Overcoming the Three P’s

Part One: Acceptance

There’s no point in sugarcoating it, the three p’s have been like slow-working poison in my life. They have led to all sorts of destructive thinking, choices, and behaviors. While it’s true that making sacrifices and doing hard things are unavoidable in life, when the three p’s are in charge, the cost of navigating life becomes outrageously, painfully, high.  

What do I mean when I say the three p’s? 

I’m talking about perfection, performance and people-pleasing.

I mentioned in my last post that I am a recovering perfectionist. But rarely does that issue come without it’s friends: performance and people-pleasing. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know for myself that my cooperation with the three p’s was motivated entirely out of one thing—self-protect.

I wanted to be accepted, valued (or treasured), cared for, approved of and to feel entirely safe in my relationships and in my little world. I believed the lie that if I did what everyone else wanted or defined as valuable (performance), exactly how they wanted it done (people-pleasing), and avoided mistakes along the way like it was my full-time job (perfection), I could somehow guarantee myself this bubble of bliss-filled love and safety.

Yes, I can see as clearly as anyone how ridiculous it sounds now, especially written out so plainly. But come on, there’s no way I’m alone in my longing for this kind of utopia. Humanity is continually in pursuit of ways to make life easier and the best ways to alleviate any form of pain and suffering, so I’m going to trust that as a sign that I’m in good company here. In any case, trusting the p’s just doesn’t work. We all know it doesn’t work. And if we know it only in theory, and still find the promises the p’s offer to be tempting, we will ALWAYS learn by experience how ruthlessly they lie. 

My journey of resisting and overcoming their influence has been a long and painful one. Through years of partnership, the p’s became interwoven into the fabric of my being so thoroughly, that cutting and tearing have been necessary to extract them. It also takes a lot of conscious effort to keep them out. I’m working on it ALL THE TIME. I understand that to live the life I desire, one of courage, freedom, and purpose, I must ditch my dependency on the p’s. Perfection, performance, and people-pleasing are rooted in fear: freedom, courage, and purpose are rooted in love. They cannot coexist inside of me.

Self-awareness is crucial to winning this battle over fear-based living. I am the only one responsible for my behavior; the only one with the power to make decisions, belief-systems and habits for myself. Honest self-evaluation and awareness are critical to the mindfulness it takes to create healthy, powerful beliefs and habits. But self-awareness is only part of the process to living purposefully. Acceptance—self-acceptance—has to be yoked with our awareness or mindful living quickly turns back into a performance-based lifestyle. Let me explain.

First, when I say “self-acceptance,” I’m not promoting a take-me-as-I-am-or-not-at-all kind of attitude. I struggle with the term “self-love,” because it feels unreliable to me. I know there is a version of it that is merely hedonism justified. I’m not into that. I’m not into selfishness, reckless self-indulgence or any form of self-centered living that creates disconnect or chaos for the people in my life. Protecting connection with the people I love is a priority, because it’s those connections that make life rich, full, and worth living. Pleasure is temporary. The pursuit of it will cost us those things of lasting value, like relationships. That is not the version of acceptance or self-love I’m talking about here. 

However, a lack of self-awareness and acceptance is equally as destructive as only loving and living for yourself. Self-loathing, self-rejection, self-judgment are all crippling inner-paradigms. They offer no useful way to approach healing and wholeness, no insight on how to create and maintain connections, and no courage or power to mature and grow in emotional resilience. They disempower. They debilitate. They destroy.

So then what do I mean when I say “self-acceptance?” What I mean is an honest but non-judgmental willingness to embrace all of who I am today, right now, imperfections and all. I receive myself as I am. And I am willing to be content with myself … dare I say, even approve of myself. In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown writes, “The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we become at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become” (17)^[1]. Acceptance fuels compassion and compassion facilitates understanding and empathy. From that place, a place of empathy and understanding, the courage to learn and grow thrives.

Acceptance is about receiving, believing, and approving. You may not be content or pleased with everything about yourself; you may have habits or behaviors you’re not proud of or places of learning that are in the beginning stages. But true change and growth won’t come out of self-judgment or rejection, because they create disconnect inside yourself. And what you’re disconnected from, you have no power to change. 

Only by embracing our true, whole selves can we actually deal with those places we want to see grow.

Empowerment to grow, learn, and change is only part of the benefit of self-acceptance though. When we embrace who we truly are, we also empower our strengths. We are free to recognize and identify our value, skills, and unique qualities. We embrace the pieces of ourselves that add beauty and richness to the world. We become courageous in our investment in ourselves and others. When acceptance comes from the inside, we no longer look for outer evidence to prove we’re valuable, loveable, etc., because there’s no inner-rejection we’re trying to reconcile through the acceptance and approval of someone else. In turn, we do a much better job loving others for who they are, exactly as they are. We stop expecting them to fix the broken or wounded places inside of us and give them the same freedom we’re learning to live in. 

It’s hard to accept the fact that my heart won’t always be safe. I don’t like to feel bad: I don’t like to experience pain. But I like living in the bondage of the three p’s even less. And we all know they don’t work anyway. You can spend your life trying to please others and get it all right, but still experience rejection, betrayal, and pain. However, we can learn to navigate life’s assaults without losing our power, confidence, and value, if we recognize and accept our value for ourselves.

This subject has been on my mind and a part of my personal growth journey for a long time. However, the catalyst for writing about it came from a quote I read recently. I want to end with the quote today, which I know is against all the style rules of good writing. I’m doing it anyway. I only ask that as you read it, you consider: What pieces of yourself are you trying to bury, ignore or forget exist? What would you chase if you weren’t afraid? What does the world need that you uniquely offer? What would freedom—real freedom to be yourself unapologetically—look and feel like?

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Try.

---

^[1] I must add that this quote was taken out of a section of the book that is talking about boundaries. Brown discusses the critical nature of healthy boundaries when we desire to live a life of compassion. It’s good stuff. Definitely worth reading.