Deep Unwind: Bye Bye Perfecktionism 🌊

Deep Unwind: Bye Bye Perfecktionism 🌊

Seeking perfection can be an inspiring goal in some areas of life: A musician practices until the notes are just right; a baker carefully measures each ingredient. But perfectionism is something different. It asks us to believe that we must somehow become finished—complete, flawless, and beyond improvement.

In this Deep Unwind, you'll gently loosen the grip of perfectionism and discover a different kind of perfection: the quiet intelligence and order found in nature itself.

Your journey begins beside the ocean, where you explore a tide pool filled with shells, seaweed, barnacles, and tiny forms of life. You'll discover that beauty doesn't arise from everything being neat or complete—it emerges through constant movement, exchange, and renewal.

As your awareness expands beyond the shoreline, you'll experience a shift in perspective, recognizing that you, too, are part of a living system that is continuously healing, adapting, and evolving. There is nothing to force. Nothing to finish. Life already knows how to unfold.

This Unwind includes:

Guided hypnosis, deep relaxation, overcoming perfectionism, letting go of control, nervous system regulation, parasympathetic relaxation, stress relief, mindfulness, self-acceptance, personal growth, subconscious transformation, and trusting the natural flow of life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Hi everybody, this is Jessica, and welcome to Unwind, a podcast where we come back to ourselves, explore relaxation, and ask ourselves the question: what do we find when we unwind? Thank you all for being here. I'm so excited to be doing Unwind. It's really making me happy. Um, we've gotten some feedback from some people because things are rolling on Apple Podcasts. I heard from Shammywam. Great name. This is a new listener and a hypnotherapist. I can't tell if you're male or female, so I'm going to assume you're female. I just want to say I'm very flattered that you were listening to my work. So thank you. Mary Jo in St. Louis has been listening for four years on Sleep Magic and now is here with us at Unwind. Thank you, Mary Joe. Someone named Minnie SB is sober, neurodivergent, and wrestles with PTSD and is very grateful that I didn't disappear. Me too. Me too. And I'm glad you're here. And Cordelia Gray. What a beautiful name. It's like a cup of tea. She's been listening also for four years and says that my hypnosis has become an essential part of her self-care routine. That makes me extremely gratified. Thank you. I read all of these comments for a couple of reasons. First, it's for all of you listening. Because hearing that something works actually begins the process in your own mind. It's sort of a pre-hypnosis, if you will. And it helps you to build confidence that things can change, that relaxation works. And that's what we're here to discover. But I also read these things for me. As I make this transition, I can feel vulnerable at moments. So hearing your voices reassures me like nothing else can. Thank you for listening and thank you for your feedback. Please, if you feel moved to do it, rate this show, give reviews to this show, tell your friends, do whatever you can. I I apologize, we're kind of at square one again in terms of building and growing a show, but so be it. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do to help this flourish. Also, subscribe, join me at Instagram or at patreon.com where we're creating a little world behind the world. Okay. Tonight. Bye-bye perfectionism. Perfectionism is an interesting topic. I myself am not a perfectionist. I'm more of a process-oriented person. I mean, don't get me wrong, I like good results, but I'm rarely aiming at perfection per se. But let's get clear here about this topic. Some things we need to do perfectly, or close to perfectly, like baking a croissant. You can't just mess around intuitively in the kitchen with ingredients and produce fine French petisserie. Doesn't happen. You want to play a Bach concerto perfectly, or aim a rocket into space perfectly. But doing something perfectly is different from being a perfectionist or believing perfection can or should be achieved everywhere, all the time. To me, perfectionism appears to be an attempt to seek a moment or a product or a version of myself that is somehow complete or beyond improvement. But the problem with perfectionism is that it's not achievable because we can't stop change. I mean, just look at nature. The ocean never presents the same wave twice. Trees don't hold on to their blossoms forever. Even our bodies are constantly repairing cells, replacing things, reorganizing themselves from moment to moment. And not only are those functions unstoppable and never complete, they're often downright messy. So even if you achieve perfection in one moment, life moves to another moment, and it must be achieved again. It's exhausting. And yet, here's a nod to the perfectionist, when we look at life through a wider lens, there is something astonishingly beautiful, and yes, even perfect, about the larger order within which all this change is occurring. But this larger perfection is not achieved through stillness, but through movement. It's not about completion, but flow and participation. And we must surrender to that perfection. So, yeah, we don't really have the control to make things perfect, but we do receive intuitive guidance within the bigger perfection that shows us the next right move. As nature gently whispers, relax, let me move through you. That is perfect. So if you haven't already, just let your eyes close as you settle into your inner world. You know, if you're someone who has the perfectionist tendency, you may recognize how that makes you feel. A sort of narrowing of your attention. Maybe a feeling that you're always aiming. Let yourself feel that now. Feeling that you need to be checking and revising and double checking. Let your body feel the pattern you experience when you're aiming at perfection. Notice how your body feels. Notice how your mind feels.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Good.

