I long ago learned to keep a tight leash on my perfectionism. If I didn’t, it would run circles around me and trip me. Scraped knees and elbows. Bruised shins. Never a pretty picture, and I should know as someone who’s had her fair share of knees and elbows meeting pavement.
Christianity
Try Again
After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other hand, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection. – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Good Enough isn’t Good Enough
Whatever you do, do you work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. – Colossians 3:23-4 (NASB)
The words “sloppy” and “good enough” don’t sit well with me. They are not a part of my work ethic, nor are they to what I’m called. I’m called to excellence, to doing my work heartily.
Art is for Service
As artists, we often point our light inward. We need to point it at someone else. We may have the light they need to find their way out of the woods. – Darden Smith, SongwritingWith:Soldiers
How to be a Better Writer: Face Your Insecurities
We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. – Etty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum writes of worries. She could make the same statement about insecurities, and it would hold true. Insecurities rob one of energy. They hold court in the mind. The person wavers, a boat tossed to and fro in the waves. [Read more…] about How to be a Better Writer: Face Your Insecurities
Celebrate Small Successes
A common saying is “don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.” I tend to have the problem. I now and then mistake the trees for the forest.