Poetic, Inspirational Living

“Just try your hardest” is something we tell ourselves alot, but none of us really believe it, do we? Because the fact is ‘your best’ is never really good enough or else we wouldn’t walk around telling ourselves to ‘try your hardest’? Concepts like this are somewhat based on perfectionism - the idea being that in an ideal world, your hardest is actually the best and actually is good enough.

New research shows that people who are prone to perfectionsim tend to be prone to mental health issues. Now, this may not come as a surprise to many and the correlation between practically unacheivable standards and mental health should be that difficult to see but most of us structure our life around the goal of attainging a certain amount of perfection.

Happiness is one of those goals that is constructed as something that can only be achieved once every puzzle piece is put together right, once every aspect of your life is perfectly ordered and maintained. Rarely do we seek happiness in chaos. Yet for most people, chaos, even in small doses, in an inevitable part of living.

For someone who enjoys organized living and definelty sees happiness in relation to how much control I have over different aspects of my life,reveling in chaos is hard to do. Yet I don’t have the type of personality that you would label as being a perfectionist. However, I do catch myself concerned that I’m not any of the following: living up to my potential, not trying my hardest at all times of the day, every day, that I am regularly satisfied with ’second bests’. I think I am not alone. In the words of Dennis Leary - Happiness comes in small doses…

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