What David Gest blames Michael Jackson for and how you can save yourself the expense

Human's pursuit of perfection has always fascinated and bothered me, it erodes our enjoyment of the life we are here to live. We put ourselves under unnecessary stress for not fulfilling the 'should be like' criteria we create in our head. Last week I wrote about perfectionism and how that can be our own downfall, even preventing us from doing the work we set out to conduct in fear that it will not be good enough or live up to other people's expectations – or how we think it 'should' be. People take their quest to be flawless to extreme lengths. Last week, by sheer chance, I happened to see an interview with David Gest days after his leaving from Celebrity Big Brother. I don't watch CBB so I had no idea he was ill and left because of that, or that he was even in it this year.

The interviewer asked Gest about plastic surgery and why he had it at such a young age living in L.A. and does everybody do it? David said that back in the day he was influenced by Michael Jackson to go under the knife because Jackson said you always have to make yourself look better. Guest said he had his work done back in 1980, but today says, "It was the stupidest thing, what an idiot I was. Be who you are, you do not need plastic surgery. People look in your soul for true beauty." It's so refreshing to hear this from someone who has lived, in our perception of it, the 'Hollywood glamour' lifestyle.

People have become fixated on the idea of the perfect body – the hourglass figure – being slim and sun-kissed, and they forget to be who they are, and become more self-centred on what they are. But is it a good thing, and does it bring you happiness and tick that box that indicates you have reached the point of branding yourself 'perfect'? Not according to Gest who said, " it was the stupidest thing," and quite possibly regrets meddling with nature.

How do people arrive at that state of realising they are fine as they are, without playing God in the process of trial-and-error plastic surgery? From a personal level I was not comfortable with myself as I was tubby as a child from being in a wheelchair and not fitting the stereotype of guys my age on a Friday night at a club. So I went on crazy fad diets and all sorts to try and meet the criteria of what society was dictating. It wasn't a diet or quick-fix meal plan that got me to like myself, I changed my 'lifestyle' and who I was. A few years later I went and had my eyes laser-corrected because I didn't want glasses and contacts were not for me. Fast-forward several years and my eyes had gone back to their original state and I needed glasses again. The trauma of having laser treatment and then worrying if my eyes will be damaged was not really worth it, I felt. If we learn to become comfortable in our own skin we could forgo the trauma and expense of surgery and fads, which need upkeep and maintenance quite a lot of the time.

I never expected to be writing about this on my blog but as an example, getting breast enlargements might seem like a good idea at the time, but in the long-run is it? There have been reports and scares in the media of leakage from implants and imperfections to what was expected. Is living always concerned about the possibility of something going wrong from a procedure you had done to improve yourself – your self-esteem, at the end-of-the-day – is that what you truly desire? I'm a big advocate of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. I've had a few operations on my legs etc over the years, which I have written about in my books, but now I am very against having any more surgery to correct or improve my walking. On my last surgery to remove 3cm of bone from my right leg to level up my pelvis as my left leg has not grown as much as the right, due to being paralysed, so when I walk my pelvis is out of alignment, in theory you can understand that. After the operation now my knee on my left side drops more because the hip is not strong enough to support it, so that op had made me even more out of alignment than I was before. So for that reason I am against corrective surgery unless it is for something broken. If I learnt to live and work with what I had, a whole lot of drama – and trauma – could have been avoided. I've had to reach a state where I am comfortable as I am, realise that I am enough the way I am, and just make the best of what I am fortunate to have.

It's not often I think I'm going to write a blog that will end up as random as this; putting David Gest and boob jobs in the same article, but that's what makes life exciting, because we don't know what's coming next. When you learn to be who you are and stop obsessing about looks or things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't matter, then you open up the pathway for new things to come to you. Be the best version of yourself.