During my time in high school, one of the things I really enjoyed was dancing. The rehearsals with friends, the performances on stage before crowds, it was all memorable, and quite a time of character building for me. When I first started, the gazing eyes of the crowd made me shrink inside. And those times I knew I didn't do it perfectly, I would beat myself up over it.

Everyday I strive to live by principle. One of those principles being excellence.  With me good enough is not good enough. And as a Christian, I am imitating a God of excellence.

Aiming for excellence can make perfectionists of us. When you are a perfectionist, often a lot of your resources are misdirected. You invest time and effort in details you don't need to. You set unrealistically high expectations.  Forgetting, many times in life it's not about the destination but the journey. The perfectionist often misses the joy of the journey.

Even when it is not about the journey, fussing about getting it perfect gets you no where in the end. Perfectionism has a way of keeping you lost in the details and never accomplishing the task. For the last couple of days I have been trying to come up with a blog post but all I have done is scatter of sticky notes all over my desktop and nothing more. Just because I couldn't write something I felt was perfect for the blog.

Over the last few years, I've unfortunately been living and performing below my potential. And with a lot of things I've not had to give it my best, but to just give what is good enough. Sometimes just the bare minimum requirement. It's got me thinking, is good enough really not good enough? Something I learned during my dancing days is not to stress over mistakes I made on stage. Most times I didn't get it right, I was the only one who knew I didn't. You know why, others didn't know what I was supposed to do, or they were busy trying to get it right themselves to notice me.

And then lately I've thought good enough could be good enough. It's not exactly the best work ethic, but definitely comforting to the perfectionist. I've come to learn that when you go for good enough you are more likely to enjoy what you do, get full pleasure in it. Life is simple without the constant fear of failure and disapproval, without the weight of the world on your shoulders. A life of good enough seems like it is good enough.

However, I still think good enough is not enough. We ought to aim for a higher standard, excellence. But keeping in mind we are human and are limited. Perfection is not achieved when everything is perfect, but when we give our all.