Okay friends, this is the last Thursday of the month and I had been sharing a monthly recap on how my no buy year was going for that month on the last Thursday, however last month I ended up sharing late. I have decided I will wait until the last Thursday in October to recap and then we will be back on track for sharing the last week of the month! But, I will share a teaser and say I am still really struggling. And because of that I wanted to talk about an adjacent topic this week – perfectionism. I am sure I have talked about the topic of perfectionism before. If not the main topic, I know I have talked about my struggles with perfectionism and how I really like to call myself a recovering perfectionist because I have been a lot better over the past several years at giving myself grace when I’m not as disciplined as I would have liked to have been.

Over the years I have shared here on my YouTube channel a variety of different challenges I have put myself up to. I actually used to have a series on my channel where each month I chose a different challenge and shared my thoughts on how the challenge went. I think challenging myself outside of my comfort zone is a good thing. And some of the challenges have led to some long term healthy habits. But these challenges, like the no buy year, I think can lend itself to falling back into the perfectionism trap. While I think challenges can be good for setting a framework for eliminating bad habits or incorporating new good habits, it can also cause me to focus too much on behavior. What I mean by this is that sometimes just changing behavior isn’t enough. Changing the behavior doesn’t necessarily mean a change in my heart. Choosing to do the no buy year for me isn’t necessarily just about saving money, although that is a really nice side effect and I think it’s always good to be intentional with how I am spending. For me, it was more about changing my heart posture towards stuff. I don’t want stuff to be so important to me. The important things in life are relationships, experiences, and striving to make a difference in this world somehow.

Yes, it’s good to change the behavior, but the last part of this no buy year I want to focus on changing my heart posture. By just focusing on changing the behavior, that puts me back into a perfectionist mentality, where I am WORKING so hard to just do the right thing. I have struggled with this throughout my life. Just striving and striving and never feeling enough. But I really feel I have turned a corner with that over the last few years, like I mentioned, giving myself more grace, realizing I am human and I can’t always be perfect, realizing I am ENOUGH.

There is this verse in the Bible in Romans 7:15 that says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” In that passage it goes on to say that basically we all have that struggle because we all are not perfect. I try to remind myself that everyone struggles with this very thing. We all struggle to consistently do the things that are healthy for us and not do the things that are not healthy for us! All it means is that I am human.

Lately because of the lovely stage of life I am in… good ole’ perimenopause, which is causing my hormones to be out of whack, which is causing me to feel out of whack, I have really been trying to focus on healthy habits. I have been walking every morning first thing – moving, getting sunlight, I have been lifting weights, taking all the supplements, eating all the protein, staying away from sugar and alcohol. Doing ALL THE THINGS. And some days I still don’t feel myself. I have really been struggling more lately with this perfectionist mentality where I feel like I have to do ALL THE THINGS, EVERY DAY! I am trying to leave room for grace, but it has been a struggle. So, if you are struggling – with perfectionism, with messed up hormones, with no motivation, with giving in to your temptations because you feel like you cannot do it all ONE MORE DAY… you are not alone!