Striving for Excellence or Perfection?

During the month of May I’m reading along and participating in the 31 Days to Clean Challenge hosted by Joyful Mothering. As I was reading Day 12 in 31 Days to Clean about imperfection, this quote from the book really has stuck with me today:

“Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.”

~ Harriet Braiker

There are so many different ‘sticks’ that I can try to measure myself up against {and I’m guessing that some of you feel the same way}. There is a BIG difference though in striving for excellence in the things that I do and striving for perfection.

Striving for perfection is guaranteed to frustrate me and cause me to feel that I am of little worth. When I do that, I’m putting a burden on myself that I will NEVER be able to carry!

Striving for excellence is still challenging, but a much more manageable goal. I desire to be more excellent in all things ~ my marriage, my parenting, the care of my home, the education of my children and so much more. I will never be perfect in the things that I do, but I can work toward doing things to glorify God.

And glorifying God is something that I do want to strive toward!

 

If you haven’t downloaded either the pdf file of 31 Days to Clean or have it on your Kindle, it’s a great look at balancing the Mary/Martha in each of us in relation to our homes. Each of the 31 Days focuses on the vision for caring for our homes and then gives two daily challenges:

• a Mary Challenge ~ something that encourages and engages your heart
• a Martha Challenge ~ specific cleaning task for the day