Hi, I'm Carrie, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. Phew. Feels good to get that off my chest.
All joking aside, perfectionism haunts many of us. We don't start because we don't want to make mistakes. We do things alone because we don't want anyone to see us fail. We get so nervous we shake before our barrel racing runs because someone might think us incompetent if we mess up. We don't step into our calling because we think we're not ready and will, therefore, not do it just perfectly.
Sound familiar? I thought it might.
It's amazing to me how we encourage others to showcase their best efforts and almosts, but we hesitate to be that encourager for ourselves. We recognize the greatness, the goodness, the amazingness, the try in our friends, our family, our spouses, but we hide those pieces of us. We bury our dreams and ambitions, our rough drafts and our sketches, instead of showing the world how incredible our not-quite-perfect is.
It's taken me almost 32 years, but I'm finally internalizing that how I speak to myself matters. That encouraging myself the way I encourage my loved ones is necessary for my personal success. I'm moving forward knowing that I am perfectly flawed, but God's plan has accounted for that.
Does that mean I'm going to half-ass things and hope for the best? Nope. (Well, OK, no for 99% of things; sometimes I forget to do something and may have to fake it.)
What it does mean is I'm going to hold myself to realistic expectations. I'm going to remind myself some days that progress is progress; an imperfect something is often better than a perfect nothing. That the people who matter want me to succeed and will not hold my less-than-perfect against me.
Am I going to fail? Likely. More than once. But I truly, truly believe that our failures do two things; 1) they teach us how not to do things, and 2) they teach us lessons that we can pass on to others.
Am I going to give up? Hell no. I may redirect, repurpose, redo. But I will not give up.
So let's make a deal, alright? Let's give ourselves grace, ask for help when we need it, and work to tell that little perfectionist living in our brain to take a dang hike.
