{"id":31544,"date":"2020-03-30T00:53:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T05:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=31544"},"modified":"2020-03-30T00:53:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T05:53:30","slug":"briefly-need-to-be-perfect-has-caused-many-of-my-other-failings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=31544","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Need to be perfect has caused many of my other failings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Perfectionism-trap.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-31545\" src=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Perfectionism-trap.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Perfectionism-trap.jpg 460w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Perfectionism-trap-300x222.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault \u2014 and the source of many other failings in me \u2014 is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently as 10 years ago, I would have dismissed it as a small failing that showed up only every now and then, but I now see it as the wellspring from which my other sins are born. It\u2019s such an insidious belief \u2014 and one that can look on the surface\u00a0like a reasonable desire to be good and right \u2014 that it\u2019s hard to acknowledge it as the inner cancer it is. But until I understood this, it was always going to be impossible for me to get over my deep shame about my imperfection or to accept the love of another person, because she is bound to be flawed, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault \u2014 and the source of many other failings in me \u2014 is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=31544\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-8cM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31544"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31548,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31544\/revisions\/31548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}