If ever there were a time to stop beating yourself up for being human, it is now. You were not at the top of the class, not the employee of the month, nor are you the “10” you think your partner wants. But you’re probably pretty spectacular in some way, and definitely good enough.
How Am I Doing in Life?
The pursuit of success is a religion because it is a robust system of meaning-making that operates at emotional and cognitive levels, guides our decisions, contains its own morality, is buttressed by particular rituals, and is practiced by a group of people sharing a largely unexamined ideology
- Success is determined by one’s perceived place in the social hierarchy
- Healthy interdependence is the gateway to both surviving and thriving, and our capacity to achieve it is entirely contingent on our own social sufficiency, our being “good enough” for cooperation and for love
- Much of the work of healing in our lives revolves around this central question of knowing that we are deserving of the belonging, a question that has always been central to **** sapiens
- Humans in the West have become organized by hyper-individualism that demands even more
- For so many of us, a sense of one’s sufficiency is not enough to quell the inner voice that demands not just belonging but also supremacy
The Passable Parenting Approach
Moving away from perfection allows love in your family to be messy, real, and guilt-free.
- Focusing on what you can control will get you through this, and that means reducing the effort you put towards flawless parenting and finding the satisfaction in multiple roles
- Perfect doesn’t work in relationships. What works is flexibility, responsive sensitivity, and availability
- Not avoiding mistakes but acknowledging them, doing what we can to make up for them and learning from them
The Good-Enough Partner
When your partner is not your romantic ideal
- How much “less” can your partner be and still be a good partner?
- Enough can be defined as “as much as necessary”
- Ideal love, however, seems to be about getting much more than that
- In ideal love, enough is not enough, and you can’t get enough of your partner-the better she is, the more you want.
- Some people are not fortunate enough to have even a good-enough partner-they might have a “just-enough” partner or a “barely enough” partner
- Consequently, many people settle for a partner who is no good for them at all
Congratulations, You’re Average
Changing our definition of average can benefit us
- Surrendering to an average existence could be, paradoxically, how we find our better and happier selves
- Maybe, it’s time we reprioritize what’s worth striving for
- If all we seek is high achievements or being the best, we will find only disappointment
Getting the Laundry Done Might Be Good Enough
Learning within the context of a global pandemic has strained our ability to reflect and take in new insight as we build the proverbial bicycle while riding it.
- The new habits we have integrated may have already pushed us to our emotional and physical limits
- Rather than beating ourselves up over a supposed lack of discipline, we should ask the question: Why has it been so difficult to learn something new?
- Neuroscience tells us that adult learning is linked to habit, and 40 percent of behavior is habit. When we try to do something different, our habits get in the way
