Episode 7 – Healing Perfectionism – When 80 Percent Is More Than Good Enough

Amina once sold cakes, and any cake that wasn’t completely perfect went straight in the bin, so the whole project ran at a big loss. Today, when she forgets to bring something important to an event she is running, she simply uses what she has and makes something new out of it.

In this seventh episode, she and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the seventh of the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart: becoming a master of healing perfectionism. They explore the fear behind perfectionism, why mistakes are the engine of evolution, and why 80 percent is good enough. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• Pillar 7, perfectionism: Amina’s need for control, and a society that wants us to function like machines
• How the pressure to perform leads to chronic stress, inflammation and illness
• The fear behind perfectionism, and how Pål-Esben made peace with his dyslexia: why 80 percent is good enough
• Accepting not being liked, and the people we put on a pedestal
• Mistakes as the engine of evolution, and why Pål-Esben said “Congratulations” when Amina fell into the same trap again
• Amina 18 months on, and why there is no shame in seeking help
• Why healing perfectionism is mandatory on the way to your Sahara, and the student who nearly left her husband over angels
• The recipe in four points, and Pål-Esben’s email regime for choosing his relationships

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Today’s topic: perfectionism

Pål-Esben: A warm welcome, Amina.

Amina: Thank you so much, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: A new episode, and today we’re going to talk about one of our favourite topics: perfectionism. So what does that have to do with you, Amina?

The story of a need for control

Amina: Well, it’s the story of my life. It’s been quite an interesting theme in my life. Where I am today, I keep finding new pitfalls where perfectionism can try to find a place in my life. But I can start from where I was before, because there I have a lot to celebrate and shout hallelujah about. I’ve had a great need for control. I’ve been very caught up in being perfect: looking perfect, doing the perfect things. For as long as I can remember, I felt that I was defective, that I was wrong in some way. I felt that I had no worth, so I had to try to live up to an ideal that was perfect. And perfect doesn’t exist, of course, but it took me a few years to understand that.

I started quite early to find ways of making myself perfect. One was appearance: clothes, make-up, hair. Always being perfect in front of the people I met, so that they would think I was lovely and pretty and good. So I mirrored people a great deal. It was very important to me to be a perfect wife. Earlier in life I was a practising Muslim and had more contact with my Arab roots; my goal in life was to become an Arab housewife, and I got a taste of that. Back then I was very focused on making dinner at the right time, having a hot meal ready for my husband, being a perfect mother, making the perfect cakes. For a while I sold cakes, and then it was hugely important that they were completely perfect. If they weren’t, I threw them away. So that project really ran at a very big loss. Perfectionism has truly played a big part in my life: the fear of making mistakes, the fear that it isn’t good enough. “I can’t publish this, I can’t write this, I can’t post this, because it isn’t good enough.” Through this primordial shamanic journey of development I’ve really had the chance to practise letting go of what I can’t control, and of large parts of my perfectionism. I’ve worked a lot on finding the balance. Because some people just go with the flow: they flit about a bit here and a bit there, nothing is all that important, and life falls into place anyway. My big lesson has been finding the balance between flow and structure.

A society that wants machines

Pål-Esben: Perfectionism: you’re not alone in having challenges there. Because as I see it, it’s a problem in our society. Society wants us to be productive beings, more like machines. We’re supposed to be good at what we do, we’re supposed to be a good mother, a good father, good friends, a good employee, good at whatever it is we do. And this business of getting better, of becoming a shining version of ourselves, is something that drives so many people into stress. That’s why I see perfectionism, or the way our society looks at and wants perfectionism, as one of the most important causes of the illness we have in society. How can I say that? It does sound brutal. How can perfectionism, and our drive towards perfectionism, be an important cause of the massive illness in society?

It’s like this. This urge to keep performing more and more in every area of life, in order to feel valuable, feel wanted, find our place, so that others will respect us and like us, whatever it may be, creates massive stress. Chronic stress. Just look at the people on social media: you have to be there, you have to be available, you have to post particular kinds of posts that are supposed to get a certain number of likes, and if they don’t get that many likes, you’re doing something wrong. It’s a complete circus. All of this, from social media to how we’re supposed to be a good father, a good mother, a good friend and a good employee, creates an insane amount of stress. And over time that stress simply becomes chronic stress. We know from medicine, at least functional medicine, that stress leads to the production of stress hormones. Stress hormones lead to inflammation. And a great many of today’s chronic lifestyle diseases are connected to there being far too much inflammation in the body. You could say: the more stress, the more inflammation, and the bigger the challenge with illness. So this isn’t just a problem for society when it comes to stress and quality of life. Because the more we subject ourselves to perfectionism and want to become “perfect”, which of course isn’t possible, the less happy and content we are.

