I recently saw this tidbit of advice posted in a meeting room to define the rules for meetings in that room – “Don’t let the perfection be the enemy of the good.”
I thought about how often it is true that the pursuit of perfection gets in the way of doing just the good. Mercedes uses the slogan, “The best or nothing” and their rival Lexus uses “The pursuit of perfection.” Somehow, it makes more sense to me to constantly being in pursuit of perfection than to constantly do nothing if one cannot do it perfectly. That, after all is what 
hard work and practice is all about – the constant pursuit of doing better, with the goal of perfection. What a sad world it would be, indeed, if we all just quit and did nothing, if we couldn’t be perfect at whatever we were attempting.
In our religious beliefs, perfection is a heady target to tackle. We have the example of Jesus to point to and many people wear little bracelets with WWJD on them, which stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” I find that to be somewhat presumptuous for anyone to think that they can somehow channel Jesus into their daily decisions or actions. Hopefully 
they can learn from His actions and the stories that He used to teach His disciples and instead think of the question, “What would Jesus have wanted me to do?”
The answer to that question is likely to be something less than perfection and would focus around doing the right things, the good things, the things that you might hope someone else would do for you in the same situation. That is why it should be enough to stand on the line and serve food to the hungry who can make it into the shelter; rather than to do 
noting because you cannot solve world hunger. It is enough to tutor one student to improve their reading skill and not sit and do nothing because you cannot solve the education problems of America. The solution (the pursuit of that perfect world) starts with the first person that you serve food to that day or the person that your tutor. There is no failure in the fact that millions of others may have gone hungry or cannot read. You did your best that day and did not give up and do nothing.
The real trouble with seeking perfection is that is so easy to let yourself slip into the role of loser when it is not achieved. Rosalynn Carter put it well – “You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don’t win, at least you can be satisfied that you’ve tried. If you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you don’t set high goals, you don’t branch out, you don’t try – you don’t take the risk.” Failures are just a part of the process of getting 
to success. Even Warren Buffet, whom many believe to be the best investor ever, has had his share of failures.
So maybe the secret is to just focus upon doing your best at whatever task you have set out to accomplish and not worry about perfection. Don Miguel Ruis put it this way – “Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.” At the end of the day the question that you should be asking yourself is not, “Did I achieve perfection?”; but, rather, “Did I do my best?” If you can honestly answer yourself that you put the best effort that you could into the tasks, you will sleep well.
The Special Olympics uses the motto – “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” In the end, one should reward oneself for being brave in the attempt and doing your best at what you are trying to do and not get down if you did not win. If you have given your best and honest effort to the task, you have already won. In that private little victory you can be at peace with yourself.
Have a great day and give your best effort at whatever you decide to do.
Posted by Norm Werner 
flash of disdain overcomes us as we watch the story of a young black mother with her three children burned out of their home on the nightly news. Maybe we pull back the hand of friendship from the person whom we are told is a member of the LGBTIQ community. Those people, we may think don’t merit our help or friendship or pity. After all they brought this on themselves, right?
of His love and acknowledgement of Him in our lives. Do we merit God’s love? Of course not. What could we possibly do to merit His love? The path to God is not marked by accomplishments and it is not earned by good works. Mark Twain put it this way – “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” There was no mention of or need for merit in that guidance. If we do that, maybe the next line in that scripture by John will also come true – “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
almost any circumstances. Victor Hugo said – “Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”
I’m sure that there are scientific explanations about the endorphins that are released in the body by laughter; but those fail to take into account the release of the icy grip of hate, anger, remorse, fear or sadness from our hearts during those moments of laughter.
up his ratty cardboard sign that asks for help for him and his family without caring; yet few stop to offer help. We may feel good about holding the door open for someone else somewhere, but too few make the effort to open the door to an animal shelter cage and rescue a lonely dog or cat. It feels good to drop a dollar into a donation bucket outside the local superstore; but only a few actually go to the homeless shelter to volunteer to serve food or offer services. Do you care enough to actually do?
“God, please give me the courage to go there and help”. It’s easy to hurry past the needy or ignore those in pain or despair by looking the other way; after all we’re busy people with lives of our own to lead and mouths to feed. Someone else will provide for those people you may think; or, you can adopt the saying that the University of Michigan basketball team has been using in the NCAA Tournament – “Why no us?” Do you care enough to actually do?
