*Day 3: Something You Have to Forgive Yourself For*

Honestly, as crazy as this may sound to some, I have to learn how to forgive myself when I fall short of my given expectations. And for those of you who know me know that I hold myself to pretty high standards. When I was in high school, I had a handmade "sign" on my wall with a quote for me to live by. The quote was from Henry Ward Beecher and it said, "Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you." And I do. I am your typical perfectionist. And when I am unable to live up to my own expectations (which is often), I beat myself up. It's amusing to me that I have so many people comment on how much I do, and how impressed they are with me, and yet I just want to laugh and say, "Yeah right! I am horrible." as soon as people start complimenting me, I start thinking of the areas I fall short of where I would like to be. I have always been this way. One good example is school. From K-12 I had straight A's (and yes I was valedictorian), but in 7th grade one of my midterm report cards (not even the final grade) had a B on it. I got sooo upset and actually crumpled up my report card. Of course I got fussed at for what I did to the report card, not the B.
I have found that now that I am a mom with the responsibility of modeling good life skills to my daughters, I have raised my standards and beat myself up more when I fall. So much so that I emotionally feel down and almost depressed at times.
     In my attempts to solve this problem, I have started the FlyLady "self-help" for people like me. The entire premise behind this process is to help us FLY. FLY stands for Finally Loving Yourself. I still have a long way to go. But once I learn to forgive myself for not being perfect, then I think I can be happy with less than.