Being yourself is harder than what you seem.  There are times when our decisions are still affected by others.  Well, we can’t blame those times because no man is an island.  So no matter what, other people’s opinion still matter.  Who doesn’t want to be called pretty or smart by other people?  So sometimes, we’re striving not just for ourselves, but for others as well.  But no matter how we love compliments, we should never forget who we really are.  Not just be like them, but also live your life according to who you really are.  Because if you live that way, there will come a time you’ll feel extremely sad and lost.  You will be someone else’s shadow.  You will lose your identity and will struggle to get back what you lost.

So make sure to have time for yourself.  Reflect and analyze.  You only live once and you can never take back the lost time.  So be sure to make the most out of yourself and out of your life.

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Are you going to spend your life wondering


Standing in the back, looking around?

Are you going to waste your time thinking?

How you've grown up or how you've missed out?

Things are never going to be the way you want

Where's it going to get you, acting serious?

Things are never going to be quite what you want

Even at twenty-give, you gotta start sometime.

I'm on my feet.  I'm on the floor.

Now all I need is to hear a song I know.

I want to always feel like part of this was mine.

I want to fall in love tonight.

Someone's going to ask you what it's all about.

Stick around. Nostalgia won't let you down.

Someone's going to ask you what it's all about.

What are you gonna have to say for yourself?

Are you going to spend your life wondering?

Standing in the back, looking around?

Are you going to waste your time thinking?

How you've grown up or how you've missed out?

This song – “Praise Chorus” by Jimmy Eat World has been one of my favorites for many, many years.  I haven’t listened to it in awhile, but something recently made me go back to it and I realized what a perfect song it is for life’s journey.  It’s all about living in the moment, seizing the day, and being here now.  As wonderful has living in the moment is, there’s another part of the song that really sticks out at me:  “Things are never going to be the way you want.”  Why, you ask, does that particular line stick out at me?  After all, it’s probably the most negative line in the whole song!  However, it’s a great reminder for me.  It reminds me of a very important fact that doesn’t always come easily to me, and that is…

A HAPPY LIFE IS NOT A PERFECT LIFE

Sound simple?  Yeah, not so much if you’re a Type A, slightly neurotic perfectionist like myself.  I like perfect things.  I like perfect outfits.  I like perfect handwriting.  I like perfect (not necessarily happy) endings.  I like perfect tasks at work.  I like doing things well – the best, if possible.  I’m not overly competitive with others, but I’m pretty damn competitive with myself.  I want to do the best I can when I’ve decided to commit myself to something.  I want, if at all possible, perfection.

As we all know well, perfection is not possible in the grand scheme of life.  No matter how wonderful, happy, or peaceful your life is, it’s never going to be perfect.  N-E-V-E-R.  As a perfection-seeker, this is a hard concept for me to grasp.  My life will never be perfect?  Really?  I have to admit that my heart skips a beat when I think about that.  We all want a perfect life, right?  The question is… do we all accept the fact that we can’t have one?  I think I’m still working on making sense of this reality.

LIFE ISN’T PERFECT.  IT’S MESSY… YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT.

What if we said that to ourselves everyday?  What if we surrounded ourselves with people who confirmed this statement that we didn’t have to be perfect?  I’m pretty sure that I’m my worst enemy in this department.  I don’t think anyone in my life expects me to be perfect.  The only one who expects perfection is me.  And this desperate search for perfection comes at a cost.  It has a high price of perpetual dissatisfaction.

Identifying the problem is the first step?  Now that I know that I am always striving to be perfect and that I deep down believe I will someday have a perfect life (which doesn’t happen to anyone), it’s time to face this problem head-on.  No more perfectionism in my life!  Perfectionism – no big surprise – causes a lot of anxiety.  I don’t want that kind of anxiety in my life and – yay! – This is something I can control.  I can choose not to be a perfectionist.  Instead, I can choose to be positive.

