It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, you have flaws. We all do. These can be slight differences in our personality, or bad habits that might harm our health. It can sometimes be really hard to admit to a flaw and that might have a very negative impact on your relationships and your life. Instead of refusing to believe you might be anything less than perfect, take some time to look at your own imperfections.
Imperfections are mostly quite beautiful, in fact they make us human, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Just think about how your imperfections may affect other people, either directly or indirectly, and then decide if you would like to change them.
Bad habits are something that can cause great emotional issues for your family or close friends, take for example smoking or drinking. The health complications caused by smoking or drinking can be very dramatic. Smoking in particular has a very negative impact on families.
Heart disease, lung cancer and various other smoke related diseases means that not only are you cutting your own life short, you are putting children, parents and friends through unnecessary pain as they watch the person they love deteriorate.
If you smoke, but you aren’t ready to stop the habit entirely, a great first step is to swap your cigarettes for something else. One option is to switch to a tobacco and nicotine free chew.
Another option is to use nicotine gum which has helped thousands of people quit conventional cigarettes.
Drinking is another bad habit which can impact on your family whilst slowly damaging your liver and function. Alcoholism is defined as an illness and is so severe that finding treatment and dealing with recovery needs a lot of support from both the healthcare professionals and from your family and friends.
There is no simple solution to help you recover from alcohol addiction as there are few substitutes available. However if you drink heavily but don’t believe you are dependant on in, you could make a few small changes in your habits to ensure you balance a little of what you love, with a little of what is good for you.
A lot of us will go to a glass of wine, or beer, to relax after a long day at work. Try switching it up for an exciting soft drink or, even better, a fresh juice. Drinking during the week effects the quality of our sleep, it can also lead to obesity or depression. By cutting the amount of alcohol we drink during the week we will feel a great improvement on our overall health and may find we have more energy and a drive to get up and go.
Flaws to our personality are a little trickier to admit. Perhaps you have a desire to correct people you can see making mistakes. You believe you are trying to help and simply don’t want to see them fail. However this could come across as overbearing and might make others feel less keen to talk to you. Maybe you use phrases such as “welcome to the real world” when talking to creative friends who have a different way of behaving than you do.
This can be really damaging in a relationship as it suggests you have the secrets to a normal life, a correct way of living. We all know that this is nonsense. No one has the correct way to live. It is all relative depending on our past experiences, the environment that surrounds us and our perception of circumstances. Sometimes your words may mean nothing to you, but to someone else they will create a feeling of being inferior. That is a very negative cycle.
Take you time to think through how you speak and be aware that everyone is different and that is perfectly ok. Offer support wherever you can, but support someone in a way which will be helpful to their life. Not in a way you believe they should live their life.
Then embrace the imperfections of life.