Girlfriends Should Come With Cup Holders

Recently, I came to a shocking revelation:  I cannot be everything for everyone.  While many of you may have figured this out a while ago, I took a little longer to reach this very obvious realization.  My personality type is an INFJ which, for those who are unfamiliar with the Myer's Briggs Personality Typing, essentially means I am a perfectionist.  I have a hard time shaking the notion that perfection is an attainable goal that, though met by very few, should be constantly strived for by all.

For example, the one area of my life in which I constantly strive for perfection is my marriage.  Let me be a little clearer; by perfection in my marriage, I mean I want to be perfect for my husband.  In his eyes, I want to be everything that he needs me to be.  I think this is a very common feeling in most wives, but it is a tricky goal to meet because it is so reliant on many outside factors, including children, careers, families, finances, spirituality, and even your spouse themselves.  My husband always reminds me that he thinks I am perfect for him but I always recall a specific moment when I clearly failed to meet his needs.

We were dating at the time and sitting in a common area of my college dormitory with another couple.  We were all sipping on cans of soda (yes, even though this is a college story, it really was soda) while lounging around on bean bags.  I was leaning against my husband (then boyfriend) while he was looking around for a safe place to set down his open soda can.  After failing to find a good spot, he looked at me, then at our friends and said, "Girlfriends should come with cup holders."  Of course, he meant it as a joke and to this day I do not believe that I should surgically implant a cup holder on my hip, but it is a fun example of how we can never be everything for everyone no matter how hard we try.

Lately, I have decided to wear many hats.  There are a lot of people who can wear many hats and manage just fine, even enjoy it.  I feel I need to be perfect at every hat I wear, so the more hats, the more stress, and the more I feel like a failure.  After a couple of weeks of a lot of stress and a lot of wallowing in feelings of failure, I realized that I will never reach perfection if I am too focused on the fact that I have not yet reached perfection.  It is very hard to focus on getting somewhere if you are too busy being upset that you are not there yet.  Even if you are a person who does not strive to be perfect in everything you do, you will still never be able to be the best you can if you focus too much on how you are not currently at your best.

So, from now on I am going to try really hard to strive for perfection in all areas of my life by not dwelling on the fact that I have not yet succeeded.  I challenge each of you to do the same.  Next time you become frustrated by a new job you have not fully learned or a new task you have not yet conquered, take a moment to think about the attainable goal you would like to reach, no matter how big or small, and focus on bettering yourself to reach that goal rather than becoming discouraged by how far you still may have to go.  If that doesn't work, maybe we can look into how much it would cost to get that cup holder implant.