It may mean volunteering for Meals on Wheels and delivering meals and conversations to a few elderly shut-ins. It may mean adopting a pet or volunteering to work at a n animal shelter on weekends. It could mean volunteering to work on a house for Habitat for Humanity or bringing food to your church and then delivering food baskets to the needy at Easter. Maybe it’s befriending that lonely kid at school that nobody seems to like and who seems so down all the time. You know lots of things that need to be done and which you could do; but, do you care enough to actually do?
perhaps retired before they get into volunteer work. It’s great that they eventually did do something about their caring, but it is not necessary to wait. Earlier in life most of us think that we are too busy with work and family to take the time to do work for others, but that is just rationalization. Make your volunteering a part of family life. Take the family with you to do that work. Let your children see and participate in the work that you choose to do in service to others. It is a great life lesson for them and it shows them that you really do care enough to actually do?
Samuel Henry John “Sam” Worthington[1] (born 2 August 1976) is an Australian actor. He played the main character role of Alex Mason in the Call of Duty: Black Ops series. He portrayed the protagonist Jake Sully in the 2009 film Avatar; Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation; and Perseus in Clash of the Titans and its sequel, Wrath of the Titans; before transitioning to more dramatic roles, in Everest (2015) and Hacksaw Ridge (2016).
why r what it was all about. If they stick with it long enough their intellect catches up with what the Sunday School teachers were try to tell them and they begin to understand and may even begin to believe. Somewhere around high school age that same intellect is joined by a growing ego and the first tastes of freedom and many wander off from their faith, convinced at the time that they know better than to believe what they are being told. For some that loss of faith is just an extension of the rebellion against all things that can set in at that age. Eventually self-control and intellect again gain the upper hand and the adult mind begins to look for the meaning of life and wondering about what comes next. Faith provides the only reasonable answer to those questions. All other answers still lead to dead-ends. And so, the journey is taken up again.
elationship with God? Are you still unsure and wandering about looking for signs from God; or, have you settled into a comfortable relationship that brings you peace and assurance that everything will be alright? Remember that, wherever you are on the journey, you can find directions in your Bible and you can turn to your guide, Jesus Christ, and ask for help. You will not be turned down and you will not get lost on the journey if you just do those things. If your journey hits a few bumps along the way, don’t get discouraged; just keep in mind what the final destination is – your place in heaven that Jesus has prepared for you – and keep on keeping on. The destination is worth the journey. Maybe I’ll see you along the way.
opinions and approval of others to validate ourselves. The self-promotion of many social media sites supports that need to be seen and to receive approval from others. We’ve even become comfortable with asking people to “Like me” on Facebook or elsewhere. We keep score by how many “Likes” we get. Yet none of that really makes a difference if you do not like yourself or your life.
thankful for; but, many of us don’t take the time to really think about all that we have and have been given and thank God for what we have, much less thank Him for who we are. God made each of us unique, each with talents and abilities that please Him in some way. He sees our value, so who else really matters? You don’t have to pray to God “See me; Like me”; He already does.
self-worth through their belief in God. Instead of wandering through life asking others to “See me; Like me”, you will be able to seek out others to say, “I see you and I like you; you have worth to God”. All of this will happen when you have come to peace with who you are and see the value in your life as your ability to serve God by helping others.
wrote about that in my post of February 16 – 
“What would Jesus do?”, but I submit that doing so abstracts the process too much. These are our decisions to make and it is up to us to make them. Perhaps a better way to phrase that last saying might be to ask yourself, “What would a person who follows the teachings of Jesus do?” That at least brings us full-circle back to thinking about the person that we’d like to be – a person who follows the teachings of Jesus.
against the stream of what appears to be commonly accepted practice. That requires courage and a strong belief that what you are about to do is the right thing, the thing that the person that you wish to be would do. Steve had a great quote for that –
protest the treatment of people of color or ethnicity. It takes courage to stand up and say that I will not be treated like an object anymore or take any more of your abuse. It takes courage to decide that you are not going to continue to “go along to get along” anymore. Be the person that you would like to be and act now, before “not now” becomes never in your life.
get yourself into and the reactions that you have to them. Ask yourself how the person that you would like to be would act and react in those situations. Would that person show courage or cowardice? Would that person act without thinking or think about it without acting and perhaps let not now become never?
hard look at it yourself. Are you where you want to be in life? Are you surrounded by those that you really want to be with in life? Are you doing the things that you really want to do in life? Take a good hard look at your life-selfie and ask yourself those questions and more. As Socrates said – “The unexamined life is not worth living.” A life-selfie may give you a way to examine your own life.