That’s how it was for me too, in the old days. I call myself a functional overachiever from that time: I was the only one who could do things well enough; others weren’t capable of it. I had to be available all the time; people had to be able to reach me day and night. And it wasn’t until 2003 that I woke up, after I collapsed with the burnout that nearly killed me. I almost had to die before I woke up and understood that this might not be the smartest way to live your life. At least not if what you want is to create a meaningful, joyful and good life. Because putting ourselves under this insane pressure to perform, which perfectionism really puts us under, leads to a lot of suffering. From my experience with thousands of students and clients over the last 20 years, I’d say that one of the things that creates the most suffering for a human being, seen from a meta-perspective, an eagle’s perspective, is this insane stress people put on themselves to become perfect, or to perform enough in every area of life. Of course it’s a big shift, from the days when you run on autopilot and have to be a shining version of yourself to satisfy everyone around you, to waking up and saying: maybe life is about other things than that.

The spiritual hamster wheel

Amina: Yes, absolutely. And in the alternative, spiritual sphere, one pitfall is stepping into a new hamster wheel, a spiritual hamster wheel: being the perfect spiritual person who is supposed to look like this and that and be such and such. That’s also a pitfall I’ve fallen into a few times, and an important one, I think, in order to learn the lesson. But when you look at perfectionism: what’s really the reason for it? When did it arise? Where does it come from?

The fear behind perfectionism

Pål-Esben: That’s a good question, and the answer has several aspects. One of the things that drives people into this perfectionism treadmill is the fear of not being good enough, the fear of making mistakes, the fear of not being good enough in other people’s eyes. There’s always a fear there, which in esoteric terms is connected to the first chakra, which has to do with survival. But first we have to define it. Perfectionism: there’s nothing that’s perfect, after all. People strive to become perfect, but what is perfect, then? Can you define what perfect is?

Amina: No, I don’t think it can be measured or weighed, in length or breadth. No, I have no idea.

Pål-Esben: It isn’t possible to define perfect. It’s a utopia we strive towards, that we drive ourselves towards. And the side effect of this isn’t just stress; it’s a fear-driven behavioural mechanism.

Dyslexia: making peace with the “flaws”

Pål-Esben: I have many examples of this from my own life. In the old days, before I woke up to life and began to understand what it would take for me to live a happy and meaningful life, I struggled with dyslexia, for example. I have a very severe form of dyslexia, both in reading and in speaking. Something happened in my language centre; maybe I hit my head a few too many times when I was little, and fell down the stairs a couple of times too many. So my language centre isn’t quite as it should be. It’s a challenge for me. On the one hand I think clearly, but when I speak, words and sentences get a bit swapped around, so it sounds a bit odd when you listen to me. For me this was very stressful, because the way I’d been brought up, not being able to speak clearly was a sign that you weren’t smart, or that you were stupid. So in the old days it was a problem I tried to fight against. And of course you can get better with dyslexia: better at reading, better at speaking, by going to a speech therapist. But once you have the kind of dyslexia I have, you can fight against it until you’re blue in the face without it ever becoming “good enough”, or perfect, or simply going away. I struggled a lot with this in the old days. I had big problems reading: if I opened a book, the words jumped around, and I strongly disliked reading books. It was a terrible business. It meant I had to be a bit creative and learn other ways of learning without reading. But that’s a story for another time. My problem was the speaking, that the words come out a bit wrong. For many years I fought against it, and of course that created a great deal of stress in me. Until I came to the point after the burnout, when I almost went down for the count completely, and said: “OK, Pål-Esben, so you’re dyslexic. You have your ‘flaws’, and then it might be more important to spend your time and energy on other things than trying to become ‘perfect’ at this.”

80 percent is good enough

Pål-Esben: Then I came to the point where I accepted that I’ll never be able to speak completely clearly. And I made peace with it. I came to the point of accepting that I’ll never read as well as others, but I’ve learned other ways of learning where I don’t need to read. And the day I made peace with it, I had energy to spend on other things.

The challenge with making peace with this, with what I call “80 percent is good enough”, with being OK even with a few things like that, is that you also need the self-image and the self-confidence to match. That’s the next problem that often drives the fear in a person: that they’re so unsure of themselves. If you don’t meet the “certain demands” that society has, and that you think other people have, which you struggled with too, and your self-image is too weak and insecure, then you don’t believe you can cope with simply turning round and saying: “Yes, now I’m doing what suits me.” It makes you anxious. So in this process the self-image also has to be worked on: identity and value system and the things we’ve talked about in earlier episodes.

