☀️ The Nicole Magnusson Newsletter

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📆 Daily Issue 30 | ⏱️ Read time: 2 min

Embracing Imperfection: Dancing Through Life’s Storms

Yesterday, an old thought loop caught up with me.

Wishing I was PERFECT.

I wish I looked different, talked differently, and had a completely different life.

I wanted my face, my body, and every aspect of my existence to be filtered and airbrushed.

If I could just be PERFECT everything would be okay. All of my problems would go away, and I would drift through life in a perfect carefree existence.

I projected perfection on different girls I saw online.

If I could look like them, I could finally exhale.

If my house looked like that, I could finally feel peace.

If I had that much attention, I would finally feel loved.

My mind raced as I put more and more energy into some imagined perfect existence I would never obtain.

But then my mind settled on a quote: “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain”.

I don’t know the author of this quote. I saw it on a teacup, so let’s assume the teacup gods were imparting their wisdom.

I let the realization wash over me…

Life will always be messy.

My to-do list will never be done.

I will always be slightly inadequate.

One day, my body will completely decay.

I let myself feel it… my humanness. My inconvenient, messy, gross HUMANNESS.

There will be problems until the day we die. And if we cannot learn to dance amongst the chaos, we will spend our entire existence curled up in a little ball crying in fear.

Life is too precious to spend our entire existence curled up in a little ball, scared of everything that is not perfect.

We are MESSY, AGING, and IMPERFECT. Let us not wait until the final moments of our life to realize what a gift all this craziness was.

I think underneath our desire to be perfect is the knowing that once upon a time, we all knew perfect love. In Heaven, we were all perfectly loved, and we felt perfect joy and happiness.

I don’t think we want nose jobs and lip filler. I think what we TRULY want is perfect love.

And we WILL experience that again. One day, when the time is right.

But right now, we’re in the middle of the storm. Right now, we need to befriend ugliness, uncertainty, sickness, addiction, and overwhelm.

The storm isn’t quite as scary when we’ve committed to dance our way through it! In fact, the storm can even be exciting! ;)

Keep inspiring,

Nicole