I was talking to somebody about this the other day, about perfectionism and how there are so lots of things that I want to do in my life, with my house, writing, everything, but I want to do my best, you know? everybody does. For me, I feel like unless I give something 100%, it’s not even worth trying, and even when I do give 100%, I still see the things that I could have done better.

It’s a theme that’s been running through my life for the last few years, and to be honest, when I got pregnant, it got much worse.

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Something happened with my hormones, and I don’t talk about it a lot on the blog, but I developed anxiety. It’s not something that, you know, I want to lead with ever, but I have it, and I’m working on it. I work on it every day.

The person I was talking to was my therapist, and she said that often 70% is good enough, you know. often 60%. often 50%.

I think a lot of of us know these things, but it’s so easy to forget them…

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I was telling her that the thought of doing things, like a task, becomes so debilitating for me often that, because I want to do it well, but I don’t feel like I have the tools or the time or the energy, I won’t even do it at all. In my mind, I see this best picture of how the task must go, but because I feel so married to that thought, because I can’t do it this way or that way, I get paralyzed, and it’s… I’m kind of over it. I’m really over it.

This has held me back in so lots of aspects of my life, to be honest, with my family, my writing, my house, it’s just made everything so difficult, and I’m at a point where it’s just, you know what? I want to not feel like I’m being held down by so lots of things. I want to feel light and free. I want to do things.

So I’m just going to commit to doing stuff at 70%, you know? 70% may not be 100%, but 70% is still something, and I’m gonna do that for a while and hopefully step forward in some ways.

My gawd, if you could see my house… It’s such a mess, but I have this best picture in my mind. but I’m letting that go now. If I can just get it to 70%.

Actually, 50% in regards to the house. That’s what I’m committing to. If I could just do 50%, then at least I’m moving forward a little.

I’ve generally been like this pretty much all my life. I mean…I did not expect to get teary ideal now but…

Please don’t ever feel like you’re alone, you know? You aren’t. things happen to us all. I’ve never met a best person in my life. Not a single one of us is perfect, and you don’t have to be perfect. Ever. Please remember that.

With any task that bothers me, like with my office or any room in the house, if I give myself an hour and tell myself that I only have to work on one pile, if I get through the pile in the hour, that’s great. If I get to anything else after, that’s good, too.

I’m gonna try to remember that small steps, no matter how small they are, are still steps. It’s about taking bite-sized steps. You’ll get there. You can do it.

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Have a good day, my friend.

Your friendly neighborhood appeal addict,

Karen