Perfectly imperfect: essence vs reality

What you need to know:

  • But what makes perfection a topic of interest? Well, we live in an increasingly demanding world. We log onto our social media platforms and nearly everything and everyone seems to be doing wonders. The currency of perfection has become increasingly valuable and desirable, as everywhere we look, we see images of perfectly manicured lawns, best in class vehicles, perfectly smiling children wearing mini-me outfits, you get the picture.

I lean more towards perfection tendencies and I understand the drive towards that direction. But I can also attest to the view that perfection is over-rated.

But what makes perfection a topic of interest? Well, we live in an increasingly demanding world. We log onto our social media platforms and nearly everything and everyone seems to be doing wonders. The currency of perfection has become increasingly valuable and desirable, as everywhere we look, we see images of perfectly manicured lawns, best in class vehicles, perfectly smiling children wearing mini-me outfits, you get the picture.

Seemingly in this era, face value beats substance hands down and we obsess with keeping up with the Joneses as an active pass time.

The reality though, is that the pictures, videos and stories are carefully crafted messages for our consumption and do not necessarily capture much truth. The truth remains that we are all imperfect with imperfect lives. The narrative that perfection is an ultimate that we must aspire to achieve in this respect must be strongly challenged in our consciousness and in our lives.

Allow me to shift gears and address what makes me assert this view; I strongly believe that the strive for this elusive bar of perfection whilst it may realize some inspirational value, I would argue that it is creating plenty of negative issues along it’s warpath. Of particular interest is mental health. Yes, I said it! This taboo subject that we never talk about for a variety of reasons rears its head strongly in our generation and I believe that the search for perfection amongst other issues resides at the heart of it.

But what does mental health mean? WHO defines mental heath as ‘a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community’.

Why is the question of mental health important for those of us in the people profession? Given that we are living in this particular time and space, is it possible that our people both at work and at home are immune?

From a simplistic view we can argue that symptoms indicating all is not well exist in both our work and home environments. Examples are changes in behaviour, decline in performance, decreased concentration, misconduct at work or at school, negative attitudes, low self esteem, physical, mental and emotional abuses, devastating rates of substance abuses, increased anxiety, depression and indeed even to extremes of self harm.

Our people in our offices and families are likely dealing in silence with various issues that may not look debilitating in the first instance but, are much more complex and harder to heal than a wound on our flesh.

So what is my clarion call one might ask?

I would humbly suggest the following as a starting point;

1. Endeavour to sensitize and create the mental health awareness necessary to start up conversations around this ‘dark’ subject

2. Engage professionals who can help demystify the subject, break down the jargon and offer explanations in a manner that is palatable for all

3. Focus on building organizational internal expertise to be able to recognize the tell –tale signs of potential mental health issues and signpost them

4. Identify and deploy response mechanisms suitable for each organization’s environment aimed at tackling the problem at the first instance in terms of offering mental health ‘first aid’ such as sensitive support and guidance to colleagues to help them recognize the problem and seek help

5. But most importantly, exploring and learning techniques to care for our mental well being such as re-organizing workloads, schedules, creating positive cultures et cetera.

Ultimately, the stressors and pressure we experience both in and out of work won’t evaporate, challenges will persist albeit in different forms, but we can foster and learn coping mechanisms, we can learn to be own best supporters instead of worst critics. We can take time to pursue activities that bring us joy such as exercising, choosing to switch off our gadgets and enjoy special moments with loved ones or any other positive activities that take us out of our stressful realities.

Above all, we can endeavour to speak up about our struggles, because it is in sharing our challenges that allows others to do the same and hopefully, collectively we can find possible mechanisms to help us find healing.

In the end, we are masterpieces – perfectly imperfect!

Ms Ramadhani is a senior manager in the Human Resources Department, East Africa Aga Khan University