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

Quitting Social Media- A Personal Story

Think about your childhood, life was so carefree and everyday was an adventure. Besides the occasional test or two at school everything was wonderful and the world was your playground. Life was so incredibly simple yet a simple place such as a backyard could transform to a whole new world.  At one point in time my backyard was the jungle and I trekked between the trees in search of treasure buried in the deep forest. My front yard was a bicycle yard and my siblings and I rode up and down the mountains which in realty was the slope of my street as well as my neighbors’ driveways. The front yard also was a baseball diamond allowing my siblings and I to hit home runs and play baseball on the front yard. The pool was the greatest place to be and my siblings and I would swim in the deep ocean being very careful to not awaken the great and mighty shark who lived in the deep end of the pools abyss. Fast forward to where we are now and instead of being driven by our imaginations and the world of make believe we are driven by the fake world of social media. It is incredibly sad that instead of children growing and learning through their senses like I did they are glued to an Ipad or some sort of device electronic device.

While I love the fact that the internet brings me quick information when it comes to schooling it has created an environment where as I mentioned in another post we are only on it to show “how great our lives are” when actuality people are struggling on a daily basis with their own self-esteem and stress of life. It is a false reality which constantly causes us to compare ourselves to others. This can cause a situation where people are subconsciously competing with one another and the competing can be deadly emotionally if we are not in that stage of life.  Things which are meant to be enjoyed in the moment are now done on a daily basis. While a simple food photo never hurt anyone 20 years ago we didn’t take pictures of our food, we simple ate it. This then begs the question why should we be sharing aspects our what we do in our daily lives? Where has our sense of privacy gone? We live in a world were we constantly want to be seen and want to feel important so perhaps this is why we share aspects of our daily lives but at the end of the day while people may like these posts they may not actually care. Maybe that is just my opinion personally but after a hard day at work all I care about is my family and not what one of my friends ate for lunch. I don’t mean for this post to offend anyone and I apologize if it does but I am simple trying to prove the point that it should not be overtaking and controlling our lives. We live in a society which is addicted to social media.

I honestly am one of those people who did compare themselves to others and have done so in the past. Social media was something which was a constant which I thought was cool to connect with others but actually became an addition and actually made me feel worse about myself although I have a lot going for me in my life. With that being said I make a conscious decision to get rid social media of it to live a more meaningful life. I now live more in the moment, connect more with family and friends, as well as to get back into the things I love which allow me to use my imagination. About two weeks ago I cold turkey quit social media and have not been on since.  While I have not deleted my accounts completely I have not gone on and don’t have the desire to do so.  I am trying to work on myself and what brings me joy in life and the elimination of social media has helped that tremendously. I am more at peace with myself and am finding more joy in everyday experiences. The next time you are thinking about going on a social media site think to yourself if you really need to do it or if you can find joy in the day without the need to find it in the social media 

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.