When Things Aren't Going Perfect
Let me just start this post with some irony. I already wrote this whole thing and accidentally closed the window without saving, so now I have to write it all over again. This is great though because it’s actually the theme of this post.
This post is about battling perfection. Perfection is a word that has been haunting me my entire life. For as long as I can remember I have put pressure on myself to be perfect, while at the same time always comparing myself to others and telling myself that I will never be as good as them. I have done this at school, at dance, at work, at my hobbies, my relationships- pretty much anything you can think of. I’m not quite sure where this need to be perfect comes from, but it causes me a lot of pain and self-doubt.
Ever since I was little, I always thought of myself as being below others. The other girls were always better dancers, always prettier, always smarter, always more outgoing, and always better. As I sit here and think about how this made me feel, it makes me sad. It makes me sad that when I was in the most advanced dance class, at the top of my class, and such beautiful person inside and out, I was constantly telling myself that I wasn’t good enough.
The thing that really sucks though is that I still do that to myself. Even starting this journey of boundless.irl was tough for me. Beth and I wanted to start this as an outlet to talk about our personal journeys of self discovery and personal growth- something that we are both extremely passionate about at this point in our lives. Even with this passion and excitement, I was scared. I was so nervous that it wasn’t going to be perfect. To be candid with you, Beth and I only decided on the name a week before we planned on launching and I only finalized the logo this past Sunday night, the night before our planned launch. On Monday, when Beth posted I got so scared. The thoughts that ran through my head were, “What if people think its stupid? What if its not good enough or I’m not good enough? What if people hate the logo? What if people can tell that I have no clue what I’m doing?”. After I let those thoughts run their course, I remembered that those thoughts are the core of all of this. This is not about me being perfect or being good enough for anyone except for myself. This is about me expressing myself as I get to better understand who and what I want to be in this world and none of that has to be perfect.
The real kicker this week though has to do with my search for my last co-op. As a fourth year student at Northeastern University, I should be securing my third and final co-op right about now. My plan has been to get a great third co-op that I love and to be hired by the company to come on full time after graduation next May. This may not be how my future goes though and I have to make peace with that. At the start of this process about a month ago, I applied to four jobs and got selected for interviews at three, which I was psyched about. About an hour before my first scheduled phone interview though, I got an email saying that the company was no longer hiring for that position because of budget cuts. Although I was bummed, I wasn’t too upset because I had interviews for two other awesome companies lined up. I had great interviews with both of those companies and even got a second interview at one of them. I just heard back from that company yesterday though and they said that they are no longer offering that position because of internal reorganization. This really sucked because it was my top choice. On top of all that, I haven’t even heard from the third company who said they would get back to be two weeks ago; I even sent them two follow-up emails. Clearly this process has not gone exactly as planned this time around and its honestly making me feel like a failure, or one may say, imperfect.
Though all this really sucks, through my experience when everything goes awry, there’s usually something really great just around the corner. So I’m going to keep my head up and stop forcing myself to be so perfect all the time and I recommend that everyone takes a second to remind themselves that you are doing the best that you can.
So, what do you do to battle perfection?
