If you’re a mom and are willing to be honest with yourself, you’re likely more than familiar with the pressures of perfection and comparison. They often start innocently enough —but soon they’re controlling our lives and dominating our every action. Comparison and perfection are cruel taskmasters, and it’s time to turn on the light and tell them it’s time to go!

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to speak with author, blogger, and mom Crystal Paine, known to many online as the Money Saving Mom. Her website, moneysavingmom.com, helps countless families be “intentional” at home, in their business, and with their finances. Crystal and I had a wonderful conversation, and while she talked about some of the things she’s learned about saving money, more importantly we spoke about the pressures of being a perfect mom, how to fight the lies of “having to do it all” with positive truths — and about how she’s learned to authentically be herself.

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Moms, I hope you’re encouraged and inspired. Saying goodbye to the idea of “perfection” may seem like a daunting task, but here are a few places where you can start. I promise it isn’t quite so scary.

1.) Confront the lies in your head. Every mother I know has a collection of negative voices in her head telling her she isn’t good enough in one area or another. Maybe it’s saying you’re not good enough at cooking or managing your finances, or maybe it’s that you’re not spending enough time with your kids — or if you only did this one thing, life would get so much better.

We may have different scripts, but all of us have this in common: Those voices are lies. The kicker is that we know that these are lies. The hard part is fighting them. Crystal talks about an exercise she started doing years ago that made a world of a difference in this area. She began to write down the lies she was hearing and started replacing them with positive truths.

Crystal says it took years for her to change her mentality, but she is living, walking proof that this works!

Related: Nurturing Heart of a Mother Resides in Each Woman

2.) Stop the comparisons. There’s a well-known saying: “Comparison kills contentment.” Boy, is that the truth. As a pediatrician, I have listened to thousands of mothers talk about how horrible they are for not doing things that other mothers (or countless voices of other unknown advisers) say that they should do. The truth of the matter is, we are always looking around at our friends or strangers for guidance and advice, and we can get so caught up in doing what others say and comparing our journey as a mother or parent that we lose sight of what is good for us and our families. (go to page 2 to continue reading) [lz_pagination]