“It is very poisonous to constantly throw arrows at us.” How can we moderate our obsession with perfection?

The search for the ideal and the rules of beauty have always existed. Since the beginning of time, women (and men) have navigated between sublimation, alienation, and liberation. Except that today we are the cosmetic tyrant, the main boss. You need not only to succeed in your personal and professional life, to be a good mother, a good lover, an infallible friend, but also to protect your skin, the planet, eat healthy, take care of your glow day and night, socialize. networks, “yoga”, breathing, meditating without wrinkles, without spots or dimples, “being yourself”, taking time for yourself and expressing your feelings… many of us suffer from the mental burden of beauty. Some ideas to reduce it.

I alleviate my emotional fatigue

“We always talk about physical or mental effort, while most of our daily efforts are emotional,” emphasizes Gaetan Cousin, Ph.D. of psychology at the University of Lausanne, who publishes: The art of doing just enough. Measure your efforts without exhausting yourself (Ed. Odile Jacob). By this I mean everything we do to endure, mask or regulate our emotions, stress, boredom, frustration, anxiety or, on the contrary, to create positive emotions around us. An incredible expenditure of energy that we rarely take into account. If it’s problematic to put in too little effort, it’s just as problematic to put in too much too often.”

According to him, it would explain why we can’t (or are no longer) able to do certain things, start, why we procrastinate, that everything tires us in advance… Moreover, it is such a subjective and personal concept that we never we cannot appreciate the amount of effort others put in, hence many misunderstandings at work and at home. For the explorer, it is therefore important to find the balance between effort and ease, between the pleasure of navigating the waves and the difficulty.

“Whatever your life goals are, there are a number of small tips to help ease the burden of this emotional effort as much as possible,” he continues. The best way is to divide the action. Taking the first step is often the hardest step and always requires a lot of emotional effort. So you have to start small, step by step. Once you start, things are easier because action begets action and sets a positive dynamic in motion. In addition to task sequencing, certain routines can also reduce this perception of effort. If we run every morning at a fixed time, little by little, the limitation disappears. Not forgetting to constantly remember why we do what we do. Making sense of them makes them much less exhausting. »

I practice active kindness

Psychotherapist Natalie Rapoport-Hubshman, an expert in mind-body integrative medicine, says she sees more and more young women in constant self-criticism, constantly comparing themselves, paralyzed by the precept of happiness… Personal Development Yoga Mats: with big bursts of “I’m not doing enough”, “I should have”, “I can’t do it”, self-deprecation mostly fueled by social media. In his book Live in harmony with yourself (Ed. Odile Jacob), he does not hide that “it is very poisonous to shoot arrows at you all the time”.

On the contrary, studies have shown that a minute a day of wellness is good for the heart and arteries. Even enough to change your life little by little. “You have to treat yourself like your best friend,” the doctor insists, “which doesn’t stop you from accepting yourself with your doubts, flaws, emotions, and conflicting strengths.” Being on your own is not easy for anyone. Taking care of yourself doesn’t mean focusing on your vessel either. When we are kind to ourselves, we can be kinder to others.”

I measure my goodness

In her book, Natalie Rapoport-Hubshman also writes that showing kindness and gratitude to others twelve times in a month is enough to reduce inflammatory genes and relieve stress. Until you become Mother Teresa. Be kind, but not too much. this is also the name of the last work of psychiatrist Francois Lellord (ed. Odile Jacob).

A read to recommend to all those who cannot say no, those who are too modest, too conciliatory, too sincere. Not to learn how to become evil and selfish, far from it, but to understand why we allow ourselves to be caught in the wool behind our backs and begin to assert ourselves because, as the practitioner reminds us; “We don’t do it in life. You don’t always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don’t ask for.”

I stop feeling guilty

Mona Scholle herself, the priestess of feminism, is the author fatal beauty and: Witches, who invites us to do so in his latest work; Resist guilt. About some of the barriers to existence (Editor: La Découverte)!