Perfectionism...wait, did I spell check?

This is quite a hard confession for me, but it's also a necessary one: I'm not a perfect person. I have never been and I will never be, no matter how hard I try.

We all want to be perfect. Even if we accept the fact that we'll never perfect, most of us still try to be in at least one area of our lives. At least, I know I do.

Some of us try to be perfect in relationships, behaving in only certain ways in hopes that our parents, our friends, or cute guys will think well of us.

Others try to be perfect in our careers, pushing ourselves endlessly to work harder and being angry at ourselves when we fail.

Now, pushing for excellence in all that we do is a good thing. We bring honor and glory to the Lord when we work hard and persevere, even if the product (whatever the product may be) isn't exactly what we had planned on, but we need to realize the difference between perfectionism and striving for excellence.

Perfectionism always ends in failure. I mean, think about it, no matter how well we do, when we're being perfectionists, we're never happy with the result. We always think of something that we could have done better.  Perfectionism ends in negativism and causes people to not want to be around you because you're constantly complaining about or unhappy with your life.

Striving for excellence never fails. You know why? Because when we strive for excellence, no matter how it goes, we bring God glory. Though we may still make a mistake, when we strive for excellence and remain positive, we bring God glory. I find that when I'm striving for excellence I'm a far more positive person, than when I'm trying to be perfect. When we strive for excellence, we cause others to bless the Name of the Lord!

That's definitely something that I want; don't you?

Love,