I want to give you this message today because it has been something that has been hard for me to come to terms with over the years. We live in a sort of perfection culture. We see pictures on Facebook or Instagram with all sorts of filters on them that make everyone look perfect and flawless. This leads us to believe that our peers really are perfect. We start to think that we are the only ones who don't have it together, or that we are the only ones who don't feel amazing all of the time. Here's what we don't see though: We don't see the seventeen tries it took to take that picture until they found the right one. We don't see how long it takes for the person to pick the perfect outfit for this picture to look so great. We don't see the extremely long amount of time it took to edit the picture or the time it took to come up with the perfect caption to make them seem so clever and perfect.

We are so good at comparing ourselves to others that this perfection culture has really begun to affect our mental health. So many people struggle with depression today because they think they are the only ones to not be perfect before, but that just isn't true. Life comes with all sorts of challenges and sharp edges that will get in our way and our life will never be perfect. This is true for everyone by the way.

The worst part of all of this is that we get a sort of time related tunnel vision. We start to believe that whatever we are going through in a season of our lives defines the entirety of our lives, but that is not true. You will go through seasons where you make more mistakes than others, but that doesn't mean that you are just a person that makes mistakes. You are not your mistakes. You are so much more than your mistakes. In fact, your mistakes help you to be better and shape who you are in spite of them. This only gets harder because there will always be people in your life that will try to tie you to your mistakes and tie you to your past. There will always be people that will tell you that you can't be more than who you have been. A lot of times people will tell you this because they feel inadequate about who they are in their own lives and they feel like they can't be more than who they used to be. They have put themselves in misery by this false belief and misery loves company.

Now I know it is hard to believe sometimes that you don't have to be perfect and you are better than the mistakes you have made in your past. Believe me, I am still trying to learn this lesson. I struggle with the same thoughts. That is why I thought it was so important to cover this. Don't let the past get you down. You are not your mistakes.

It all starts with you.