Insisting on Perfection



Photo by MChloe

At some point in my younger years I developed a fear of failure and to me failing was anything less than an A. So throughout grade school I tended to take the attitude that "if I didn't try I couldn't fail". Now of course that makes no sense because if I neglected to do a project I received a failing grade but I comforted myself by saying that "I failed because I did nothing at all, if I had tried I would have excelled". The truth was, failing was failing and my excuses meant nothing to anyone but myself. Eventually there came a time where I was no longer able to fall back on the safety of "not doing anything to avoid failure" and I had to step up to the plate and prove my worth.

I quickly had to come to grips with the fact that we are all human and people make mistakes. No one is perfect and perfect is a very relative term anyway. It is important to do the best you can within reason. Overloading yourself with unrealistic expectations is basically just setting yourself up for disaster. The more you bite off the more you have to chew and there comes a time when we all get tired. Playing catch up with an already full plate allows no room for self and without taking care of number one nothing on that plate can get done.

"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." 

~Henry Ford

Insisting on perfection can stop us dead in our tracks and deny us the ability to get anything done at all. In my opinion having nothing done at all is much worse than having something done even if it's not perfect. This can be applied to all aspects of life.
I am frequently asked by people how I managed to live and keep up with such a thrifty and frugal lifestyle. The truth is, I post about more deals than I take part in. I pick and choose what's important to us and where our priorities lie. In the beginning I clipped every coupon, hunted down every deal and spent countless hours scouring circulars and sale racks. I burned out pretty quickly. I took a 2 week hiatus from couponing and playing the drug store game. I didn't go food shopping and simply scrounged up meals from what we had stored away in our cupboards and freezer. I didn't even go to the thrift store. It took me realizing that I had let almost $20 in Rite Aid UpRewards expire to snap me out of my non-couponing rut - how could I have let that much money go to waste?! But when I started up again I made some changes and it has been a trial and error process.

I resigned to only clipping coupons that there is a solid chance I will use (aka. no more children's medicine coupons or pet food, even if they are going to make my deals better). Being bogged down with all the excess many times inhibits us from making progress. I developed a better filing system (I will share this in another post soon), limited food shopping to every other week as well as laundry, and I continuously remind myself that sales are circular and will come again. It is okay to miss a good sale. I save so much money everywhere else that if I have to pay full price for an item, that's okay because I'm still coming out ahead. Every penny saved is just that a penny saved  - and believe me, you'll be surprised how fast those pennies add up!