah, but.' I'm going to receive it." And I'm gonna end that embrace. Embrace flaws. Embrace weaknesses. Embrace mistakes. I see them, and I'm loved in the midst of it. Because it's love that leads, leads us to the change. Condemning ourselves, shaming ourselves, having anxiety over it, and feeding the anxiety over it, it's not going to produce transformation in our lives.
Another word, another phrase is something that I say often. I found myself learning it in my own journey and saying it to a lot of people in one-on-one sessions over and over again. It's a simple statement that just says, "It's okay if you're not okay." If you're not okay right now, you're watching this video, and it's late at night, it's two in the morning. Yeah, you, you can't sleep. You got insomnia going on. You're spinning about something going on. You're spinning about a thought, and the pressure's rising. This is a statement for you tonight. "It's okay that you're not okay."
And this communicates, "I'm loved right where I'm at, right now. I'm loved not because I do what's right. I'm loved not because I fix things, not because I, I behave well. I'm loved right about now." This cuts through the shame so you can see your heart in a, in a greater sense of clarity, so you can see what you need. Nurture leads us to understanding what we need, right? The picture of a nurturing mother, she first embraces you. "It's okay." She hugs you. She tends to a wound. Maybe it's an actual wound that she's got to put a Band-Aid on, or there is an emotional wound.
Is an embrace? Following the embrace, there's a movement towards discovering what you need. Maybe you got all dirty and scraped up, and your mom says, "You know what? Why don't you go ahead and take a shower right now and clean up?" That's a nurturing pathway, right? Or, "Would you like some food? Maybe this time to eat. We'll give you a bowl of soup or whatever, whatever it is, right?" Some of you are just having memories right now. Oh, that moment where I had that hot cocoa or something like that, right? Or, "Do you want to? Why don't you rest for a little bit? Let's put a blanket on you." Right? And says, "Oh, you got a fever. Oh, you may have, you may have maybe getting sick or something, right?"
So the loving nurture leads us to seeing things. And in the absence of that nurture, we become so hard on ourselves. We don't even go there. It's like, "Hurry up and get over it. What's the matter with you? Get on with life." Until we inflame the inner critic, all the self-hate, and all that stuff. "It's okay that you're not okay." It doesn't change love. And that's, and that's a very, very powerful thing that nurture says.
Another statement is, "Be kind to yourself, and let that kindness extend to those around you." Now, we often try to be kind to other people. Perfectionists will do that because they don't want to be seen as being, you know, the angry tyrants that we carry within. But you don't start there necessarily. I, and I'm not saying it's only this way, but for perfectionists, they, they do the outward a lot, but it's through performance. But really, they don't have love in themselves for themselves. And so what I'm saying is, practice the language of kindness. Be kind to yourself right now because that will slow you down. It will welcome unconditional love, welcome nurture, and it will help you to be more present with others and be more nurturing to others. Because what we cultivate within is what then gets extended around us. I find I am kind to others so much more as I'm practicing kindness with within myself.
Another statement I want to say is the statement of patience. And I can't emphasize this enough. It's been a powerful statement in my life and my journey. Is recognizing, "Healing will take as long as it takes." You, as a perfectionist, as you're leaving, letting go of that label, and letting go of that tendency, and letting go of all the things that encompass it, you can get frustrated by putting a deadline on yourself. You want to get healed by tomorrow, by today, by 10 years ago, right? By last week. There's all these pressurized things that, that you can come under.
Well, love, in the language of love, and and a nurturing expression, is patient. It's going to take as long as it takes. Love is patient. It's time to be patient with yourself. This is nurturing. Your expectations have created a lot of pressure. So perfectionists will say, "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to lower my expectations." I don't know that getting free from perfectionism is about lowering expectations, but more taking the pressure out of those expectations and grounding those expectations in love. That helps shift our perspective. Because sometimes lowering expectations, we just kind of go, "Well, but it's not that black and white kind of thing."
Because, because shifting expectations into a, a non-pressurized, more patient perspective, it may alter how we see it. It may alter our deadlines. It may teach us to let go more because we value relationships. It may shift our goals to value relationships rather than results and productivity. And I value you, and so I'll slow down for that, and I'll be patient with myself as I'm patient with you. That patience will help me to embrace when things don't go my way, or deadlines aren't met. I was a very goal-oriented person, and I still have goals, I still have areas that, but there's so much more love wrapped around it. There's a lot more flexibility to these things. Perfectionists struggle with flexibility in how they relate to people, how they relate to goals and things, and they don't let love have a work. So maybe you need to say to yourself, "This healing journey, it'll take as long as it takes, and I'm going to learn to be okay with that."
Another statement I say to myself and to my brothers and sisters all the time, "There is no pressure." Now, we come under pressure because of stress, the pressure we put on ourselves, our expectations. It's pressure. Pressure arrives in all the unloved places of our heart. Pressure arrives where love needs to have a work. So we go to pressure because pressure screams. Love doesn't scream. So oftentimes pressure gets the upper hand because love requires a different frequency.
And so I want to remind you, there is no pressure. God's not under pressure, and he's not putting you under pressure. He wants you to live a life led by the spirit, not driven by this pressure. Pressure reveals we're angry. We're, we're under a weight of burden, of yoke we shouldn't carry, or under fear, stress. Our brokenness is screaming out. Where you see the pressure, you'll see a trail that leads back to areas that need healing, love. And we need to welcome him.
The last thing I want to say to you and remind you of, perfectionists, as a nurturing statement, is, "Have fun. Get back to having fun." Because perfectionism actually steals your ability to enjoy, have enjoyment, and to experience the joy in enjoyment. So I want you to focus on enjoyment in your day. That it's not all these things we have to do, we get to do. It's a shifting of, "I want to be present in this moment and extract all the enjoyment that I can." This is a journey. It's not gonna, you're not gonna arrive. Focus on what's fun in the moment. And, and recognize, as a perfectionist, you take yourself too seriously. And you're gonna have to relax. You're gonna take a deep breath. You have to smile a bit and go, "All right, I'm goofy." And embrace that, and embrace the fun in the moment, embrace the fun with the other person you may be interacting with in your, in your present situation.
So, which of these has been one that you go, "I need to take note of that. I need to apply it in my life and in my journey." I know it's done a lot for me. I pray it's nurturing for you. If this episode was a blessing to your life, again, go to MarkDeJesus.com. You can support these videos by clicking on the donate button. Please be sure to subscribe on our mailing list, and also subscribe on our YouTube channel. I appreciate it so much, and I look forward to continuing this conversation on freedom from perfectionism and adding more and more value to your healing and freedom journey.
Well, it's time for me to start heading out. I look forward to sharing more resources with you, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. But in the meantime, this is your brother from another mother saying, "I'm out."