We live in a society that is fueled by perfection. It is drilled in us all day, everyday day. Picture that we post have to have the right lighting, angles and/or filter. The captions have to be A-1; both engaging and entertaining. In parenting, there is no room for a mistake. Singles have to have perfectly constructed profiles and married couples have to always be relationship goals. Our social media pages have to be perfectly curated and posts have to be timed perfectly to get optimum engagement. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When did life get this complicated!?!? It’s already hard enough without this external pressure from societal expectations that don’t do anything but provide false validation.
I will be the first to admit this is something I struggle with daily. The questions of “am I good enough” or “am I doing this right” tend to make the simplest of decisions monumental. And because it subconsciously happens it hard to see the negative effects that stem from this type of thinking. The main one being procrastination.
I was reading a bible plan that stated: “Procrastination is often fueled by perfectionism, which is rooted in the fear that you won’t get it right so you hesitate to start. Perfectionism wants to make sure there are no flaws. You often make things more difficult or complicated and time-consuming than is necessary in your attempt to get it right.”
That piece slapped me like a ton of bricks because it echoed my life. I have struggled with the idea of starting a blog for probably the last 5 yers or so. I always had the love to write but I felt like I did not have a big enough platform to get people to read what I write. So I pushed the thought to the back of back of my mind and continued on. Every so often I would bounce the idea off my husband and he would encourage me to go for it. But I would always come up with some excuse or I would start planning and mapping things out and then run out of steam.
Or I would write something and then get discouraged because I would not get the traffic, followers or exposure that others get. The biggest obstacle I had was wanting everything to be perfect. I felt that once it was perfected then everything would fall into place and I would take off.
But all of that changed before I turned 30 last year. I made a promise to myself to stop being reasonable and letting this thought of perfection run my life. So I took a chance and made the leap to get this blog started.
I said all that to say when reading that devotional, I was slowly falling into a rut of comparison and perfection. But that last line was like a wake up call to me. “You often make things more difficult or complicated and time-consuming than is necessary in your attempt to get it right.” It was like that line was strategically placed just for me.
I realized I was spending so much time on focusing what is not perfect that I missed the joy of the imperfections. I could not see the forest for looking at the tree in front of me. I will not say I have conquered this 100%. But I am learning how to use the less than perfect moments and situations and aspects as fuel to create something beautiful.
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