Expectations of Perfection

Some times being a human is the hardest thing. 
We all have expectations in our brains of how things should go.
How our day should go.
How our week should go.
Even how our life should go.

If you know me at all, you know that I am a planner.
In my mind I like to have everything perfectly laid out. 
I want to know whats going to happen, when it will happen, and what the result will be.
If you are coming to my home for an occasion, I want to have to perfect menu planned. 
If we are planning a vacation, I will spend literally months researching. 
I want to make sure that that vacation is the best it can be.
I aim for perfection.
And in my mind all things go perfectly. 
All the time. 
But then real life happens, and my expectations are always shot down. 
Its not that the actual vacation is bad, in fact it is always almost amazing.  
Its just that it never lives up to what I had planned in my head.  
Now that I have come to recognize this about myself I have learned that I need to back off a little. 
But when you aim for perfection at all times, that really is hard. 

Always aiming and seeing perfection is one of the hardest things in life.  
I can't ever remember an occasion where anything went as perfect in real life as it did in my head. 
This brings with it a sense of utter failure.
All the time.
From the smallest thing of a meal not going as planned, to much larger things in life, like relationships.

"Perfection is annihilation.  It paralyzes us from working from the heart.  Humans by nature are not perfect and imperfections are what make the world beautiful."

This constant need for perfection is tiring. 
It makes me question every small detail of life. 
But at the same time, a lot of times it makes me just give up. 
I tell myself it will never be perfect anyway, so what is the point of trying.  
This has proved to ruin a lot of things in my life. 

Learning to live an imperfect life is hard, and it is something I am working at every day. 
But people, the struggle is real.
There is not a day that goes by that I try to perfect some area of my life. 
Expectations of perfection.  
That is what runs and ruins my life.
They say, "Practice makes perfect", but what they don't tell you is, perfection can never be achieved, no matter how hard you work. 

I found this quote by Mandy Hale that sums this up so perfectly - 

"When you release expectations, you are free to enjoy things for what they are instead of what you think they should be."

More than anything, that is what I want.  
I want to be able to drop my expectations at the door, and live a life enjoying things as they are supposed to be.
I want to be o.k. with something when it doesn't go perfectly. 
And I want to be able to look back on my life and smile, not because life turned out perfectly, but because I learned to accept an imperfect life.