My Imperfect Life

Since the beginning of social media it seems folks only post the best highlights of their lives, they pick and choose the best poses, and they post their best meals. Social media and truth don’t always go hand in hand. Being that these blogs are meant primarily for my children, I want them to know the absolute truth.

If I post a picture, it’s generally one of my boys, my family, or us together. That is the best of me and my life. Nevertheless, I write on my failures and struggles as well for example “Failure is a Must” , and in “Yet another Failure“, and sometimes I even post a video with one of my many failures fun fact this failure earned me a chapter in the book Eleven by my buddy, Greg West

It is crucially important for me to be transparent about my struggles as I am happy to post about my successes. I want to be someone you can relate to and say “well, if he can do it, so can I”. Unfortunately when all we see is the good times, the successes, we can’t relate to them. We feel like they don’t have the same struggles that we do. They haven’t made the bad decisions we’ve made. They haven’t been dealt a bad hand as we have. They haven’t had to deal with depression or substance abuse,  or domestic violence, or trauma, or whatever that we think they haven’t dealt with.

I have failed so much more than I have succeeded. I’ve had a rough time in life. I haven’t always been healthy. I still struggle every day.

I don’t wake up jumping out of bed excited to go to the gym, or go for a run, or not eat until 3pm, or pack my lunch to make sure when I eat it is healthy.

I hate running. I have excuses… I mean, many reasons why I shouldn’t run so much. I’m a huge man. I’ve been in too many car accidents. I smoked for 20 years. I don’t have time. Blah Blah Blah.

I can find 800 things better to do with my time than to go to the gym every day. Going to the gym before work and/or after work sucks.

I stare at amazing looking calzones and pasta dishes daily at work, not to mention the cheesecake. Eating clean is not very much fun. I have so many reasons why to not eat good. Especially when I hear that I eat too clean everyday.

I am committed to reading everyday. I post about a book I recommend after I read it in my group. What I don’t post is the fact that I am a slow reader and that I re-read pages at a time because I realize that I have no idea what I just read. I have to spend a lot more time reading that the average person to cover the same content.

I write a lot. If you’ve read my blogs a long time you already know how much I’ve struggled in my writing. I hope it’s getting better.

I post often on mindfulness, health, and motivation because I wish I knew someone in my past that shared hints and advice on these areas that I’ve struggled in most of my life with.

My point is that just because you see the good parts, the good side, the perfect lighting and poses, know the struggles are real. Not only real but necessary.

I love my imperfect life. Wabi Sabi – Imperfect, perfection. It takes struggles to grow. It takes challenges to learn. it takes missteps to learn to dance. It takes dirt and rain for life to sprout. I’m not only okay with the struggles, I embrace them.

Learn to look for the opportunities to grow when you encounter challenges rather than complain.

It’s okay to post the highlights, but remember to be proud of the failures, the mistakes, the missteps, the hard times, this is when we grow.

Love Y’all