A Word on Perfectionism…
With all the New Year’s resolutions floating around in my head, a few potent thoughts keep coming to mind. While I never want to stop writing down and working towards my personal goals, perfectionism can kill even the most meaningful efforts. The demoralizing thoughts racing through my head are all too familiar.
You can't ever stop trying to be good enough and but you will never be good enough. The load will be too heavy to bear, no matter your performance because the standard is unattainable. You will never get there. You have already messed up too much, so stop trying.
This is perfectionism and this is unfair.
I can't think of a more beautiful depiction of the burden of perfectionism than in the Disney movie Encanto. Each member of the Colombian family has amazing gifts—the gift of strength to lift other’s burdens, the gift of courage to go on alone, the gift of seeing things to come, and more. They have amazing abilities, but they each feel they must live up to an impossible standard. Anything less than perfect is unacceptable.
I loved Isabela’s story, a girl who created beauty by growing flowers wherever and whenever she wanted. As she talks with her sister Mirabel, Isabela describes how badly she wanted to not worry about what others thought of her. She asked, “What could I do if I just knew it didn’t need to be perfect? It just needed to be? And they let me be?”
Isabela went from wearing flawless dresses, to deciding she preferred a dressed splattered with the colorful explosion of learning new things. I was touched by this symbolism. At a time in my life when I was suffering from constant, paralyzing thoughts of whether or not I was good enough, I saw Isabela’s dress and thought, “I want my life to be like this! I want to have permission to make mistakes and love myself still!”
Making a mess of things in life is inevitable, but our contributions are beautiful! Feeling we must never mess up is a sure-fire way to halt or slow our progress and we are here to grow! We were not sent into this world, hoping we would not ever make mistakes. I believe we came thinking, mistakes will happen, but oh how I will grow! It will be worth the journey, missteps and all, because of Jesus Christ, who can make everything right in the end.
I know we are learning lessons we couldn’t learn any other way in this life and one of the sweetest gifts we can give ourselves is compassion and love throughout the mistakes we make. When we give this to ourselves, we will be amazed at who we can become.
