Poppy Jamie, Founder of Happy Not Perfect and host of the Not Perfect podcast joins Happiful to talk about self-acceptance and how breathwork changed everything for her

In the month that she releases her fantastic new and first book Happy Not Perfect: Upgrade Your Mind, Challenge Your Thoughts and Free Yourself From Anxiety, Poppy Jamie chats to Happiful about the mindset and tools she uses to address her inner perfectionist and critic.

Poppy is sharing the lessons she’s learned through her own lived experience, in the hope that she can support others to aim for a sustainable level of happiness, rather than constantly seeking perfection within their lives.

Breathwork can change everything

Aiming for perfectionism in her teens and early twenties left Poppy with chronic exhaustion and burnout, but then she came across a practice that enabled her to start to listen to her own body more closely and to reset her perspective

“A friend introduced me to breathwork, which I think was the first step for me being able to slow down my nervous system, sense of overwhelm and overload of cortisol. Breathwork was an unbelievable experience, they say it’s forty years of therapy in forty minutes and I truly believe that.

“When we stuff so much down, which is what I was doing, breathwork brings that up. I remember just crying and crying in the class and afterwards. It was the most freeing experience. All of these emotions that I’d felt for years and had been terrified to really acknowledge, were finally just coming out.”

The experience was so significant for Poppy that she trained to become a breathwork instructor herself. “Every time something has freed me in such a life-changing way, I want to know how I can ensure that even more people can have access to it.”

Acknowledging that mistakes are important

Explaining that she’s made her fair share of errors too, Poppy is keen to let people know that getting it wrong often helps us to pursue a different and better direction in the long term.

“When we make mistakes that’s when we’re at our most creative!” she says. “I talk about this in the book, if Thomas Edison hadn’t made mistakes, he would never have invented the lightbulb. It was because he tried and failed hundreds of times that he made something valuable.”

Picture your personal dream future

When you’re contemplating your future, Poppy suggests, avoid the labels that you’ve been given throughout your life and think about where and who you really want to be.

“The world often tells us who we should be, so every single day I work on deconditioning myself. I think, how would my future be if I took off all those labels and do what truly lights me up? That to me is my dream future.”

Read the full interview with Poppy in July’s edition of Happiful, out on 17 June.
Listen to Poppy’s episode of I am. I have
Happy Not Perfect: Upgrade Your Mind, Challenge Your Thoughts and Free Yourself From Anxiety (Yellow Kite) by Poppy Jamie is out on 10 June.

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