As a recovering high achiever (thanks autoimmune disease!), I’ve had to adjust how I think of concepts like “perfect” or “good enough”. By no means am I a pro at this - I’m very much working on this everyday. To find balance, to find the right mixture for me of rest and productivity. I’ve had an autoimmune disease since childhood, but it likes to find new ways to school me concerning energy or the lack thereof all the time decades later.
Back to perfection. What does perfection mean? For myself and many recovering perfectionists or “high achievers”, it can be helpful to dial in and really look at what that means to us.
For myself I might define perfection in myself or my life as being able to find a hard-to-attain balance of rest and productivity. Not too much or too little of anything. That feeling of “just right”. Keep in mind I have OCD and chasing that “just right” feeling is a HUGE trap for someone like me 😂. Because of this thinking trap, it’s helpful to realize that “just right” or that feeling of perfection and balance I’m constantly tempted to chase might not even exist!
Ask two people what their perfect day looks like. Or their perfect life. One person may answer by painting a mental picture of an exciting life full of friends, traveling, and exotic experiences. Another person may respond with desires of a comfortable home life full of children and all the messy joys that can bring.
We all want our own unique blend of life experiences and comforts that can look wildly different from each other - and none of them wrong! Trying to strive for a level of perfect that seems to always be out of reach is EXHAUSTING physically, mentally, and spiritually. Ask me how I know! 😅
What feels right also naturally changes over time. What felt like an ideal life or goal at age 20 might not feel right at all when you reach age 30, 40, or beyond. I know that for myself, the ideals I strive for now are definitely different than what I wanted in my 20’s. And that’s a good thing!
The key point here is that it’s very freeing to realize that what may seem perfect now may change later - if that perfectness even exists in the first place! Releasing yourself from the chains of an ideal that doesn’t serve you or isn’t something truly achievable can bring a lot of comfort and room to embrace what IS achievable. Perfect isn’t real. Accepting and finding peace in that fact is freeing, and I hope if this message found you, you get all the rest and comfort you deserve in your life - no matter how imperfect it is.
