In case you didn’t know this about me, I’m a highly sensitive and emotional human. I let little things bother me and can be too hard on myself when I make mistakes. However, this doesn’t stop me from making a lot of them. Some recent mistakes include, oversleeping for one of my classes, misreading a deadline, and missing a meeting. While those things aren’t huge deals, I let them get to me. I felt like a mess and wondered why I just couldn’t get it together. It’s a frustrating way to feel. But we don’t have to let the frustrating moments define us.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been carrying around these feelings of stress for a while. And I think at some point, these feelings of messing up and being hard on ourselves start to take a toll on our physical and mental health. The other day I woke up with an awful headache and I couldn’t figure out why. After a while, I realized that it was probably correlated to the high amount of pressure I was placing on myself. When did I start telling myself that I couldn’t make mistakes? When did I start putting pressure on myself to be perfect? These were questions that made me take a step back and rethink my previous thoughts. You are allowed to mess up. You are allowed to have a bad day. You are allowed to realize that being perfect is not going to happen and that the pressure of attempting it is not worth the cost. You are allowed to give yourself grace.
This realization felt like a bright flash of clarity. If you’ve been around a while, you know that I talk about the idea of grace a lot. You also know that I feel giving grace to yourself and others matters a lot. However, I realized recently that while I’ve been saying I need to give myself grace, I wasn’t doing it. Instead, I was giving myself the stress of pressure to obtain an idea of perfection that doesn’t exist. It’s an exhausting cycle of trying to have it all together only to realize that we were never meant to. You were not created to be perfect. You were created to try your best and that’s it. To get up in the morning with the intention to live a life rooted in faith. To be kind to people and grow from the mess-ups. To apologize when you’re wrong and offer forgiveness where it needs to be given. Sometimes life looks like getting up and walking out the door, only to realize you forgot your keys and now you’ll be late to work. And you know what, that’s ok. Is it fun? Nope, not at all. But you’re allowed to mess up, even on the little things.
So here’s my promise to stop putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect when that was never what I was created for. To take the little mistakes with a grain of salt, breathe, and give me the grace to keep trying. Your bad days do not define you. Your mistake is not your future. Every day we wake up is a chance to do our best. And that’s not gonna look the same every day. Sometimes my best means pajamas all day and attempting to check things off a never-ending to-do list. We are not machines, we are people and we need grace. A car can’t run with no gas and you can’t run with no grace.
So process your mistakes. Acknowledge them. They exist and they aren’t fun, but they happened. However, realize that they do not define you. You are worth more than a bad day. You are not perfect and you were never meant to be. But you are worthy of getting up every day and trying with everything you’ve got. Some days are hard. They won’t make sense and you’ll fall short. But you’ll get back up and you’ll keep going because you are strong. Give yourself the grace to accept help from God. He loves us more than we can comprehend and He walks with us and takes our hand as we move past our mess-ups. Don’t be afraid to ask for forgiveness and to act on it. God gives us the grace to keep going and keep growing. You are more than deserving of a life full of grace. You are so loved friend.
All the love, Annie