So it was important to come to the point where I acknowledged that 80 percent was good enough when it came to the way I speak. But it also meant I had to be OK with someone laughing at me. If my students and clients listen to my video trainings, it’s easy to say: “Good grief, he can’t even speak.” But that’s completely OK. If that’s the level they’re at, then it’s OK, because it doesn’t bother me if someone laughs at me. That’s just how it is. As long as they understand me, that has to be the main point. If you understand me now, I couldn’t care less if I listen to the recording afterwards and think I perhaps should have said something differently, or that I’m tripping over my words again. The day you make peace with that, the pressure and the stress go down. Then you accept that 80 percent is good enough, and that has to be enough. And that’s probably also the point you came to when you started your journey of development not so many months ago: what is actually good enough?

Accepting not being liked

Amina: Yes. And as you touched on: I’ve practised a lot at picturing the worst-case scenario around things, this business of accepting. My biggest fear is that someone thinks I’m silly, that I say the wrong things, that I don’t know enough, that I don’t fit in. A lot of what I’ve worked on has been accepting not being liked. Accepting that some people actually will completely disagree with what I’m saying out loud now. Some will think I’m silly, some might laugh at me, maybe some will talk about me behind my back. Just to take it to the extreme: I’ve worked a lot on accepting that that’s fine. Because if you’re going to speak to several people or share things, and you don’t even need to be speaking to a large audience, I think it’s hugely important to accept that some people won’t like what you say, wherever you go. Not everyone appeals to everyone, after all, and perhaps it isn’t meant to be that way either.

Pål-Esben: I think so too. That’s a healthy insight. If you’re trying to be liked by each and every person, it’s very stressful. Like with social media, where you think that the more likes you get, the more liked you are. But it turns out that today we’re lonelier than ever, even though everyone is on social media. I think it’s about having one, two or three deep relationships. That’s what a human being needs, not a thousand people clicking like. But you have to come to the point where you accept that this is what reality is like: if you have an opinion and try to express it, there will always be someone who doesn’t like it, and that has to be OK too.

13 likes and the pedestals

Amina: Yes, and especially this business with social media. I’ve been round that loop myself, where I’ve posted something, checked it after an hour, and then: only 13 likes. “Oh, good grief, now I look stupid, now I have to be ashamed, now I have to delete the post. And think of everyone who saw that I deleted the post, oh, good grief.” There have been a few rounds of that. And we had a small, interesting experience at the beginning, when we were going to record the episodes here, Pål-Esben. I don’t know if it was after the first episode. I had a really hard time: I struggled to sleep, I felt a bit silly, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I couldn’t recognise that this was about a kind of perfectionism, because I had that across the whole spectrum, the whole package. Then we talked about it, and it turned out that this was something that came up for me when I was with you. And I wondered: “But why is that?” Then you said: “It’s about the people you put up on a pedestal.” I had a real aha moment there, and since then it has helped me work out which people, situations and places it applies to. I can more easily recognise which people I put on a pedestal, the ones who make me feel I have to perform more.

Performing instead of living

Pål-Esben: Exactly. And it’s often the case that pretty much everyone is like this when they’re with people they look up to. Then they often have performance anxiety around their teacher, or others with a certain status in a group or in society. And then you’re supposed to perform, instead of living. Why should we try to be a machine and function, instead of learning to live? That’s one of the questions here. I used to be a machine trying to function; I was supposed to be optimal in every area. But that’s the opposite of living. Because life means that we have to make mistakes. And if we try to arrange things so that we don’t make mistakes, we slip into this anxiety hamster wheel, where we try to become perfect so that we won’t have to make mistakes.

Take an example. I’ve trained a fair number of teachers over the last 20 years, in different subjects. Many of the teachers are capable, they have talents, they’re good at what they do. But they hold themselves back from going out and being teachers, because they don’t think they know enough: “What if I get a question I can’t answer? What if I make a mistake?” So many people hold themselves back from going out and doing something sensible with what they’ve learned, because they don’t feel perfect enough for the job. This side of perfectionism, where we’re terrified of making mistakes, is something we need to look at more closely. Because mistakes, as we see it, are something we can’t avoid as human beings. If you try to become a human being who doesn’t make mistakes, it goes without saying that it’s an impossible task. Because one thing is guaranteed: we’ll keep making mistakes, no matter how much stress we put ourselves under to avoid it.

Amina: Nice line again. That sounded so clever.

