Being a health and fitness coach, I feel like I'm expected to be on my "A" game all of the time. I know I put a lot of the pressure on myself and that nobody really expects me to be perfect. But I always want to be the good example for people. If I can show people that I'm doing a great job - then maybe that will help motivate them to do the same so they can be healthy!
But I think its very important to talk about imperfections because being perfect is never attainable. And why would we want it to be? Our Pastor said some really great things in his sermon yesterday and it got my mind just racing thinking about how it relates to so many areas of our lives. When God created the world and everything in it, it was "good". The Bible never says it was perfect. Perfect is static and never changing. But "good" allows so much opportunity for things to be better. For things to keep improving. We were never designed to be perfect creatures. Rather, we were made in His image, with free will.
Doesn't that feel so much better than dealing with the guilt of never reaching that "perfect" place you feel like you're always striving for?
With health and fitness - I'm never going to eat perfect. There are delicious things in this world like chocolate and wine and I'm not going to forbid myself to enjoy those things once in a while. I think the important thing to remind ourselves is that as long as we are putting in an effort to make good choices like 80% of the time, you're doing a pretty darn good job. I always tell my challengers that they should just be proud of themselves for showing up and caring about their health. Getting down and hard on yourself because you screwed up for a few days is not going to be productive. It leads to feelings of guilt and remorse and then things just snowball.
When you look at life, and goals, and dreams as merely a journey and not a final destination - things just get so much easier. Or...maybe just more enjoyable at least.
This leads me to GRACE. We need to offer ourselves a little more grace. In this fast-paced world where we feel like we are expected to be the best and greatest and fastest at every single thing we do - it's so hard to feel like we measure up. We need to just stop for a minute and think about all the things we are doing right. And for the mistakes we make - forgive ourselves and offer ourselves grace. Guilt and worry do nothing positive in our lives except drive us down further.
So join me today. Stop trying to be perfect and forgive yourself more. Be the best you can be...and be happy with "good". Make one more good choice today than you did yesterday. And if you don't - it's ok. There is beauty in the way our world was created. 24 hours in a day. Days separated by the night. The ability to wake up every single day to start fresh. It's up to us how we want to view each day.
