Here is what I believe: Puzzles are perfect, every piece fits in its particular way, it’s easy to know what’s right and what’s wrong, it obvious what fits and what does not. Emotion is not useful when you are working to organize the pieces. The puzzle does not care about your age, your race, your sex, your politics, your ideology, religion, or culture. If you have the ability to control your emotions and be patient. If you are willing to work to put the puzzle pieces in the right place and you are good with the time it will take, you will eventually be successful, and you will see the image, words, or message the puzzle was made to convey. In the end, when you finished with the puzzle, as you stand up and look down at what you have accomplished, you could say, “It’s perfect.” I got all of the pieces in the right place, and that would be the truth.
Puzzles can be perfect; people cannot. Who said that?!? I want to give them credit. I think I heard it on a podcast I was listening to; it resonates with me. I have defined my life by the value of Excellence because I spent so much of my early life trying to be a perfect person, only to repeatedly collide with the truth that perfect with people is impossible.
When I have breathed my last breath and my time on this planet is finished. No one, including the people who love me the most, will stand back and reflect on my life and say that any part of my life was perfect. To type those words on my, IPad for this blog post is utterly preposterous. I have been the king of the fools; I cannot do it right enough times to make up for all the times I did it wrong. If anything close to perfect was the standard I had to attain for my life on this planet to matter, then I have already ultimately failed. Everything I currently believe is truth for my life; everything I think I have done right was born out of my almost constant failure.
No human being to ever live on this planet, except the spiritual conversation of God come to earth, can claim perfection. For argument's sake, let’s use the current popular statistic that there have been 108 billion people to live on planet earth. So arguably, there has only been one perfect person in a sea of billions of other people, and that idea or stat is not a matter of fact; it’s a matter of spiritual faith or a strong belief in God anchored in spiritual conviction rather than a provable fact.
Don’t stop reading here because somehow you feel what you believe spiritually is somehow being challenged! Can we eliminate any controversy by agreeing that no one currently alive is perfect? Of the 7.674 billion people now alive on this planet, not one single person can say they have done it all perfectly. Can we agree on that?
I’m exhausted, embarrassed, and frustrated that it took so much of my life, my personal human experience, to finally surrender to the reality of the truth that people cannot and will not ever be perfect. Inside the culture wars and the war of ideas, in every category, sports, politics, religion, technology, the arts, etc., there is one common denominator, imperfect people.
It may seem silly to some of you, but dealing with the reality of my imperfection has become one of the secrets to any consistency and success I have. I did the work to create the language and tools I needed to move forward by defining myself from the inside out. I mean choosing what I believed about my heart, how I was wired, and then working my way out to the practical things I believed I was supposed to do to succeed despite my imperfection.
I chose to believe that the spirit of freedom lived in my heart; it was hardwired in me; I was born with the desire to live free. I believe freedom is a gift from God to the human heart. I decided I would have to fight for and wrestle with freedom physically, mentally, and spiritually. I mean, to live with freedom, I had to have the answers for my imperfections physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Next, I decided the other gift I had been given was the freedom of choice. The ability to choose my path in life, to choose my beliefs, to choose my community, the people I live with and love. Freedom and the ability to choose are what separates humans from every other living creature. People are not perfect, but freedom is in our soul, and we can choose. That’s a miracle for me.
I realized that I was trying to make all my most significant decisions based on my strongest beliefs. Without a solid working knowledge of my core values as tools, without putting what I believed into language so that my values could become clear targets to daily re-aim at my imperfections would continually be the same obstacles, and freedom would eventually become my stumbling block if I weren’t intentional with its power.
So trying to be perfect left me frustrated and defeated; I was imperfect, broken, and fallible. Perfection was unattainable in my life. However, I decided to pursue Excellence in everything that I do continuously; Excellence became the core value I would re-aim at every day. I adopted the pursuit of Excellence as a foundational truth in my life and my personal code. In my code, the pursuit of Excellence leaves room for mistakes but demands that I correct those mistakes and not make them again.
Striving for Excellence isn't flashy; it's mundane. Excellence is accomplished through deliberate actions ordinary in themselves. These actions must be performed consistently, made into habits and goals then compounded together over time. Since achieving Excellence is mundane, it's within my reach. The proper perspective for me is to retain what works well, build on it, improve it, and correct the mistakes. I can and should always be moving toward Excellence. For me, the pursuit of Excellence understands that making improvements will require me to take purposeful risks; taking risks means making mistakes. If I’m not making mistakes, I’m not learning; I’m not aiming high enough or pushing hard enough. My pursuit of Excellence requires me to fix those mistakes and not to make them again.
I understand that I am imperfect, but I make no excuses. Minute by minute, day by day, I’m working to improve to develop Excellence in my life. That’s the way it works for me. My life is a constant process of refinement to do better by daily re aiming at the value of Excellence, and that process doesn’t end until I’m dead.
Freedom + Choice + Excellence Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually = how I overcome my imperfections. S&H
Keep Coming Forward
Jim Hensel