Mistakes are the engine of evolution

Pål-Esben: Yes, I can hear myself analysing. But hang on, where was I? We were talking about mistakes. Seen from a holistic, esoteric or spiritual point of view, we are completely dependent on being able to make mistakes in order to fulfil our mission in this incarnation. It’s simply impossible to fulfil your soul’s vision and intention without making mistakes. The question is why. If we observe the universe we live in, we see that since what many call the Big Bang there has been a constant expansion and evolution of the universe. We see the same expansion and evolution in absolutely everything in the universe, including our planet, which is in constant evolution. So it would be very strange to conclude that our nature isn’t about evolution, since we’re a result of the universe and Mother Earth, and have arisen from Mother Earth. Of course everything is about evolution. Absolutely everything in the manifested part of existence, the physical and the metaphysical part, tells us that evolution is the key.

So what does evolution mean? Evolution means trial, error, growth. Trial, error, growth. No evolution can happen without trial, error and growth. Everything from how planets and galaxies arise and disappear, to how the dinosaurs on this planet arose and disappeared: it’s trial, error, evolution. Evolution can’t happen without trial and error. That means mistakes give us an opportunity to grow. Imagine a life without mistakes, where everything has been perfect. In a setting like that, growth wouldn’t have been possible. That means that fulfilling our fundamental nature, which is evolution, wouldn’t have been possible. We find it again in karma, which is the accumulated consequences of the intentions and choices we’ve made, including the “good” things connected to the Path of the Heart, the path of the soul, as opposed to the not so good things connected to the ego. Karma and dharma, which we’ve talked a little about before. That’s the foundation of our process of evolution: that we can do things, make mistakes, learn from them and grow. And when we go out into nature and ask a tree, “Why do you grow from the time you’re born until you die?”, the tree will say it doesn’t understand the question. Of course it doesn’t understand the question, because that’s the tree’s nature. It’s only we humans who are so limited in our understanding of our own existence that we think making mistakes is wrong.

Amina: Yes, that’s true.

How do we deal with our mistakes?

Pål-Esben: The question is how we deal with the mistakes we make. Do we deal with them like this: “Aha, maybe something here wasn’t so good. What can I learn from this? How can I get better, so that I don’t make the mistake again?” It isn’t about making mistakes for the sake of making mistakes; that’s just as unhealthy as perfectionism. But once we’ve made a mistake, I think: “The way I spoke to my partner there perhaps wasn’t quite optimal. Perhaps I was a bit too harsh there and a bit too disrespectful. That wasn’t good. OK, what can I do to become a better partner? Well, first I go and apologise for being a bit sharp. And then I take away the lesson, so that I become a better version of myself towards my partner next time.” That’s growth. That’s evolution. And that’s one of the ideas you were given right at the start of our journey of development together: why should we fear mistakes? Why shouldn’t we be open to mistakes? We make mistakes anyway. Why not learn to love it, since we’re going to make them? Because if we use our mistakes in the way I’m describing now, they’re an important part of our process of growth, an important part of becoming an even happier human being with an even more meaningful and joyful life. Why not see mistakes that way?

Amina: Yes, and that’s something I’ve found very interesting on this journey: seeing the lesson in the “mistakes”, quote unquote, in the knocks I take, in the difficult moments, in catching myself running on autopilot. “What did I say there? Why did I say that? Whoa, that perhaps wasn’t so optimal.” I’ve been through many processes where I’ve thought: “Why have I ended up here again? I thought I was done with this. No, no, no.” Then I’ve slipped into a state of non-acceptance, and that makes things much worse. But when I shift into acceptance and see what I can learn from this, that’s where the magic lies. Because the way I see it now: I wouldn’t have gone through this if there wasn’t something I was meant to learn. It’s my resistance to these mistakes that makes me suffer. So they’ve been very important to me, and luckily I’ve taken notes along the way: the pitfalls I’ve fallen into, the mistakes I’ve made. When I leaf through my notebook, I can see what I’ve learned from it, the good things that came out of it. And if I go through something again, it can seem very similar, but I also see: “Whoa, something new came out of it there that I didn’t see last time.” This business of accepting the mistakes and seeing what good can come out of them.

A bit like what you were touching on: there was a woman who told me she’d had a perfect upbringing, with food on the table, a mother who took care of her, good memories of her father and the whole package. And then she said she was in therapy because she couldn’t live up to how perfect her mother had been. So whatever your circumstances, you can struggle with this in one way or another.