6 WAYS TO STOP BEING PERFECT AND START BEING HAPPY

Stop criticizing and judging.  This, of course is a huge one.  If you are able to stop judging yourself and others, you’re a lot less likely to be in perfection mode.  Perfection comes from the idea that everything has to be a certain way.  But who says it has to be that way?  Who says you have to look a certain way or dress a certain way?  Who says you have to act this way or that way?  Okay, yes, we all live in societies and sub-societies that have certain standards, but we don’t always have to live up to those standards.  And we can make our own standards!

Learn to go with the flow.  Man, oh, man, this is a hard one for me!  I’ve never, ever been a go-with-the-flow kinda girl.  I like to be in control, holding the reigns, setting the pace.  I don’t like to go along for the ride or just sit back and relax.  But, when it comes to battling perfectionism, learning to just chill is really important.  Life is unpredictable.  There are going to be unexpected twists and turns and being able to deal with changes is essential to living a positive life.  We can’t control everything and this is something I really, really need to work on reminding myself everyday.

Know that everything has a reason.  Many of you might not be down with this idea, but I truly believe that everything happens for a reason.  Even the most horrific, awful things in my life have taught me something, have me the person I am today.  It’s not easy to remember this when dealing with a crisis or heartbreak, but it’s so important to remember that life is what it is.  Some things are out of our control and we just have to realize that someday the reason for what happens will be explained.  I do my best to learn from every mistake, every bad situation, and all of these little lessons have added up to make me the person I am right now.

Look at the big picture of life.  I try to ask myself this every time I’m freaking about something not being as perfect as I would like it to be:  will this matter in five months?  Five years?  Usually the answers to these questions are “no!”  Most of the things I get myself all worked up about don’t really impact my life in the long run.  Emotional wounds always heal with time.  Though I might be panicky and worried right now, in a few days, weeks, months, or years, I won’t be worried about it anymore.  When I find that I’m stressing about something small (which I do more often than I should), I need to remind myself to look at the big picture and pose the questions:  “How important is this?  Is it really worth all of the stress and anxiety?”

Take time for a time out.  Sometimes the best thing to do when I’m feeling like nothing is going the way I want it to go is to take a time out.  Removing myself from a situation can be the best way to get a fresh perspective on it.  When I’m working hard to get something perfect – whether it be an outfit for a night out, a blog post, or a serious work-related task – it’s hard for me to step away.  I’m in a zone and I’m focused and I don’t want to waste any time.  However, whenever I force myself to pull away from what I’m doing, I find that I usually come back with fresh ideas and a new perspective, which helps me not to be so perfection-driven.

Appreciate what’s working for you.  This goes back to the idea I talk about a lot – loving your self.  You most likely have a lot of great things going on and you don’t even notice these things when you’re focused on making everything perfect.  When I’m seeking perfection, I don’t take time to realize what’s good in my life and my level of gratitude seems to be a lot lower.  It’s really important to realize what is awesome about your life and to be grateful for all of the things/people/experiences in it.  Doing this will make perfection seem a lot less necessary.

Those of you who aren’t perfectionists might not really understand what a burden it can be to always be striving for this unobtainable goal.  As I said above, there is not such thing as a perfect life.  You might have a great life.  You might have a happy life.  But no one – no matter how hard he or she tries – will have a perfect life.  This is a fact I must accept and embrace.  Knowing that life will never be perfect, that I will never be perfect will take a lot of the pressure off.  If you know you can’t be perfect, you have to settle for being the best you can be.  And, right now, that sounds pretty good to me.

Article courtesy of the “Positively Present” site.

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Live a life of meaning; deliver a message that has purpose.  Sing a song that will lift us, paint a picture that depicts hope.  Write a story that will inspire my own and say a joke that would make me smile when the clock hands ticks on the hardest times.

Life is a real journey, so relax and enjoy the ride you can make it a wonderful adventure.  Don’t sweat the little stuff, do your best to fix the big stuff and relax and enjoy the ride.  It is a once in a lifetime journey and you will never have another opportunity to do it over.  Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it, according to Ben Franklin.  Life is a real journey and can be really wonderful, if you just think of it as a great adventure and make the most out of every experience you have.  It isn’t always wonderful, but if you look, you can find something good in everything that happens. 