SPEAKER_03 8:10

And now we relax. Oh, as you bring your awareness to your breath, that lovely natural wave of your breath. Your awareness has been outside of you, out in the world, doing things, thinking things, maybe trying to make things perfect. And now it's just coming home to your breath. Good. Now I invite you to bring your awareness to your eyelids as you allow your eyelids to become soft. And as your eyelids are resting, allow all the muscles around your eyes to soften and relax. And as you relax your eyes, your eyelids are feeling so heavy. You begin to imagine that they cannot open. Now, of course, you know you could open your eyes if you want to. And you can. But right now we're imagining that your eyes are so heavy and relaxed that they cannot open. So let's play this little game as you test your eyes to make sure they won't open by lifting your eyebrows, wiggling them while your eyes remain closed. Good. Now you're aligning with your imagination, and that's taking you even deeper into relaxation, your whole body feeling loose and limp and relaxed. Good. As the muscles of your face become soft and relaxed, as your head is feeling very, very heavy on the pillow. As you imagine warm waves of relaxation lapping up against the beach of your mind. Feel those warm waves of relaxation lapping up against the beach of your mind. As all mental tension disappears. Covering your arms as they feel nice and heavy. And the heaviness is moving down now into your hands, into the palms of your hands, moving down now into your fingers as you unwind and unwind. And all the sounds going on around you are taking you deeper and deeper. Oh deep inside your body, becoming soft, relaxed, open and the wave of peace is softening your heart. Soothing your heart. So that any emotional tension you've been feeling in the last little while is dissolving as you go deeper and deeper. And the wave of peace moves down into your belly, softening your belly as your breath moves deeper into your body.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Heavy.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

And the wave of peace is moving down into your legs now. As your legs become nice and heavy. Heavy. Taking you deeper.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Good.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Imagine you are walking along a path toward the ocean. It's a mild afternoon, and the air feels fresh against your cheeks. You smell salt water and the scent of seaweed drying in the sun. As you look ahead, the sea stretches toward the horizon. There are lovely full clouds hanging lazily over the water. You stand and watch. The clouds are casting huge shadows on the water, so that the ocean seems to be shifting between shades of deep blue, slate and green. And where the sunshine pokes through the clouds, the ocean looks silver. You hear the waves, but you don't see them yet. As you stand very still, you take a nice deep breath, and you hear the familiar sound, a surge of water whooshing up the beach, and now the quiet hiss as it retreats. A gull cries overhead. You continue walking as you go deeper and deeper into relaxation. As you arrive at the beach, you notice the tide is low. You take off your shoes and step onto the cool sand. To your left, you notice a rock formation. You watch as a wave rolls toward the rocks. It is gathering itself just offshore, now lifting and curling, and now it crashes against the rocks, dissolving into foam and spray. Ah, a wonderful release. As you go deeper and deeper.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

In and out, in and out, in and out.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

You walk toward the rock formation and climb carefully up the rounded, water beaten rocks until you stand a few feet above the beach. And you notice tucked within the rocks is a tide pool. You walk toward it very carefully on the slippery rock and sit down next to it. It's about three feet across, a small depression in the stone holding the overflow from the ocean. And around this depression are smaller bowls, little divots, and handfuls of water. You examine this mini environment. The water is clear in some bowls and slightly cloudy in others. You notice patches of pale sand, fragments of a shell, tiny pebbles. In the large tide pool, you notice a long ribbon of seaweed drifting lazily beneath the surface. Its stem has tiny air bladders like strings of beads. Everything smells briny and full of life as the sound of the waves continues to move through your body in and out in and out in and out.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

As you go deeper and deeper, you notice more. This tiny world is very full.

SPEAKER_03 22:26

You notice barnacles clustered along the sides of the rock. Some of their shells are tightly closed, others slightly open. You notice a muscle shell lying on its side. One half remains intact, and the other half is missing. A big strand of dried kelp has been flung upon a rock. Its edges are curled and crisp from the sun. A single seagull feather rests at the edge of a small pool.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Everything feels messy, and yet so alive.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Thick and strong. And as you gaze at it, and you go deeper and deeper, you notice that down the middle of each arm runs a wavy purple line like a tiny winding river, and along each side of that river are rows of cream colored dots. Breathing in and out, in and out, in and out, you lie down beside the tide pool as your attention softens, and your breath becomes slower as you go deeper and deeper, you close your eyes. And it's rising gently, your perspective beginning to lift a few feet at first, above you. You still imagine the pool, the ribbons of kelp, the shells, the starfish. But now you're seeing the whole rock formation, the cradles, the tide pool. You notice its irregular shape, its curves and pockets. As your awareness rises even more, you see another formation nearby with another tide pool. And another. Each one slightly different. Each one holding its own little world, different shells, different starfish, different colors, unique combinations of the same element, and from here up high, they resemble cells, little capillaries, tiny places of exchange in a larger body, where nutrients are absorbed, where life is happening as your awareness rises even higher now. Fifty feet, maybe a hundred. The shoreline is beginning to reveal its shape. You notice its edges and curves, the inlet and coves, fingers a rock reaching into the sea, patterns repeating themselves, fractiles in a bigger mosaic.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Receiving releasing receiving releasing, and as your awareness moves up even higher, you see the headlands, the mouths of rivers, systems nested within systems, movements within movements, tiny worlds supporting larger worlds, and you realize that you are part of a larger system just by being you.

SPEAKER_03 32:20

You are playing a role in a much bigger play, and as you relax and simply be, you feel secure as part of a larger system as the system takes care of itself, following its own intelligence, and now your awareness is coming back down, down, down as it returns to your body as you go deeper and deeper, and you realize that you are made up of countless little tide pools inside of you, tiny places of exchange where one thing becomes another.