Progress. Not perfection. {Guest Post}

To close out these guest blogger-bonanza, I have Kristin from My Mission Impossible where she shares her thoughts of health, wellness and motherhood. Kristin is a working mom with kids about the same age as my boys. Like me, Kristin is addicted to Instagram and she always posts great photos with lots of yummy clean eats.

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Hi Love Life Surf readers!  I’m Kristin and I blog at My Mission Impossible.  I’m really excited to be filling in for Christine and (if I might say) a smidge nervous too, as this is my first guest post. So please, go easy on me!  My blog centers around my never-ending struggle to balance my full time job, my family, housework, social life, fitness, nutrition, and the list goes on and on…  For years I focused only on the first couple, but never the fitness and nutrition.  I suppose I always took my health for granted, assuming I was healthy because I had no actual health problems.

I decided to set out on a journey to better myself – both inside and out – and after a few weeks, decided a blog would be the perfect way to document said journey! I’ve met so many amazing and people along the way and found so many other blogs that I love reading and getting inspired by; one of them being Love Life Surf!

At the beginning of this journey my goals were a little different than they are now, about six months later. I wanted to lose weight, get buff, be bikini ready and then simply maintain the level of health and fitness I’d achieved. I clung to this idea that I really only had to work hard for a little while and then I’d be in such great shape that I could pretty much go back to eating what I wanted for the most part and scale back the workouts. Well, that just isn’t the way life works for most of us!

While I was able to change my body in a few months, it was still far from perfect. We are so hard on ourselves, especially us women, that I know I will never have a perfect body because we are always picking ourselves apart. I don’t really want to “accept myself as I am” because I feel like we can always be better.

We can always be kinder, more thoughtful, more caring, more helpful. Just as I feel we can always eat better, push harder in our workouts, and challenge ourselves more. I think the minute I accept myself as I am, that is the time that I will stop trying to improve myself. I am aware that I am not perfect and I’m okay with that, but I will not accept that I am the best I can be. I have however, learned to strive for progress, not perfection. This has become my mantra. Seriously, I whisper it to myself at least 5 times a day. I have since tried to apply it to all facets of my life.

As I mentioned, I have a really hard time, as do most working mothers, fitting it all in. I want to be the best mother, the best Office Manager, the best wife. I want to eat clean all of the time and workout every single day because that’s what makes me feel good. But I can’t possibly do so. Instead of beating myself up, I’m learning to live a life of balance. I’ll never be the best Mother, but I can be the best Mother that my children will ever have (like they have a choice!) and I can damn sure be a better Mother than I was yesterday. I can’t work out every single day because I don’t have the time and because my body needs a break. It needs some time to rest and repair, but I can push myself a teeny bit harder than I did yesterday. I can’t eat clean all the time; I won’t lead a life of deprivation. I thoroughly enjoy eating clean, but I still give into my sweet tooth sometimes! I believe in moderation. I will let myself enjoy a treat if I want one. I’m an adult, I’m capable of making my own decisions and now I’m better educated on how that “sweet treat” will affect my body. Instead of having a half a pan (no, I’m not kidding, I can inhale that in about 10 minutes flat) I will have one brownie. One [kinda] big brownie. And it simply must be a corner. ☺

I hope you’ll stop in at my blog sometime and follow along with me as I continue to strive for progress, not perfection. You’ll see a lot of what I eat, mostly clean and healthy with some sweets tossed in here and there! You’ll see a little bit of my workouts and fitness routines. And, of course, you’ll also see some pictures, some whining, and some complaining! I try to offer advice and I’ll often ask for yours. I love connecting with my readers and reading your comments and I try my very best to answer every single one. Please come share your tips with me on how you’re able to balance it all!

You can also find me here:

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MyMissionImpossible
Twitter (@MMI_blog)
Pinterest (@MMIblog)
Instagram (@mymissionimpossible)

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Thank you Kristin for sharing your thoughts here with us. I think that it’s a really important perspective to have – to focus on progress versus perfection.

Thank you to all my guest bloggers over the past two weeks!! Thank you for giving me some space and the opportunity to unplug, relax and take a mini end-of-summer sabbatical. It was very much needed. I can’t wait to share with you all the fun things that we’ve been doing i.e. expect lots of pictures on Monday