perfectionism
Painting As A Powerful Spiritual Practice
As a visual artist, I find painting to be a powerful tool for spiritual growth and manifestation. Art has been used as a medium for self-expression and energy channeling for centuries. Painting in particular is an enlightening way to tap into one’s innermost thoughts and feelings and connect with your higher self.
One of the ways that painting can be particularly helpful in growth and healing is that it offers a way for us to let go of what no longer serves us. We too often hold onto old traumas, fears, and limiting beliefs that keep us stuck in negative patterns. Channeling these toxic thought patterns and emotions into art can help us to release it and create space for new energy to flow in.
The act of painting itself can be deeply meditative and calming, allowing the artist to quiet the mind and tap into their intuition. When we allow ourselves to be mindful and entirely present in the moment and focus solely on the act of creating, we access a state of energetic flow that is incredibly soothing, healing, and transformative.
Additionally, painting can be used as a powerful tool for manifesting. When we create art with a specific intention in mind, we are essentially using our thoughts and imagination to give physical form to that intention. Making an original painting is much more powerful and intentional than creating a vision board, for example. By painting images and scenes of the things we desire, we are sending a clear message into the universe that we are ready to receive it.
You Don’t Have To Be Perfect
Whenever we are focused on a task at hand, whether it is career, business or personal, we tend to focus on our mistakes and worry about what we may be doing wrong. Will it meet expectations? Are we good enough? The loud voice of perfectionism in our ego mind is often saying, “You did not do it right, you did not do enough…you are not enough.”
But constantly striving for perfection and beating ourselves up when we cannot meet those impossible expectations, sabotages the very thing we are trying to achieve. It impacts every part of our lives and also affects people around us, including our friends, coworkers, family and life partners.
Setting unrealistic standards for ourselves and others leaves us constantly feeling disappointed in ourselves and let down by others, over and over again. The perfectionism we are striving for becomes front and center in our in relationships, our careers, our health and our overall well-being. The result is anxiety, low self-esteem, fear of failure, depression, and broken relationships.
Failed perfectionism leads us to constantly measuring our worth against others, and vulnerable to the opinions, criticisms, and judgments of others. Perfectionists are very concerned about what others will think or say.
Striving for perfection is also about a need for control, so that our lives and those we care about will work out perfectly as we had planned. But contrary to popular belief, perfectionism does not lead to lasting success and fulfillment.
Control Is The Opposite of Love
I have learned that communication glitches and other side-effects of a Mercury retrograde can actually offer us valuable life lessons if we choose to pay attention.
For example, during the recent retrograde my daughter suffered a migraine on a day she was supposed to visit me. I decided not to pick her up, because she said she was not feeling strong enough. She is prediabetic and I pray and light candles for her daily.
So, I texted her a get-well soon message along with an animated chicken soup meme. Feeling worried about her, I checked in periodically throughout the day see if she had received her ‘virtual chicken soup.’ But the message read receipt only showed ‘delivered.’ No read receipt.
The next day, the text message suddenly showed it had been ‘read,’ but it had the previous afternoon’s timestamp? I noticed a similar phenomenon when co-parenting communication with my daughter’s father also suddenly failed repeatedly and produced delayed read receipts.
Instead of becoming frustrated about it, I contemplated the matter and came to an enlightening conclusion. Spirit clearly said to me, “The need for control is the opposite of love’s vibration.”
This is so very true. Controlling energy is toxic energy. It was a gentle reminder that I need to keep working on releasing my desire to try and be in perfect control of everything in my life at all times.
When we constantly feel the need to control every aspect of our day, rather than letting the energies of universal love, joy and abundance flow freely in our life, we block our blessings and personal growth.