The answer to all of those selfie reflections is no; we don’t have to just continue down the current path. We have been given a free will and the ability to change our direction at any time. The momentum of life may try to carry us along the old path, but we can break free and chose a different path. The key to making that decision probably starts with that life selfie and a critical evaluation of what we see in that picture of our life. That review doesn’t mean that you have to beat yourself up for past life decisions; but it does mean that you need to be brutally honest with yourself about where you are in life and where you really want to be.
your life. Some things might be easy to fix immediately; perhaps stopping a bad habit or stopping your association with bad people who may lead you astray. Other things, like making a job change to find something that will both provide the necessary income and make you happier, could take a while and require careful planning. At least you will know that you have made that choice, based on your life selfie and you may start feeling better about the future right away.
Local life coach and author, Norma Nicholson, has published a book called Living a Balanced Life which might give you some perspective, in addition to your life selfie, on the things that you might need to consider doing to change the direction of your life and get it back in balance. You can find out more about Norma at 
yourself. If you see things that need to be changed in your life, make a plan and start those changes. You don’t have to continue down a path that you don’t really like. Making changes, bused upon this evaluation of your life-selfie is not selfish; however, it is self-serving and that’s a good thing. The next time that you take a life-selfie, after you make those changes, I think you’ll find a different person smiling back at you.
completely absorbed in) that will make you happy. I’ve noticed that many people are most happy when they are completely absorbed in their family life; when being with, and participating in things with, their wives and children take away any cares of the world and they just enjoy the moment and the experiences with family.
dmittedly, it is a somewhat rare and perhaps a fleeting experience; but think of the last time you and your loved ones had a great group experience together and how happy that made you feel. Maybe it was a family pillow fight on a weekend morning, or maybe the fun of a visit to an amusement park or the zoo. There’s nothing that can make you happier than everyone in the family laughing and having fun together while doing something together. Not only are you completely absorbed by the experience, but you also get to share in and draw from the happiness of others in the group experience.
takes on the characteristics of a job for you. It’s also important to maintain control of yourself within the pursuit of a hobby/sport, so that it doesn’t start to take over your life or get way out of hand. Many times on the TV show American Pickers, they show people who have crossed over the line from collectors to hoarders, some of whom eventually recognize that and are trying to pull back from had become an obsession and regain control of their collection hobby. In sports we have probably all encountered the uber-competitive fanatic for whom the sport has become totally a win-lose proposition, rather than a pleasant and enjoyable pastime. There is often more frustration than happiness to be found in that approach to sports.
with them about why they do what they do, why they spend the hours or toil away behind the scenes on jobs with little public recognition for their efforts; they will usually tell you that it makes them feel good; it makes them happy. There’s lots of business advice that says doing the jobs that no one else wants to do is a good way to succeed in business. I think that it is good advice for life in general and your reward in life is a payoff in happiness. Sometimes you are the only one who knows that you did some of those things; but, knowing that you did allows you to make your own happiness from the effort and the success.
you find the happiness from inside? The power to create your own happiness is within you. Find those things in which you can become completely absorbed – a family activity, a hobby, a sport, service to others, whatever – and lose yourself in it. You will experience happiness as a by-product.
when I don’t get up and say thank you to somebody.” (Rod Stewart)
Think about your own life and how many times a parent or teacher or others helped you, even when you didn’t want to be helped at the time. How many times did you say thank you back then? If they are still here, why not go back and do it now? Every day is a good day to thank someone. You can start each day by thanking God for giving you another day and then think about who else deserves a thank you.
self-sufficient. We live in a society, not in a vacuum; and that society is dependent upon cooperation between its members. Sometimes that cooperation is called help and sometimes it is called intervention and all of us in this society may need a little of both from time-to-time.
said it to that person. Saying thank you has a double sided benefit; it makes the person that you said it to feel good about themselves and what they did and it makes you feel good about having acknowledged their contribution to your day or life. Saying thank you is a win-win for all concerned. Think about how big that win will be for you, if you start by saying thank you to God each morning. His will be one “You’re welcome” that you don’t want to miss.
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