“Congratulations, you failed”

Pål-Esben: It’s part of our autopilot, part of the imprinting in the unconscious that we’ve taken in with our mother’s milk, through our upbringing and from society. It isn’t a person’s fault that they run on autopilot in a pattern of perfectionism and stress. No one has chosen it. It’s a result of how our autopilot has been imprinted, and we need to get to the point of switching it off. And we have power over that. As you learned right at the start: you actually have power over it. You yourself have power over it. Of course you need to learn a couple of things, and you need to change your perspective on making mistakes: mistakes aren’t a problem; mistakes are actually vital for a process of evolution and growth, which is the foundation of your soul’s journey in this incarnation. The soul hasn’t come here to lie on the beach, drink piña coladas and sunbathe. The soul comes from a timeless and spaceless nature where everything is one. Then, for some mysterious reason, it chooses to come into this straitjacket that is the four-dimensional world we live in: time and space, where suffering exists, where we can make mistakes, where pain exists, but also the taste of strawberries and love. There’s a reason it comes here, and it isn’t to lie on the beach. It’s to learn and experience and go through its process of evolution, which isn’t possible in a state where time and space don’t exist.

For a muscle to grow, we have to put it under load. If a muscle isn’t put under load, there’s no growth in it. Look at someone who is lying in bed and not using their muscles: the muscles waste away. So we need resistance, we need challenges, in order to grow. And I remember right at the start, when we began talking together, that you wanted to be a good student who shows that she has mastered things. And then I remember one of the first times you came to me a bit downcast: “Pål-Esben, I thought I’d mastered this, but now I walked straight into the trap again, and I feel like a failure because I did this again. I thought I’d learned from it.” You were downcast, and then I say to you: “Congratulations, Amina, very good!” And you look at me: “What?” You were very surprised that I said “very good” when you’d failed.

Because when we go through a process of development, especially a profound, spiritual, primordial shamanic process of development, we depend on these challenges in our daily life to be able to go through a process of growth at all. The hardest thing is to carry out a profound process of development with a person who has no challenges or problems whatsoever in life. It goes slowly. Because without resistance, how can you learn to become a master of gratitude, the first of the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart? How can you, without resistance and challenges, become an expert in forgiving yourself and others? How can you, without adversity, become an expert in self-regulation, the third pillar? How can you, without adversity in your daily life, develop a healthy character and a healthy value system? You’d have no reason to: no resistance, no challenges, no motivation to get to grips with it. How can you become a master of seeing the glass as half full without resistance and challenges in life? How can you become a master of healing your almighty syndrome, the sixth pillar, without resistance in everyday life, without getting a few bruises now and then, walking into the trap and thinking: “Good grief, now I’ve slipped into the almighty syndrome again, where I thought I understood something I have absolutely no clue about”? And how are you going to become a master of healing your perfectionism without coming up against challenges and problems in your daily life? It’s simply not possible.

So when I have students like you, who work on things and walk into the trap again, I always see something good. Because then we can get to grips with it and use it as weights for your muscles, to build them up so they get even stronger and more stable, which is a central part of a process of evolution. I use mistakes, setbacks, failing at things you absolutely should have managed, and say: “Good, now we have something to get to grips with, a point of crystallisation for the process of growth.” You were perhaps a bit surprised the first time I said this to you?

Weights, sore muscles and growth

Amina: Yes, I was. I think I perhaps expected something like: “Yes, but Amina, you know what to do, we’ve been through this”, and tut-tut-tut. And instead I got something completely different. It was very refreshing, and a bit shocking too, but it taught me to see things in a different way and see the value in it. One of my bigger themes has been doing too much, and getting to know how much is too much. But as we’ve also talked about: how am I supposed to know what “too far” is if I never go too far and start to recognise: “OK, now I’ve crashed. Where could I have stopped earlier? OK, then let’s do it again. Yes, now I’m starting to feel that I need to take it a bit easier.” It’s seeing it through that filter. And something that has been very important to me, that I’ve worked on a lot, is accepting that not everything is supposed to feel good. Not everything is supposed to feel good all the time, and it doesn’t mean something is wrong if it doesn’t feel good. Because in a way I measured success, and how life was going, by whether I was over the moon. But I learned that you don’t always need to jump for joy and whoop and shout for things to be… perfect, I almost said.

And a bit like what you said about strength training: I picture training with weights, and when you’ve trained with those weights, you often get a bit sore. That’s a nice metaphor for how not everything feels good, but it builds muscle.

18 months later

Pål-Esben: Yes, it does. And let’s fast-forward a little now, from the start, when perfectionism was a gigantic problem in your life. The fear of making mistakes and the fear of not being good enough created a massive amount of stress, stress hormones and inflammation in your body, as well as lowering your quality of life considerably. Now fast-forward 18 months to where you are now, after going through a fairly intensive and exciting process of development. How is it today? How do you experience perfectionism today, including when you make mistakes, when you share something on Instagram and get a nasty message back? How do you react to this theme in your life today?

