Are there any recovering perfectionists out there amongst us?

One of the lessons that I learned this semester in school (which was not on the lesson plan by the way) was that it is okay to accept that you’ve done you’re best even when it is just good enough–not great—not really good–but just good enough.  Since Thursday, I’ve put in at least 30 hours of work on this last project board for the Creating Spaces class and I still have a final board to complete and to get the notebook/journal all in order all before 12 noon tomorrow.  Even with all the hard work and effort I promise you that my board would come in last if we were in a show.  The good news is that I realized tonight that I’m okay with that, I know I did the best I could even though I’m not good with precision cutting, measuring and gluing.

How many hours, days, weeks and months do we spend in our life wasting precious time by beating ourselves up and worrying about how to do something perfectly that really isn’t our forte when our time could be better spent focusing on what we are able to do well?  And the balancing act is to always do the best we can do with what is in front of us and to be able to accept our best effort even if it isn’t as good as we’d prefer and then to let it go.

Maybe this is something that you already knew intuitively or never worried about much but for me this feels like one of those big aha moments.  Now, tomorrow when I have to present my notebook and boards in front of the Professor, fellow students and visitors I can tell you that I will probably have to sneak behind the comedian that lives inside of me to talk about what I’ve learned from what I’ve created this semester in order to be able to survive the obvious! It’s one thing to admit that I’m less than perfect to you guys here but it’s a whole other enchilada to have to do it in front of a classroom full of people (especially when the other student’s project are so very well done—they’re mom’s would be proud of them I can assure you!)

This is when I really wish that heaven was somewhat like the Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep movie, “Defending Your Life”.  Surely I would be taken into a grand viewing room and applauded for my best efforts!  Ah, well, if my sharing helps at least one person out there to face the music and accept themselves, then all of this will have been well worth it!!