Our Perfect Imperfect Story

Tim McDonald
2 min readJun 5, 2016

I was about to start writing about my day yesterday. I walked away with so many lessons from conversations I had with multiple people. I just don’t know which one to share with you. It could be the lesson Craig Wilson told me about “taking a season off”, or the lesson Angela Maiers shared with me about our perfect, imperfect story, or the lesson Ayelet Baron opened my eyes to about actually being a planner. But then something happened.

I started getting upset because I thought I was done for the night and someone had asked me to do something at the last minute. Poor planning lead to me to having to change my plans and get it done. But then I remember about 6 weeks ago, I was the cause of poor planning that left others having to scramble. Did I just become the pot that called the kettle black? It made me stop.

I took a season off (this season was a few minutes) from my frustration to understand that I could adjust my plans and still get everything done. But most importantly, that I’m not perfect. And that’s OK.

We often talk about the bright side of our lives to make everyone think we are doing great. The fact is we can’t know greatness unless we experience pain. That’s the perfect story you need to tell. The one with all the imperfections. Because that’s when people can relate to you.

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Tim McDonald

Stage 4 colon cancer survivor — AmBADASSador for @FightCRC #ColorectalCancerAwarenessMonth — Former Dir of Community HuffPost