It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect

I was thinking of another lesson I learned from FlyLady. You don't have to wait until you can do a perfect job to get started. Sometimes a little is better than nothing at all.

We've all been taught that we have to do our best and give it our all, but sometimes it is so overwhelming that we need to be able to give our self permission to just get started. That is why I like baby steps, one step leads to another and before you know it you've accomplished more than you thought you could.

I also think it's OK to say that's good enough. I don't want to put all my energy into this project it's not that important. We all are busy these days and it can be hard to get everything done let alone having to do a perfect job. Sometimes we have to settle for good enough and I don't think we should feel guilty about that.

That is another reason I like to keep my life simple so that I don't get into that place of being stressed with too much to do and not enough time to do it. But when you are in that place give yourself a break.

Setting priorities helps you to know what needs to be done first but it doesn't tell you what needs a lot of time and what can just use a quick fix. That's where schedules come in, you know what needs to be done, you know what are long term projects, and you know how much time you are going to spend on each.

I had a hard time getting myself to do schedules because it felt too confining until I realized that I didn't have to do them perfectly. I could use them as a guide but I could be flexible. They are not a set of rules I have to keep, but a guide to help me know what needs to be done and when would be a good time to do it.

Over time I have made my schedules simpler. I realized I like having a morning and evening schedule and a weekly schedule, but I also like to switch things up now and then. I often try new things and tweak my schedule, but I never throw it out completely.

There are some things that have become habits. I always make my bed when I get up or almost always. I think sometimes I don't just because I want to be different. The last few days I decided to let my bed and bedroom air out for a while in the morning so I'm not making my bed right away. It suppose to be healthier. I throw out the junk mail as soon as it comes. I have a walk in closet and I change my clothes in there so they are never littering my bedroom or bathroom. I've also learned to put dirty dishes in the kitchen I don't leave them laying around the house. I'm trying to train myself to clean up the kitchen before I go to bed, but right now sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But once something becomes a habit you don't really have to think about it anymore, it become an automatic response. You do it on autopilot.

Getting back to the title of this post I had to learn that things don't have to be perfect. My poor dd's taught me that as I had to learn to let them do things even if they didn't do it as well as I did it. Being a bit of a perfectionist that was hard for me and I didn't do it perfectly but I learned I didn't have to be the perfect mother either. It took me longer to learn some things.

Linda

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