Perfectionism is a perversion of Idealism.
Idealism can so easily mutate into perfectionism.
Idealism is to revere ideals and live your life in the light of them. It is not to be used as a tool to beat yourself up because although you rever the ideal, you cannot do much more than aspire to it.
It is what you aspire to that God is taking into account. (See Mosiah 4:24.)
Your love of the ideal becomes perverted when you allow your inability to live up to it to convince you that to aspire to the ideal is foolish and that the ideal is a lie.
We must always be careful that we don’t discard the ideal because we can’t live it.
Instead, you must continue to love it, revere it, rejoice in it, believe in it, and trust that God will orchestrate your life and your experience to reach it when you are ready; in other words when you have learned the patience and mercy and kindness and long-suffering of a God.
Then you will find yourself possessed of God’s character, and all ungodliness will be shed, sloughed off. This will come by growing in acceptance, patience, persuasion, and love unfeigned for yourself as well as for others.
This has been the Lord’s most recent project in my life, lasting well over 10 years: To teach me how to continue to love the ideal while having patience with the real.
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