My most recent struggle has been the one with myself, and my strive for perfection. I expect myself to be perfect in all aspects of my life and sometimes when I stray from the “path of perfection” and slip up even a little bit in whatever aspect of my life, I immediately feel like nothing more than a failure. I think this is something a lot of people struggle with, but it is personally new to me. Growing up I had no desire for perfection, I strived to be pretty much mediocre at everything. I was happy whether we lost or won the soccer game, happy whether I got an A or a C. It was a pretty blissful way to live my life except for one thing, sometimes striving to just be decent at something when you could be really amazing at something is depriving yourself of reaching your full potential.

The truth is no matter how good you are at something, there is always someone who is better. No matter how hard you are working, there is always someone working harder. No matter how high your grades are there is someone with higher ones. I didn’t realize this until I started testing my limits, seeing just how good I could be in certain aspects of my life. The problem is once I started implementing this tactic, I applied it to most, if all not all areas of my life, except for the ones that really mattered.

I would strive for perfection in vein areas of my life but I was never striving to be an exceptional daughter, sister, or friend. I was never striving to go out of my way for others or have patience with those who especially needed it. My focus was on me, what my goals were, and how I felt about myself that day. I was finding myself in a place of personal success but the relationships in my life were lacking. My strive for perfection turned into the most selfish time of my life. The void I was trying to fill by creating unrealistic standards for myself, devoting all of my time and energy to things that had no real depth, kept me from thinking about what my life was lacking. My obsession with keeping myself so busy that I didn’t have time to think about things that were bothering me, ended up making me even more closed off to the right people and opportunities.

It is okay to focus on yourself but you can’t lose sight of the things that matter. Think about the patience others have had with you, think about how unlovable you can be at times, think about how much you owe to others for dealing with you at those times. They didn’t do it because they had to, they did it because they see you differently. Perfect or not the ones that are in your life are there because they have seen you at your most perfect and imperfect moments and still love you. They have seen your tears, your joy, they have seen your straight A’s, your failures, and your breakdowns. They have seen you employed, unemployed, skinny, and stress eating, and they still see you in a light that makes you look perfect to them.

If you realize that in this whole search for perfection you were actually just craving some type of validation from those who lost love for you, from those you are trying to make love you for the wrong reasons, or in an attempt to try to find love for yourself, know the places that will make you feel the most perfect will be the ones that think you’re flawless in every light and angle, on both good days and bad.

Perfection is not something you have to search very far for, very often you are viewed perfectly by the ones you don’t always treat the best, your parents, your grandparents, and your best friends. Stop waiting to see perfection in the mirror, on a scale, or in your bank account. Perfect is not something you will probably ever see in yourself, it is something you will see in the eyes of those you love, and feel in moments that felt like time stopped forever. Get past trying to see perfection in yourself and you will find it in the most unlikely places.