Do you know a perfectionist, or are you one yourself?  I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but have recently realized that I have a perfectionist mentality in some areas of my life.  This can be a really good thing, and it can also be taken too far.

I’m just going to start right off by saying that NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE PERFECT!

Ok, that was more for me than for you.

You see, I learned at an early age that I’m capable of doing an extraordinary job at things.  The first time I stayed up late working on a school project that I had procrastinated until the last minute, was in 5th grade.

When I presented my work the next day, not only did I get a good grade, my teacher praised my work and asked if he could keep it as an example for the next year!

This exact scenario of procrastinating a project until the night before the due date and having teachers ask to keep it as an example happened MULTIPLE times throughout my school years.

I don’t know if that’s where it all started for me, but I have spent my whole life making sure that anything I did that was to be seen or heard by another person was done to perfection.

If there would be no other eyes on it, then I wouldn’t care one bit if it was not perfect.  Like, making my bed –I pull the covers up and decently throw on the pillows, but sometimes it’s crooked and I never tuck in the sheets.

But when I was showing my house several years ago, I made sure that my bed looked immaculate, with every inch of material tucked, straightened, and smoothed in place!

What is it like to have a mindset that you always have to do a fabulous job every time your work will be seen?

How much stress have you caused yourself through the years when you get down to crunch time and things are still not how you want them, but you’re forcing it to happen anyway?

I love parties, and I like to throw parties.  I have put on 3 backyard carnivals for my kids through the years, and I didn’t enjoy any of them.  Why?  Because I spent the previous evening and all that morning setting everything up, making sure that all was perfect, and there’s never enough time for “perfect”, so as kids were starting to arrive, I was still running around trying to finish all the last touches.  And somehow I kept myself busy –rushing there or stressing here through the whole carnival!

When it’s all over, I think to myself –was that worth it?? 

What could I do next time to actually ENJOY myself during the event?

Could I throw a carnival without the streamers and balloons? 

Could I just nix the fancy popcorn machine and hand out pre-packaged popcorn bags instead? 

Could I set up some games, invite some kids, turn on some music, and call it good??

Maybe I could…

How much time, energy, stress and worry have you put into something that at the end of the day doesn’t really matter?

What would happen if we allowed ourselves to just do a half-decent job every now and then?

What would others think of us?

What would we think of ourselves? 

Could you still love and accept yourself if you intentionally did an “ok” job at something, rather than “perfect”?

I hope that this post is helpful for you, but truth be told, this one is for me.

I have been busy doing other things around my house and have gotten behind on my writing.

I usually like to stay 3-4 blog posts ahead of schedule, but with camping, family reunions, and keeping up on cleaning, I have not been writing as much as usual.

So I was in a position where I had to choose whether to stay up all night writing the perfect post, or just do an “ok” post.  I started to tell myself that not every single post I write has to be perfect.

So here I am, practicing what I preach, and giving you a half-decent message that not everything you present to other people has to be perfect.

The next time you are stressing out about something, just stop and ask yourself if it’s worth it, or if you can let something go.

Sure, it’s great to spend extra time on certain things to get them just right.  And when you have the time and energy to do it, then do it.

But don’t cause yourself grief over things that won’t matter the next day (or the next year!) 

Remember:

If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes worrying about it.

Instead, practice some self-love and acceptance!  That’s what I’m going to do after posting this!  I’ll tell myself something like:

“I love and accept you Kayleen, whether you spend days and weeks writing something fantastic or whip up a passable post in an hour”.

This way of thinking focuses your thoughts on what you think of you, rather than what other people think of you –which is where they should be.

I encourage you to give yourself the freedom to do the same!

Good luck and carry on!  You’re doing great!

Kayleen

SDG

For some fun ideas on self-care, check out 27 Simple Ways to Rejuvenate Yourself.

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