Breaking the Bad Habits of Low Self-Esteem With God's Love

Bad Habit #7-Perfectionsim

This bad habit pretty much sums up all of the other ones. Those who hate themselves are perfectionists, wishing to be perfect. They can not forgive themselves when they fall short of their impossible standards for themselves. They learned this because people in their lives would expect perfection from them and they would get chewed out whenever they made a mistake, so they learned making mistakes is never okay, no matter what. Most of the time, one of two things will happen with those who are perfectionists. They will either hold others to the same impossible standard they hold themselves to and learn to hate everyone else as much as they hate themselves, or they will put others on a pedestal, thinking everyone else is better than they are. I fell into the latter category. Those that think everyone else is so much better than they are have a distorted view of the world around them and will tend to become doormats, letting people walk over them, and they are also being hypocritical. Those that hold everyone else to the same impossible standard they hold themselves to tend to become abusive. Holding ourselves to these ridiculous standards and expecting to be perfect keeps us from moving forward in life. Satan wants you to stay fixated on an impossible goal so you won't reach any goals.

We all have an inner critic; even those who don't hate themselves have an inner critic. We have what I'll call the "critical parent" and the "nurturing parent". The critical parent is the one what will chew you out when you forget to turn in an assignment. The nurturing parent is the one that would say well, one assignment isn't the end of the world. You can always ask for some grace from your teacher too. We all forget things from time to time. Those who are perfectionists have a much louder and more obnoxious critical parent that tends to drown out the voice of the nurturing parent. The nurturing parent never screams or yells; the nurturing parents speaks in a still, small voice. It takes practice and skill to ignore the loud critical voice and hear the still, small voice of the nurturing parent. The next time you hear your critical parent screaming and yelling at you, ask yourself, well, what would the nurturing parent say? Chances are, the nurturing parent will say the exact opposite of what the critical parent is saying. 

My past mistakes used to haunt me all day and all night. Day in and day out my mind would not stop obsessing over all the mistakes I had made over the years and my critical voice would keep saying non stop, you're such a horrible person! That phrase kept repeating in my mind practically every 10 minutes like a broken record. I would try to fight this voice like a schizophrenic on a daily basis and it really made my life exhausting and miserable. It took me so long to come to terms with the fact that I will never be perfect and that no one will ever be perfect and that I'm really no different from everyone else on this planet that makes mistakes. Once I began to accept this, the less that voice had power over me and I heard it less and less until one day, I stopped hearing that voice all together.

You need to realize that Jesus didn't take our sins upon himself on the cross so we could continue to hold grudges against ourselves. God is the ultimate forgiver of mistakes, so as long as we repent of our sins, and he forgives us, then who are we to hold these grudges against ourselves? He realizes that we can not be perfect, but he made a way to make us holy and righteous in his eyes. We are counted righteous by our faith, not by being perfect. Paul says in Romans "But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins." (Romans 3:21-24, NLT). As you see, all that matters is that we are putting our faith in God and we are striving our best to live a righteous life because we love him. God sees our efforts, and that's what matters. Remember also that you are no worse than anyone else on this planet, because everyone makes mistakes. When you begin to accept this, you will start to become free of the chains of perfectionism.