When I was much younger, as an adolescent and teenager, I was sometimes a bit outrageous…I seemed to stay in trouble at home. I was rebelling, from having too many rules, from not ever feeling valued and from being insecure …not being good enough. It was not a pleasant time for me.

After getting married for the first time, I definitely swung the other way and did my very best to be perfect in every way that I knew how. After getting divorced, I got kind of wild again for a period. I always blamed that on not having time to be free as a young adult, on getting married at a young age and missing out on the things that I thought everyone else got to do.

Fast forward to getting remarried and the need to appear perfect reappeared in a big way! I was always trying to get my power from external circumstances because I didn’t realized that everything I needed was already right inside of me. I wanted a perfect body, perfect children, a perfect home, I worked so hard to make the best dinners, iron the sheets and many other unnecessary things (actually I still iron the sheets, but I do it for me!), that I missed out on some important times.

The other thing that happened because of my need to appear perfect was that I began to resent the people around me for not recognizing all that I did. No one ever asked me to do the things I did, it was just my way of trying to be seen, and it lasted for much of my life. I think this is a common thing for women…the need to please. We don’t feel good enough just as we are, we have to prove our worth through excessively taking care of everything and trying to be “perfect”.

I guess to a certain extent, I still overdo, but certainly not as much as I did before, and I have come to understand that it is my choice. I can’t expect any accolades for doing things that no one expected from me in the first place. What I know now is that when I’m happy, those around me are happier. When I feel taken care of and my cup is full, I can give more to others. The “full cup” phrase is one that I heard for years, but I never really understood until fairly recently what it meant. I think self care can be a hard thing to understand…especially if we don’t understand self love.

It has also occurred to me that the need to be perfect is a fear of not being good enough just as we are. When we try to appear perfect, not only does it lead to resentment when that perfection isn’t recognized, it leads to petty judgement of other women in order to make ourselves look better.

It’s so true that when we teach we learn and when we learn, we teach! After I wrote a blog post several days ago saying that, as women, we need to lift each other up and support each other, I realized something I had done that was pretty horrible and not at all supportive…

Several months ago, another woman messaged me, asking about an app that I used in an Instagram post. I had seen this app being used in other people’s posts, but instead of simply asking like she did, I searched and searched to figure out what it was and how it worked. It literally took me hours to figure it out. My attitude toward the person that asked me was…”I figured it out on my own and so can you.” and I did not share. Looking back, I realize how completely selfish and petty this was. I now realize that I should have asked for help in the first place and should have then been gracious enough to share.

I suppose my actions came from a feeling of having to be better than, of being afraid that someone else would figure things out and be better than me. Well…I have definitely learned a lesson! There is room for everyone because we all have unique gifts to share and a unique voice with which to share those gifts. No one can use your voice or express things exactly as you do and if they try, it won’t be the same.

The goal here is to allow ourselves to become more of who we really are every single day. By doing that, we are more able to encourage others to do the same…when we teach, we learn and when we learn, we can then teach. Women, historically, have a reputation of being petty and gossiping, and it’s time for that to change. We have to learn to honor who we are as individuals, take care of ourselves and lift each other up.

Perfection can never be achieved and it’s so time consuming…time is too precious to waste trying to be perfect!.

I fully realize that some of the need to be perfect comes from the society we live in…from Instagram, other social media, and glossy magazine pictures of women who only appear to be perfect. This will begin to change one woman at a time as we begin to understand that perfection isn’t achievable and that we are all uniquely beautiful.

My life changes for the better every day. I am attracting better because I have discovered that it all starts with me. I must change myself first, allowing everything to align for me. I’m am no longer blaming anyone. I am taking responsibility for my life. I want to finally be proud to be an example to my daughters and my grandsons. The better I become, the better I attract and isn’t that what we all want anyway? That’s where our true power lies!