"I am a recovering perfectionist and an inspiring "good-enoughist."
Can you think back to some instances where you felt you were being too hard on yourself? Perhaps they were not your proudest moments. Maybe you made a glaring mistake or regret how you chose to react to a situation. Either way, you moved on and kept living life. The toughest part of these instances can be having the ability to accept our flaws and not let them affect how we continue living our lives. Hopefully, we are able to learn from these instances and use them to help us become better versions of ourselves.
In a perfect world we would always make the smartest choices and always feel great about how we are handling life. In reality, we are all works in progress. None of us are finished products who somehow have life and ourselves all figured out. It's not how life works. Life is a series of pop quizzes that continually challenge us to keep learning and growing. These pop quizzes are not meant to make us feel inferior or like we aren't enough. Those are simply ways in which we can react. We can also choose to respond in a way that helps us to see that despite how far we have already come in life, we don't have all the answers, and that's OK.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels
One of the worst things we can do when we find ourselves reeling from a misstep is to mentally beat ourselves up about it. Sure, we may have screwed up. So what? Everybody does, whether you believe that or not. Actually, some of the most successful people on the planet make what seem like the biggest blunders since it's on display for the whole world to see. They do not let that prevent them from making more mistakes. It's all part of the learning and growing process, whether it's ourselves or a billion dollar company. The key is to not get down on ourselves or let our imperfections keep us from doing our best by continuing to learn and grow.
Nobody is perfect. The more we remind ourselves of this, the more we can strive to be our best without feeling the need to be flawless. Our flaws are what help us to iron out the wrinkles in our lives and remember we are always a work in progress. As long as we keep striving, we can keep thriving. The day we stop making mistakes is the day we stop learning and growing. We're not supposed to be perfect in order to live life to the fullest, but we can be more forgiving and caring toward ourselves when we don't get it quite right. We can be proud of how far we have come and know that our best effort is always enough.
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