Amina: There are a few different aspects to it. Now that I have my own students, with video conferences and in-person gatherings, I get questions I can’t always answer, and I find that it’s perfectly fine. I answer as well as I can, and ask you if I’m unsure. I also notice that it builds trust that I’m not a master of everything, that I don’t know everything. When I set up events and perhaps forget to bring something that’s actually important: before, the whole day would have been ruined, but now it’s more like: “OK, now I’ll use what I have, and then we’ll make something new out of it.” When it comes to negative comments and messages: I don’t get much of that, but it comes from time to time, and it doesn’t get to me.

What I did experience, though, was getting a hate message from a guy when I was about to start the basic shamanic training, saying I couldn’t call myself a shaman and that I was conning people, the whole package. That really threw me. Then I felt: “Whoa, there I had no space between impulse and action and feelings.” I was dragged down very sharply into something very unpleasant there. But I recognised it and thought: “Good that I came up against this now, because it helps me become more robust.”

And when it comes to my children: they grew up with me, when things had to be perfect. We have to say hello to that person, we have to give a hug, we have to wear the right trousers and the right shoes, they have to match, the whole package. Whereas lately they notice that I’m more flexible about it. Before, they could be very scared if they’d done something wrong or lost something at school; now I respond to them in a completely different way, and they see that it’s fine. Now and then, depending on how I’m feeling that day, an old feeling of not being good enough wants to come up, but it goes back down again very quickly. I see it and recognise it as a part of me, a part of who I’ve been and of my history, but I don’t let it shape me the way it did before.

Pål-Esben: So what you’re saying is that you’ve learned what it means to be imperfect in relation to healing perfectionism.

Amina: Yes.

The autopilot is set in concrete

Pål-Esben: That was well put, coming from a dyslexic. That means you’ve acknowledged that 80 percent is good enough. It’s OK to walk into the trap now and then. And even though you’ve worked intensively on this over several months, we’re talking about 18-plus months in your case, that isn’t a long time to go from this being something you suffer massively from in life to being pretty much relaxed about it. That’s a miracle in itself, when we see where you started, in such a short time. But we also have to acknowledge that this doesn’t come by itself. It takes active effort and an active discussion with someone. Because the challenge with this part of our autopilot is that it’s so deeply imprinted, so cemented and set in concrete, so stable in our personality, that we’re more or less incapable of being objective about it. So if you want to get out of the kind of perfectionism most people in our society have, and say, “That’s enough now; I have other things to spend my energy on than suffering under this nonsense”, then you should have a level-headed person to talk to about it, someone who can be objective and discuss it, as the two of us did during these months. It isn’t so easy to sit down and fix this on your own.

Amina: Not at all. It’s been hugely important for me to have had you to talk to, and to get these impulses and this feedback and guidance back to my own navigation system: someone who can see it from the outside and come up with impulses I’d never have found myself. Even though I may think I’m smart in certain areas and can help others, it’s something completely different when it comes to myself. So it’s hugely important, and it has been and still is for me.

Pål-Esben: When you start processes of development like this, it’s always important to find a suitable teacher, guide, therapist or someone else who knows the field you want to get better in, for example reducing stress and suffering. We can fix a good deal ourselves, but there’s no shame in seeking good help. That’s one of the things here too, when it comes to perfectionism: believing that we should be able to fix everything in life ourselves. It’s one of the most limiting belief systems connected to perfectionism: believing that I can fix everything. Well, I don’t think any human being is capable of fixing everything. The challenge is that people don’t learn to seek help where they need help. I encourage people to seek help instead of trying to figure everything out themselves. Why spend years getting to grips with things an expert already knows? Why not save yourself those years by seeking help from a therapist, guide or teacher who is an expert in the field? It will make a path of development like this, a process of evolution like the one we’re talking about here, much more joyful and exciting.

Mandatory on the way to the Sahara

Pål-Esben: Perfectionism is the seventh of the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which we call the ultimate path to happiness, meaning and shamanic magic. Even just for a good quality of life, or a better quality of life, more meaning and joyfulness, without any esoteric stuff at all, this will have a massive impact. And especially when it comes to a primordial shamanic process of development, which you’re in the middle of, a profound one, on the way to oneness, the timeless and spaceless, the complete process of liberation, then this is mandatory. Why? Well, because perfectionism helps to bind you into the straitjacket, bind you into the ego and the default mode network, bind you into time and space and lock you in there. All nine of these pillars are about this, but now we’re talking about perfectionism. To break out of this, to find your real nature, which I call your complete Sahara: if we see the material part of our existence as a single grain of sand of your existence, your complete nature would be the Sahara. And to break through and find your timeless and spaceless, real nature, your complete Sahara, we also need to break out of what binds us into the straitjacket. The more perfectionism you have, the deeper inside the straitjacket you are. So we have to actively break out and loosen the straps of the straitjacket, in this case perfectionism.

