For so many years, I’ve wanted to be perfect.
I wanted the perfect life, which means everything from how I looked, to how I acted and what I did.
Deep down I wanted to please people, I wanted and craved recognition for doing things well. If you want me to work harder - praise me, tell me I’ve done a good job!
I want to be liked and I don’t want people to judge me in a negative light. I don’t like criticism, I don’t like confrontations, and I don’t like arguments. I don’t like the negativity.
I’ve always wanted people to look at me and think - “I want to be like her, Sarah’s just awesome - she’s smart, pretty, put together, has it all going for her; friendly, fun, outgoing…..”
I think for a long time this goal for perfection has hindered me.
I know I’ve never been perfect, and so I’ve always felt like a failure.
It didn’t matter how well I did, I could always find something I could have done better, some way I could have improved. I’ve never really allowed myself to enjoy success, or really allowed myself to be happy, as I’m constantly thinking - is this it? There must be more.
As I’ve come to realise, this is actually no way to live your life, its not fun to feel like you're always failing and never succeeding and you can never be happy.
I still have this perfect person in side of me trying to get out and I’m trying really hard not to let her. I now understand you can never be perfect, you can never be good at everything.
Letting go is hard and sometimes I just don’t want to. A part of me still thinks I can be perfect, I think I can make it happen. This feeling is getting less, and I’m squishing it down and teaching myself its ok not to be perfect and at the end of the day, no one is.
It’s easy these days to have glimpses of peoples lives through social media and people will show you snippets of their “perfect life” which have been edited and filtered to improve them even more!
Who shows the full story on social media? No one, as no one wants to share the bad photos, the issues and the problems. Everyone’s dealing with their own stuff and they want escapism, they want to be inspired, motivated and encouraged, they want to dream and to believe in better.
I know when I uploads photos I crop them in a certain way and add a filter. I don’t photoshop as I have no idea how to do that!! I want to put a positive spin on it and create beautiful images.
It’s not real life though.
Real life is messy, its dirty, its flawed, its imperfect and so are the people living in it.
No one’s perfect, everyone has issues, problems or things they want to change.
For me its about accepting that fact and it’s going to take time.
I’m still learning to accept I’m not perfect. I even hate writing that down! Admitting to you all - I’m flawed....
What I’m learning and still learning is the more you accept your flaws the easier it is to love yourself and to be happy.
Once you stop trying to impress other people, you can be free.
Free of their judgements, their criticisms, their opinions.
You’ll go on living, you’ll go on doing the things you want to do and as you continue to do that, you’ll get stronger as a person and more accepting of other peoples faults. As you’ve finally learnt you're not perfect either.
It’s liberating being free from the goal of perfection.
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