If you work hard enough, can you become perfect? Of course not! Being perfect is being like our Heavenly Father and our Savior -- finished, complete, whole. It is a very long term goal that we can desire and work at in this life, and which we might reach sometime in the eternities, but only if we allow our Savior to help us. Why can't we become perfect on our own? The fact is that we learn by making mistakes. We do something; experience the consequences, then make a judgement on whether what we did was good or bad. Did it make us happy and bring us peace, or did it make us miserable, and fearful? This is what we are here to do: to learn and grow. Well, we certainly have making mistakes down pat, and we can even determine if we want to continue that behavior or never do it again, but how can we grow?
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I know of no better way to reduce a group of church women into a miserable puddle of guilt, than to mention becoming perfect. Immediately, women begin bemoaning their "failures": their home isn't neat every moment, their children are not high achievers, their meals sometimes are not very nutritious, their hair has a mind of its own, their clothes aren't stylish, their weight is too much, their yard has weeds, they forget things, and worst of all, they sometimes get tired and grouchy.