This is one of the important reasons for saying that this is the ultimate path to real shamanic magic. And I’m not talking about going out into the forest, beating your drum and holding a ritual. The real magic is found when we begin to move towards the transcendental transition, where time and space meet the timeless and spaceless. But to have any chance at all of getting there, we need to break open our straitjacket. That’s the reason we work so intensively with all nine of these pillars, which are the very foundation of a profound path of development. So I’m impressed by what you’ve managed to achieve in such a short time. And not least by accepting that 80 percent is good enough, because we can’t go as far as saying that 50 percent is good enough. Well, there’s one exception here: with my most advanced students we talk about the path to 97 percent in certain aspects, but that’s a completely different story. So I’m proud of you, Amina, of what you’ve managed to achieve in such a short time. And I’m delighted that life smiles on you in a different way today than it did a few months ago, even though life is really exactly the same.

Same life, new filter

Amina: Yes, there’s something in that: seeing that life looks the same, but that it’s my own filter that sees life differently, based on how in tune I am with the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart.

Pål-Esben: That’s a very interesting topic too. You experience the same things; the content is the same. You have friends, children, family, work and a private life. The content is pretty much the same as 18 months ago, but the experience of it is completely different. That’s one of the most fascinating things about a profound path of development like this. It isn’t about changing every area of life: new family, new friends, well, new children won’t work, but new everything. As if it were all about throwing away what we have in life: the old has to go, and everything new has to come in. Of course, new things are welcome too, and it can be right to let go of things that no longer fit. But that isn’t the key to living a happy, meaningful and joyful life. The key isn’t to say: “Now I’m going to split up with my partner, since my partner doesn’t respect or support me on my spiritual path of development, or isn’t interested in angels.” Hello? How many times do you think I hear this? You’ve had a happy relationship, perhaps for several decades, and then you get into some esoteric thing and learn about angels and whatever it is, and perhaps have a teacher who says: “Oh, if your partner doesn’t like angels too, I don’t think a relationship like that can work for you.” Then they come home, and the partner goes: “What, you want to talk about angels? You haven’t talked about that for the last 30 years, and now you’re starting to talk about angels. What do you expect from me? Do you want me to talk about angels too? No, I’m not that interested in angels. And don’t you respect me?” And that’s the start of chaos and eventually, in the worst case, a divorce, which is pointless.

The angels and the partner

Pål-Esben: So when I have students who come home to a partner who perhaps isn’t so interested in this alternative, esoteric stuff, angels and power animals and so on, I say: “Yes, but you don’t have to agree on everything. It’s possible to live in peace together. It’s possible to have other things you do together than talking about angels.” I remember a student who had started learning about angels and power animals, came home to her partner, and worked on him for weeks. They’d been happy, the kids had been happy, for 20 years, and her poor old husband sits there while she comes home and talks and talks, for hours every evening, about her spiritual experiences. Then she comes to me and bursts into tears: “My partner, my husband, doesn’t respect me, won’t talk about angels. I don’t think this is going to work, and I think I’m going to leave my husband.” And I say: “What are you talking about? Hello, you need to wake up now. Here you have a partner you’ve been happy with for so many years. You must be able to connect with your partner over the things you do share an interest in, cultivate that together and carry on being happy. You have your angels there, and perhaps he has other hobbies you’re not so interested in. Right?” The week after, I got an email back: she’d thought it through and felt it sounded sensible. And today they’re happy together.

So it’s also about how we see and deal with these things. What is a happy life? A happy life isn’t about being happy all the time, but about finding a life situation where we feel peace and meaning with ourselves, with the people in our life and with our activities. Why should we tear up things that are good in life because we think we have to clear out and throw away everything for something new to come in? That often leads to more suffering. So there too: a healthy, sensible way of dealing with these things. Yes, those are my thoughts on it.

The recipe: four points

Amina: Shall we perhaps finish with the recipe for healing perfectionism?

Pål-Esben: Yes, the recipe for healing perfectionism.

Amina: Yes, what is it, Pål-Esben?

