Letting Go of Perfect

[image error]Finding Your Inner Coach by Brett Ledbetter. In this talk, Ledbetter asks this question: imagine you are on the field playing your sport and you miss a play or fumble the ball; if your thoughts about yourself could scroll on the scoreboard for everyone to see, would you be proud of what you are thinking about yourself? And likewise, would we say the same things to a fellow player?

The same is true in life. We have a tendency to beat ourselves up over things more than we need to as we reach to do it all perfectly. And yet, we disregard the most important question of all: “Are you doing the best you can?” If you answer yes, there’s no need to hold on to the idea of perfection.

This was meant to be a short post, but it’s turning out to be much longer than I imagined when I wrote the first few words.

So, let me wrap this up and end by saying this: I’m not suggesting that we should lower our expectations or give up on dreams. I absolutely refuse to do that. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t give it the old college try and always put our best foot forward.

Nope. I’m not saying that at all. We should do those things.

But there is a thing called giving yourself grace. In other words, YOU have to be content with the effort YOU gave, even if it didn’t yield the perfect outcome. All we can ask of ourselves in any endeavor is to be honest with ourselves when we ask the question, “Did you give it all you’ve got?” If the answer is yes, then sometimes we just have to be content with that.