Perfection is not a prerequisite for participation. Let that sink in. Breathe a sigh of relief. You are allowed to be here. You are loved and enough.

This last week I visited a dear friend who just moved to Durango. One day we were driving from Durango to Telluride, a 2 hour trip with absolutely stunning scenery. And yet, there I was comparing myself to my friend and feeling insecure in my knowledge and experience of the wilderness. She has climbed 100 peaks, and is an avid outdoors woman who is inspiring and passionate about climbing, skiing, and backpacking. I started to feel regret that I live in Colorado, but have not taken advantage of the beautiful outdoors in the same way that she has. In the past, I would have tied that to not feeling as drawn to outdoor sports, not having the desire to drive to the mountains, or a lack of finances to make skiing a priority, but in the car that day I realized that even deeper than all of that was a knot in my stomach that is all too familiar and has driven so many of my choices in life over the years - this deep discomfort and belief that to show up to anything, I needed to be in perfect health - no more autoimmune symptoms - but also somehow embody a feminine beauty ideal.

Earlier on in the week, before our drive to Durango, my friend and I had been going through old photos. We met in 3rd grade so have seen each other through much of our lives. Looking back at the photos, the same painful feelings driven by criticism arose in my body. From an early age I adopted the belief that beauty and weight were the determinants for love and acceptance. Around the age of 9 my favorite gymnastics coach told me I was fat and that I should stop eating despite having 6 pack abs. A series of other disparaging comments throughout my childhood and teen years allowed the belief to take root that I was only worthy of love if I was thin and beautiful. I believed that I failed terribly at both, but I thought, “Perhaps through denying myself and manipulating food, I can ‘fix’ myself.” This aim became such a focal point in my life, but was also accompanied with a deeply ingrained sense of shame about “not being enough,” that it started to color my view of the world and my place in it.

So many of us don’t realize that the choices we make, what we believe we are allowed to do, and how we believe we are allowed to show up in the world are so often influenced by core wounds and beliefs developed in childhood. They are usually a result of something unhealed in someone else, that have been projected onto us at a young age. In my case, my dangerously thin gymnastics coach projected her own distorted beliefs about bodies and thinness onto me. Your negative beliefs might be different than those that I’ve struggled with, but they usually tell the same story - “You are not enough.”

The quote at the beginning of this post, “Perfection is not a prerequisite to participation,” is an adage we would all benefit from abiding by. How much more joy and life might we experience, if we could let ourselves off the hook, recognizing the negative self talk and beliefs that loop in our subconscious and then beginning to tell a different story. A story that declares, “I am enough. I have always been enough. I can be here and show up in the fullness of who I am knowing that I belong just as I am.” Maybe for me embodying that truth will lead me to climb more mountains. What might it mean for you?