Thought for the Day ~ Strive for Excellence

Awareness is the first step to change…when we can become conscious of seeing life through the eyes of judgment we can make the choice to change.  Are you that person whose conversations are full of should have, would have, and could have.  Do you always believe that you know a better way than the one chosen?  Do you challenge almost everything that people say and do?  Then your ego has decided that you are entitled to judge and criticize the actions, words, and deeds of others.  You have determined that you are that close to perfection that you can find the flaws in them.  Think again…because in those moments you are placing conditions on people that are groomed from your own beliefs and standards. 

 It is true that we must all strive to do our best, to reach our own level of excellence, but we cannot expect perfection, or being free from flaws, from ourselves or anyone else.  If we are to bring love to our life experience then we must let go of judgement  and the finding of flaws in the efforts of others.  We must practice acceptance,  and believe that people have the right to make their own choices, and decisions, based on the information at hand.  You may not always be aware of what is happening in the lives of those around you.  So to judge, when you have limited information is unloving and moreover it imposes conditions on people that you have no right to expect. We learn from our mistakes, and our less than stellar moments….and those lessons come to us gently at first, that is why we must always be listening to our lives. Today strive for excellence not perfection.

Don Miguel Ruiz said “In the Toltec tradition, seeing life through “the eyes of the judge” is synonymous with defining perfection as something that is free from flaws.  When we view life in this way, everything and everyone we see is subject to our judgments of how things could be perfect…including ourselves.  This is how we impose conditional love on ourselves, and others, as judgments are formed to punish and domesticate, imposing a condition for the worthiness of our acceptance and love.  But a flaw only means what we think it is; its meaning and interpretation are subject to an agreement. This is why there is a deep truth in the statement – we are perfectly imperfect.”