It’s true. We all made mistakes in life whether it’s been years or maybe as recent as an hour ago. It’s the human condition to miss the mark. It’s impossible not to.

But being able to let go is the goal. It may be the hardest and most powerful thing you will ever do.

Resilience is flexible. It’s not rigid. It’s able to sway back and forth. Resilience doesn’t have a spirit of perfection anywherenear it.

To hold ourselves to a standard of never making a mistake is holding ourselves to a standard of perfection, which is not only impossible but will also make you miserable in the end.

I can honestly say that one of the biggest roadblocks that kept me from being a resilient person was my perfectionism.

Perfectionism will consistently cause you to feel like a failure because there is no such thing.

We were never made to be perfect; we were made to be excellent.

And there is a big difference between the two.

Excellence is a spirit in which you do something. It has more to do with the motivation and attitude in which you do something,rather than the end result.

Perfection is intolerance for anything that is not in perfect form.

Perfection starts inside you and eventually works its way out and around you, influencing people, places, and things withwhich you associate.

Excellence is doing whatever it is you do in such a way that it raises the standard without condemnation or judgment of others.

For example, I have a friend who I love and value very much, and she has become very wealthy over the past several years. Itseems her level of expectation of others has gone up with her net worth. We were out to dinner a few years ago, and the levelof perfection in which she held the wait staff and the restaurant seemed very unusual. Her inability to see any reason for flaws or mistakes was bordering on a level of perfectionism that I couldtell wasn’t making her happier.

And when you go about life this way, it ends up slowly eroding your ability to enjoy it. It also keeps you from having a clear perspective on what reality is because it seems that you’re living below the line at all times. All of a sudden it takes “outof this world experiences” in order for you to find satisfactionin everyday life.

The pursuit of excellence will require hard work and a diligent attitude, but if done wisely, it will be pursued by God’s strength and not our own.