Dear Perfection,

I don’t need you. You are not what I strive for. I thank you for existing as this ethereal thing hovering just beyond my grasp. That’s right where you belong. I no longer feel the need to hold all the reigns. There are things I can delegate. I have perfectly (see what I did there?) capable people around me to help me be the best I can be. I have no reason to strive for perfection. More than anything, I want to feel like I’ve completed something. I can do that by just allowing myself to accept progress over perfection. Perfection is a rainbow. It’s beautiful in the distance but you’ll never catch it. Once again, I come back to my word of the year: GRACE. I give myself the grace to strive for less than perfection. I can do just fine by doing my best and being my best self. Mistakes and goals go hand-in-hand. I can give myself the same grace I give others.

7/6/20

Perfection is a myth that I busted last year after listening to a Shine meditation. (I can’t for the life of me remember what that meditation was) It lead me to the realization that Grace = Progress over Perfection. I even made some (not-so-great) art as a result.

Perfection was holding me down like a weighted blanket. I’d been focused on doing everything so “right” or “perfect”. So much so, that I was not achieving the goals I’d set for myself. When I fail to meet my own deadlines, I am even harder on myself. The level of self-deprecation rises to meet imposter syndrome, fear of failure, and anxiety. I would start to question why and how I failed instead of focusing on the minor (in my eyes) successes I’d had. Listing out those successes–completed tasks for the day or week–I found that, while I covered a breadth of categories, I’d completed much more than my initial To Do list garnered. I hadn’t completed my list of tasks or even completed them to the level of perfection I deemed “quality”, but I’d made so much progress, that those small steps felt like a giant leap in the right direction.

As a reminder, I come back to my Got It Done list on days when I feel like I’m not “perfect” or feel I’ve left things incomplete. Sitting down to journal on all I’ve done for the day is akin to holding up a mirror to progress.