A red pipe cleaner appears in my hand. I find another sip of coffee in my mouth and shake my head, wondering how it got there. Yuck again! Before I can torture myself anymore, I dump my coffee and look around to see if anyone had noticed I was stalling. Yes. …show more content…
On the car ride home I try to think what went wrong. I wanted to hide my face like a criminal. My presentation was utterly embarrassing. But amazingly, people came up to me afterwards, complementing the great job I did.
I’ve always strived for excellence and set high standards for myself. But my standards have a tendency to be so high they couldn’t be met, or are only met with great difficulty. That's why I’m a chronic perfectionist. I expected to confidently walk up to that podium without a need for notes and speak eloquently. No matter what, student, friend, or daughter, I crave perfection. I was so scared of messing up, I ended up doing that very thing. It's natural to have negative feelings when you fail, but I attached all this negative feeling to how I generally felt about myself.
I admit it, I am a perfectionist. But that presentation taught me to see failures in a whole new light. Anything short of perfection is not the end of the world. We have a choice. Look for the lesson we are meant to learn, or succumb.
I learned nobody's perfect, not even me. And that’s