It Is Okay To Fail: Ditching Perfectionism

Do you have any flaws? If you answered no, you would be lying because everyone has them. Flaws are something everyone has yet doesn’t talk about because they can make us appear less than perfect and in our world we want to be seen as perfect. This is personified to us when we are children and only gets reinforced as we get older. Throughout our schooling years we are told we must study and get great grades so we can get into the perfect college. While we are in college, we are told we need to be our best person and should look our best so we can meet the perfect partner. After we met this perfect partner the list continues to strive to have the perfect house, perfect job, perfect kids and the list goes on. While it is okay to have goals and aspirations the problem is that perfection is a fallacy. There is not one thing on this earth that is perfect, yet on a daily basis we strive to be perfect and always fall short due to the inability to be perfect. Constantly striving to be perfect brings feeling of failure, self doubt, anxiety and depressive thoughts.

 I unfortunately have been struggling with the need to be perfect my whole life and while I am better than I used to be still find myself trying to attain perfection. The need comes from the desire to be the best version of yourself however a problem exists when you have already done your best and still blame yourself for your shortcomings. I remember in elementary school we used to have a pre-spelling test on Thursdays and if you spelled all of the words correctly you didn’t have to take the test on Friday. While I was not a terrible speller I always got at least one word incorrect and this caused me to have to take the test again while my friends got to play. At this point in my life I was about eight years old but the fact that I had to take the test again made me feel as if my classmates were smarter and better than me due to them simply being better at spelling. This is a terrible burden for an eight year old to hold, however I lived with it and carried it throughout my life to the point where I am finally fed up with self doubt and the need to be perfect. Self doubt and perfection causes us to constantly ask what we did wrong and how we can get it right next time. It causes us to blame ourselves for things which are completely out of our control. Finally, it destroys our spirit and causes us to carry around negative oppressive energy which eliminates the beauty of the world. This blog has no intention to make you feel sorry for me and the struggles that I have had in my life but rather to make you realize that perfection is impossible and that it is okay to make mistakes in life. You don’t have to ace every test, you are not expected to get your dream job out of college, and you don’t have to meet a life partner at a specific time period. It is okay to fail because it will make you learn who you are and how strong you are despite all of the obstacles in life. So next time you feel the desire to doubt yourself don’t because giving it your all is enough. Remember perfection is a fallacy and should be eliminated from our lives

Please enjoy the song Get it Right from Glee which personifies what happens when our desire to be perfect overrules our life

How do you Become the Person you've Forgotten you Ever Were?

How do you become the person you’ve forgotten you ever were?

This is a line from the Broadway play Anastasia and recently resonated with me. As an artistic person at nature, I find a lot of inspiration from art, nature, and plays including musicals so naturally this line struck a cord in me. As children we are fun, optimistic, and the world is our playground, however that fun and optimism begins to fade away we realize that we cannot simply glide through life with no worries at all. As we grow we have constant growing responsibilities which continue to grow in complexity as we age. Things that we thought were a big deal as children or even as teenagers do not seem to be a problem in adulthood and we do not even bat an eye at them. Yet as we age these responsibilities mean a lot more and our very livelihood can become compromised if we do not meet these demands. Mortgages, bills, insurances, living expenses, and providing for children and your family can often become the driving forces behind the work that you do. In addition to this social media creates a world which allows individual to compare themselves to others and this can lead to depression and feelings of failure at the own accomplishments you have made.

How them do we disconnect from this and attempt to be like that carefree child we once were? I am currently working on this, however find myself struggling at times. I would like to get back to that child who was constantly happy and extremely carefree, in fact my uncle called me Sonny because I was always smiling and found the beauty in everyday. I would have fun at softball tournaments and always was playing and pretending very often playing make believe at these tournaments with my brother. The softball tournaments became a different world and we would save the world from monsters or compete to see who could run faster to the snack bar. When I was a child at school  I foolishly buried a leaf at my elementary school  with my best friend with the hopes that I would dig it up years later and would find “my leaf” as part of my very own time capsule. While all of these things are slightly silly it was who I was and I would like to get back to that happy and carefree child I once was. As adults it is hard to be carefree with all of our responsibilities. However, we should make an effort to become more carefree in our lives in some form or another. Don’t get me wrong as as extremely hard working person I am not going to throw my responsibilities to the side, however I am going to try to find at least one thing in my daily life I can do which brings me joy and allows me to be like that carefree child I once was.

Have you lost the person you once were? If so I would like to hear from you and would love to hear your experiences about what you did and/or how you plan to overcome it.

Peace Starts with Yourself and Grows

     Each and every day I love to surround myself with positivity. I always strive to find joy in each day even if it is simple as serving another with a good deed. Personally I love wall art that has inspirational sayings on them, one that I particularly love has the following saying: Peace Starts with Yourself and Grows. This is by far one of my favorite sayings because it is absolutely 100% true! Each and every day we wake up and we have a choice to make, either we can chose to be happy or we can chose to let outside forces and people control us.   


Growing up I unfortunately had the mindset that others controlled my destiny and I let other people get to me. For example I found myself commonly thinking that my own happiness or lack thereof was caused by others. This occurred for me commonly in middle school, a time where kids are extremely cruel, and as a kid you have no idea who you are. Reflecting back I put my search for happiness into the hands of others. My thoughts consisted of things like I would only be happy if the popular girls like me, or I would finally be happy if I was able to get all A’s.  This mindset continued into my high school years and into my college years as well. It was not until I started to serve others that I found this mindset was not true.  Peace and happiness are internal elements that WE create in our lives. If a person is constantly going through life with a mindset that they will one day find happiness the bottom line is they will never find it because happiness and peace are internal factors that we CHOOSE to bring in our lives. Peace comes from within ourselves and can be manifested by works that we do, but ultimately it is a choice we make each any every day. Remember you CAN find happiness and peace in your life, you just have to stop looking for it externally and rather look within yourself.