A Matter of Perspective

I was talking with a friend today about something that I happen to have ample experience with, perfectionism. It's something I've struggled with for the longest time. Certainly it's good to strive for excellence and want to be your best self, but to expect perfection from ourselves will only ever result in disappointment. This friend of mine is preparing to serve as a missionary for the Church in the Netherlands, and I was telling her about how when I first left for my own mission to Mexico, I wanted everything to be perfect, I wanted to be 100% obedient and say all the right things and have lots of success and be the best companion and just in short have the perfect mission. But you know what, as long as I kept that mentality, I was so discontent and frustrated all the time, because, guess what, I'm not perfect, and neither are you, and neither is any other person on this planet. We all have our mistakes, and that's O.K.! As long as I still expected everything to be perfect, the smallest little problem could throw off my whole day, and even though things were going reasonably well, I was miserable on the inside. It wasn't until I was able to let go of that need to be perfect and was alright with just striving to be my best self that I was able to enjoy the experiences I was having and embrace both the good and the bad.

One of the things I think that can cause us to hold ourselves up to such an impossibly high standard is trying to compare ourselves with others. This is especially true given that what we see of others are often their best moments, and we too often compare that to our worst moments; no wonder we can sometimes feel so inadequate and inept! Nothing good ever comes by comparing ourselves to others. Ever. It's good to have role models and even heroes who inspire us to be better, but even then we shouldn't compare ourselves to them. It's only in comparing ourselves to who we were yesterday and who we ought to be tomorrow that real progress and happiness is achieved.

This image below is a sketch I made that helped me visualize how we should look up and keep a vertical perspective, reaching to be better, instead of looking sideways at others and simply striving to be better than those around us. Hopefully this can help you make that paradigm shift the same way that it helped me.