A whole bunch of quotes...notice a theme?

If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Vincent Van Gogh

I am not a has-been. I am a will be.

Lauren Bacal

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Edmund Hillary

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

Lao Tzu

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.

Unknown

Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go.

Sylvia Robinson

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Things have been so busy around here lately that the days and weeks seem to blur together. I always seem to have good intentions but not enough hours in the day to do all those things I intend to do. One of my biggest weaknesses is that I don't give myself credit for the good things I AM able to do because I stay so focused on all the things left undone--especially those things that have been sitting on my to-do list for months and years (I need to organize our photos and finish Johnny's baby book, I need to clean this closet and that and reorganize all our bookshelves and help John get tile bids so we can finally finish the never-ending remodel we've been dealing with for way too long, I need to sew buttons back on, do the ironing that's been neglected so we can actually wear our clothes and they don't just sit there collecting dust, I need to pull the weeds before our garden turns into a disaster like it did last summer...the list that runs through my head is ENDLESS!!!).

So lately I've been thinking a lot about letting go. Letting go of the unrealistic expectations that always leave me feeling like I'm not good enough. Letting go of the heavy burden of guilt--because "guilt" never motivates me to do better, it just drags me down to discouragement, despair, depression, and doom (ok, maybe doom's a little dramatic...I just wanted to see how many D words I could fit into one sentence!). Even letting go of genuinely good things I want to do, but that I just don't have time for right now.

This is a hard concept for me to get through my thick skull, but I'm trying to learn how to trust "enough". I'm such an all-or-nothing thinker and since nothing is ever good enough, talented enough, skinny enough, disciplined enough, kind enough, clean enough, pretty enough, smart enough, organized enough, etc I've always pushed myself to such extremes in hopes to feel ok. But it's like chasing the end of rainbow--you waste so much time and energy pursuing the elusive goal that you miss out on everything good around you. Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment from all your hard work you just end up discouraged and exhausted. And after a while you start feeling like why even try if your best efforts aren't enough!

This is definitely not a skill I'll be able to master overnight, but over time I want to learn to truly believe that I'm OK. Right where I'm at. Imperfections and all.