Perfection.\u00a0 It is an intimidating word for sure.\u00a0 One which can be the cause of discouragement and anxiety for many who might feel they are constantly falling short of achieving it.\u00a0 I know because there was a time in my early adult years when I was one of those many feeling intimidated and discouraged that I would never be able to achieve perfection in my life.\u00a0 I was a single working mother with two small children to care for.\u00a0 I was constantly feeling the guilt all day at work of not being home with the kids, and then coming home at night to my kids and feeling the guilt of everything I needed to get done at work.\u00a0 I felt like no matter how hard I tried that I was failing in every aspect of my life because I didn\u2019t know how to be everything to everyone that needed me.\u00a0 It was a difficult and discouraging time for me because I felt I was giving everything I had to give, yet it was never quite enough.<\/p>\n
To fully understand today\u2019s blog you have to first understand that I was raised by parents who constantly encouraged me to live my life in the pursuit of perfection.\u00a0 I was also taught by all of my church leaders to be in the pursuit of perfection. It was engrained in my from the time I was a small child.\u00a0 I have a strong belief in God and I believed with all my heart that God wanted me to live my life in the pursuit of perfection.\u00a0 Perfection was an expectation that I was trying to live up to.\u00a0 It was a word that I judged my every action against, and when I fell short of it, which was every day, I found myself feeling like a constant failure and totally inadequate.<\/p>\n
Then one day something changed.\u00a0 I think it came from the combination of reading multiple books on self-improvement, a great deal of self-reflection, and working with a fantastic counselor who helped me cope with what had been an incredibly painful marriage and divorce.\u00a0 What changed was my understanding of how I had been interpreting the challenge to live my life in the pursuit of perfection. \u00a0I had been so focused on trying to achieve \u201cperfection\u201d that I failed to see that I was measuring myself on a truly impossible scale \u2013 perfection is impossible to achieve in this lifetime.\u00a0 None of us are, or will be, perfect in this lifetime, no matter how hard we try.\u00a0 So to hold ourselves to that standard is truly setting us up for failure.\u00a0 And I realized that God would never set us up to fail.\u00a0 Nor would God want us to feel inadequate.\u00a0 There were a lot of things I didn\u2019t know in my life at that time, but what I knew for sure was that God loved me and wanted me to succeed.\u00a0 So how could I reconcile my upbringing of being told to live in the pursuit of perfection with my belief that God wanted me to succeed?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I figured it out.\u00a0 I had misunderstood entirely the teaching to live in pursuit of perfection.\u00a0 I had focused in on the \u201cperfection\u201d and completely overlooked the \u201cIn pursuit of\u201d portion of that sentence.\u00a0 All those years I had been interpreting what I had been taught completely wrong!\u00a0 Neither God, nor my parents, nor my church leaders had been trying to tell me I had to be \u201cperfect\u201d \u2013 they had all been trying to tell me that \u201cperfection\u201d is all about the \u201cIn pursuit of\u201d portion!\u00a0 The expectation on me in this life was that I live my life \u201cin pursuit of<\/span>\u201d perfection.\u00a0 There was no expectation that I achieve it, only that I pursue it to the best of my ability each and every day.\u00a0 And for the first time in my life, I finally understood it.\u00a0 All God expected me to do was to pursue<\/span> perfection each day of my life, and then when my time on this earth was completed, if I had done all I could do to pursue perfection in this life, that God (through the Atonement of his son Jesus Christ) would make up the difference for my shortcomings, allowing me to finally achieve true perfection.<\/p>\n That realization was like having a blacked out window suddenly opened and it allowed the sunshine to come pouring in.\u00a0 \u201cThe pursuit of\u201d was something I could control.\u00a0 \u201cThe pursuit of\u201d was something I could succeed at.\u00a0 \u201cThe pursuit of\u201d was a measurement scale I could totally live up to.\u00a0 Coming to realize the correct interpretation of what I had been taught made all the difference in my life.\u00a0 I no longer had to feel inadequate or discouraged \u2013 I could feel capable and strong and empowered.\u00a0 I could do this.<\/p>\n My life has been very different since that time in my early adult years when I finally got it.\u00a0 I became happier, more successful, and at peace with my life.\u00a0 Getting rid of the impossible measurement scale and replacing it with a measurement scale that made far more sense and was far more in line with what I knew of a loving Heavenly Father\u2019s desires for my life made me a much happier person.\u00a0 It was at that time that I set the goal to someday start a charity called the IPOP Foundation, which would stand for In Pursuit of Perfection and I wanted it to be dedicated to helping people to achieve their potential and raise their self-worth through the \u201cpursuit of perfection\u201d and not perfection itself.\u00a0 In 2012 I was able to realize that goal and www.ipop.org<\/a> became a reality.<\/p>\n I will never forget the life lesson I learned about the \u201cpursuit of\u201d.\u00a0 And I have spent every day of my life since that time focusing on the \u201cpursuit of\u201d achieving perfection, which has helped me to go further and farther in life than I would have ever dreamed possible.<\/p>\n I hope that sharing my story will help those of you out there who might have misinterpreted the expectations just as I did, and who have been feeling inadequate and discouraged.\u00a0 I hope that you will recognize that all you are expected to do is to live \u201cin pursuit of\u201d perfection and know that the \u201cpursuit of\u201d is enough.\u00a0 You are enough.<\/p>\n Have a great weekend.<\/p>\n Love,<\/p>\n Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perfection.\u00a0 It is an intimidating word for sure.\u00a0 One which can be the cause of discouragement and anxiety for many who might feel they are constantly falling short of achieving it.\u00a0 I know because there was a time in my early adult years when I was one of those many feeling intimidated and discouraged that 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