Pål-Esben: I wrote an article about how we move away from being perfectionists. I even gave it a title: “Do you struggle with being a perfectionist? Learn why you’ll never get there, and how to stop the chase!” In that article I’ve written the solution in four short points. Number one: accept that you’re a human being who makes mistakes, and not an infallible, functioning machine. Number two, and I’m reading from the article now: start the day by repeating the following mantra in front of the mirror: “I love being a fallible human being! I open my arms to the mistakes I’m going to make today, because they are my greatest teachers! I’m curious about what my next mistake will be.” So that’s a slightly different mantra from saying that “every day, things are getting better and better”, and then things don’t get better. Here you set an intention in the morning that it’s OK to make mistakes: the mistakes are my teachers, and when I make a mistake, I’ll use it as the starting point for my process of growth and evolution. Number three: 80 percent is always good enough. We’ve talked about that. Number four: once we’ve made a blunder, instead of saying “oh, you’re a useless creature who hasn’t understood what you should have understood”, we use the Interrupt Handling Technique, which I’ve also written about in an article and in my book The 7 Golden Keys. The Interrupt Handling Technique for letting go of emotional states of suffering: you press the pause button, and so on. I’ve also written an article about how you can live happily and meaningfully in your life situation; it’s on my blog. These four things are what you need. If you get to grips with them, are actively aware of them and do your best, it’s very hard not to get better. If you come up against real challenges, you find a sensible person to discuss them with. I’ve seen this work for everyone I’ve got started on it, both those who come to me with burnout and those who come to me for the shamanic path. We can do it within one, two, three weeks, as we did with you, as long as you don’t expect to be perfect after three weeks. As long as you don’t expect to become perfect at not being perfect, because that’s a thing too.

Amina: Exactly.

The email regime: choosing your relationships

Pål-Esben: The question is: what do we want in life? Do we want to satisfy everyone else’s needs all the time? Or do we want to think: what do I need? Trying to satisfy the needs of all the people around you creates insane stress, especially with perfectionism. The question is: what do you need? That doesn’t mean you should be self-centred and not give a damn about everyone else. But I believe that if you aren’t able to show love to yourself and love yourself, it’s very difficult to love other people too.

And for my part, to wrap up: I came to that point, for example, with this business of people being able to reach me. In the old days they could reach me more or less day and night. After the burnout I made a change and said: the only way to reach me is to send me an email. And I decide whether I want to get in touch, and if so, when. That means I’m not active on social media or on chat or whatever it may be. If you want to get in touch with me, you have to send me an email, and then I decide when I get in touch. In my life there are at most two handfuls of people, fewer than two handfuls, who have direct contact with me. That’s something I’ve chosen, because I need it in my life. For me it’s about cultivating the important relationships, which consist of very few people I have a deep relationship with. That’s what’s important to me, that’s what I want to have resources for, and not thousands of people around me who want to get hold of me. That’s a choice I’ve made. I think each person has to make their own choices about what really matters, because you need time and resources for what really means something: the kids, your partner, your hobbies, whatever it is. We all have limited time and resources, so there comes a point where we have to choose. And at the start, when I switched off my mobile phone and changed my phone number and all that, because I just wanted peace, there was of course an outcry for a few weeks. People couldn’t get hold of me. “How is that possible? You don’t answer!” But after a few weeks people get used to the new regime. Even many of my best friends can’t reach me on the phone, since it’s switched off, but they reach me by email, which I read more or less every day. And they’ve got used to it: “OK, that’s fine, that’s how Pål-Esben is.” And then suddenly it wasn’t a problem.

Words of wisdom to wrap up

Pål-Esben: So: what are the most important insights you’d like to share with the listener to wrap up? What’s the most important thing you’ve learned, words of wisdom for the listener?

Amina: It has to be that perfect doesn’t exist. It only brings suffering, stress, chaos and constant hurry. And that it’s actually possible to free yourself from it more and more. I’m living proof of that, because if you look at my astrological birth chart, I’m covered in perfectionism from head to toe. But even there, there are always solutions where there are challenges. So if there’s hope for me, I often say, there’s hope for everyone. So perhaps you as a listener could notice, in the time ahead, where your perfectionism has made itself at home, so to speak. Where do you overthink? Where do you strive for the perfect? Perhaps write it down, take note of it, not to beat yourself up, but to get to know better who you really are, and where this perfectionist syndrome lives in you.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And it’s about going from being an infallible, functioning machine that has to function optimally in every area, to becoming more and more a human being who is living. That’s my choice, at least, and your choice too. It doesn’t mean we become worse or less productive people; it just means we become happier and more joyful people. We’ll never be able to satisfy everyone; we need to find out what’s right for us. In the next episode we’re going deeper into the shamanic side, because we’re going to start working with nature’s healing rhythms and what they’re about. Then we move more and more away from, let me put it this way, standard, fundamental behavioural psychology, and into the ultra-exciting world of the shaman: what we can learn from shamanism and bring into our lives to create an even more meaningful, joyful and happy life. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.