Overcoming this belief and the emotional pain it causes will require you to self-reflect and define what being “flawed” means. In several cases, people use this phrase when they notice they haven’t or can’t meet a standard they think they should meet.
Doesn’t failing to meet a standard just mean that one is imperfect?
Unless you have evidence to suggest otherwise, are there any perfect humans? If not, is everyone not, by definition, flawed1? The solution to dismantling this belief is to understand whether you knowingly or unknowingly think you should feel bad about an imperfection. If you think you should, you may think that any or certain kinds of imperfections are unacceptable, which is at odds with the reality that humans are imperfect.
This thinking (you should feel bad about an imperfection) also means that whenever you recognize a “flaw” or imperfection about yourself, you will feel bad.
The alternative
If you instead decide and recognize that yes, you are imperfect and as a result, will make mistakes or have imperfect characteristics, but won’t feel bad about any imperfection regardless of how much you dislike it, you’ll overcome the belief.
Doing this means you’ll no longer view any kind of imperfection as unacceptable or as a reason to feel bad.
Acceptance doesn’t mean you like it
Choosing to be ok with imperfection doesn’t mean you like the imperfection and won’t do the work to change in some way. Rather, being ok with that reality (an imperfection) means you can evaluate and work on yourself with little to no emotional pain; a way of living you’d likely prefer.
The ‘I’m Flawed’ belief is extremely similar to the psychology of “something is wrong with me.”
What to do when people think you’re flawed
Those people probably don’t know what they mean by thinking you’re flawed because if they did, they would know that they, too, are flawed in some way. Why? Unless they’re God, they are human beings.
It can be tough, but we encourage you to remember this when others call or think of you as flawed. These individuals may not have done the inner work to realize that calling people “flawed” is a phrase that does little other than generate emotional pain.
Michael Jordan: There are benefits to recognizing your “flaws”
Seeing your flaws often has benefits. It can help you see which aspects of yourself you’d like or can change to reach your goals.
For example, when Michael Jordan graduated high school and entered college in North Carolina to play basketball, he recognized that he wasn’t skilled enough to dominate the game like he did in highschool. He embraced that fact and told his coach that he wanted to do everything possible to upskill himself so he could be one of the best players on the court, and he did just that. Had he ignored his ‘flaws” because he wanted to believe he was already great, or if the emotional pain of knowing he wasn’t as impactful as he would’ve liked was too much, he might not have developed the skills that helped him achieve all that he did.
Costs (often unseen) of this belief:
Social anxiety, self-doubt, low confidence and low self-esteem, no desire to have fun, burnout, inability to be present, judgmental to self and others, never happy, constant fight or flight, fearful of losing idealistic outcomes, fear of making mistakes and learning.
Problems this belief can give rise to:
- Intelligence Insecurity
- Social Anxiety
- Feeling inadequate
- Not feeling good enough
- Low self-esteem
- Low self-worth
- Low self-confidence
Looking for more?
You can submit a request for additional support if you’d like to understand this belief more or want 1on1 help. Get help with your unique situation.
Have something to add?
If you have anything you think can be improved to help someone overcome this belief, we’d love to hear it. We’ll give you credit if we update this page with your input. Contribute
Citations
- Lents NH. Human Errors: A Panorama of our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 01 May 2018. ↩︎