Life is not always fair.  I know that sometimes it may seem downright hard to put one foot in front of the other.  But, when life is a lemon, make lemonade and be happy to have it!  It isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault that sometimes life just doesn’t work out the way we dreamed it would.  But, if you let that ruin your dreams then it is your fault!  We just have to make the best of what we get to have and enjoy it!  Everything happens for a reason and everything has a purpose.  Each day is a gift from God, what you choose to do with it is entirely up to you!  Be kind to others and experience the warmth that will bring your way!  Your life can change in an instant, so enjoy life’s journey and make it a great adventure!

Memories of our family and childhood are what shape our personality and who we are.  Whether we like it or not, our personality is formed by our parents, brothers, sisters, and the environment we grew up in.  My background is complex and my family is complex.  We’ve managed to find happiness somehow in all the confusion that life has brought our way.  Life is all about changes and all about choices.  The choices others make can have a huge affect on your life, but how you deal with what happens can make all the difference – whether that turns out positive or negative.  The choices you make today can affect you and others forever, so think about it before you make your choices.  Look for something good in every experience, even when the experience seems like a bad one, there will be something good if you just look for it.  God has a plan and never closes one door without propping another open for us to discover and walk through.

Article courtesy of the “Looking Back in Time” website.

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Consider for a moment that your life is a puzzle.  It may be a simple puzzle with a hundred different pieces, or it may be a more complicated thousand-piece puzzle with a picture that’s rather tricky to put together.  Either way, as you work through this puzzle of your life, you’re more than likely going to try forcing some wrong pieces into the empty spaces.  They look like they should fit, but as you continue on; it becomes clearer to you that they’re just not meant to line up that way.  So what do you have to do?  Well, break it apart, of course, and reassemble those pieces the right way.

Now take a look at your life.  Maybe you think it’s going along smoothly.  Your family looks happy.  Your job seems to be progressing just find.  Then one day, you find out you’ve been let go from your position at work and the boss you thought was your friend, who relied upon to help further your career has betrayed you.  You’re blindsided by this situation.  Everything you thought was perfect completely collapses.  Or maybe your wedding is just around the corner – invitations sent, flowers ordered, family excited – and your fiancé calls it off.  You beat yourself up about it thinking, “How could I have made such a terrible mistake?”

My answer to you is this: your puzzle was put together the wrong way.  However, the wrong way is often the right track.  It’s actually wonderful to be “wrong” once in a while.  It may hurt quite a bit, but it’s always to your advantage when the truth is unveiled.  Being shown that type of information is priceless.  They may just be a few puzzle pieces that need rearranging or it may be an entire section.  But whatever the size of the challenge, mistakes are gifts.  The reason being wrong is so right is that wrong always change to come in, and change is the fuel that we burn to grow and evolve.

Never be afraid to trust someone, open your own business or fall in love.  You might just be “wonderfully wrong” and if you are, welcome the opportunity to break apart those pieces of your puzzle, change their direction and put them back in a new way.  Because when you do, you’ll realize that you’re now one step closer to seeing the whole picture and having all the pieces connect at exactly the perfect points.

Build your life as you would a puzzle.  Piece by piece, section by section.  You may get bored at times, or frustrated, or feel as though you’d rather give up.  What you must do, however, is know that the pieces are all there, and the more ways you try to place them where they belong, the more connections you discover.  Soon you begin to visualize and discern images as they come together to form the overall vision of your life.

Do you have a vision?  What does your puzzle look like?  Is it falling into place, or are you forcing the pieces to fit where they don’t belong?  If it’s the latter, keep trying… the answers are all inside of you.  And at this very moment, a surprisingly stunning picture is revealing itself to you one “gift” at a time.

Article courtesy of Donna Labermeier from the Huffington Post

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