In the summer of 2018 I got the chance to travel to FIJI and New Zealand on an Outdoor Leadership trip. The following is an old blog post from that time in my life. Our lessons in life can continue to teach us. Sometimes they need to be revisited to be remembered and sometimes we revisit them to be taught something totally new.

I’d say we’ve got pretty familiar with toxic positivity in our culture today. It makes sense that it’d be a hot topic, because somewhere deep in us we crave real, raw connection with others. As I’ve been thinking more about this topic, another layer has come up for me though. It’s related to toxic positivity but I’d like to call it “Toxic Perfectionism.” You know the thing we do by choosing to continue to show ourselves, lives and relationships as “perfect.”

Personally, I’ve struggled more in the last year and a half than I ever thought I would. There’s just so much mess and heaviness all around. I’ve felt frazzled, anxious, worried, restless, and even really hopeless at times. As I’ve continued to explore and get curious and kind with myself, I’ve discovered something. I thought it might be a place for more than just me to look too. So here it is.

I was leisurely sitting in my room maybe reading a book or decompressing from the day. My phone starts to ring, and it is one of the residents. I answer as they are a little frantic, telling me about how shots were fired, and people had been shot…

If my life was a canvas it either feels like I try to fill it up way too fast or on the other extreme it can feel like I leave it really empty and bare. Not sure about you, but I think there’s several different kinds of “ideal” canvas.

A time when it feels like we're supposed to be the most happy and thankful. A time when it can feel like everyone around us is more happy than we are, especially when we scroll through our Instagram's or Facebook's.

Do you ever just want to ride off into the sunset? Did you ever think that you would? We all, to some extent, want that happy ending. Whether it's riding into the sunset with the perfect relationship, the perfect job, the perfect kids, the perfect friendships, you fill in your own blank.