Good Enough!

The best movie I've seen in years is Whiplash.  (Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, you must!  It's riveting and electrifying, and the acting is uniformly exceptional, especially JK Simmons who deserves every one of the awards he's going to win this season including the Oscar.)   The movie is about a music teacher and his protege, both obsessive in their own ways about being exceptional.   The teacher, a maniacal lunatic, the likes of which I hope my daughters never see, posits that the worst two words in the English language are "Good Job."   In his view, this phrase makes people stop aiming for excellence and settle for what's good enough.  It was a compelling scene near the end of the movie that brought this character into focus and context.

So yay for Hollywood and cinema.  It was a line in a scene that really worked and I ate it up in the moment.

But the problem is, for years, I've been telling people around me that part of the secret to managing a hectic life with a lot of responsibilities is to have "good enough" be the standard you try to achieve.  Mind you, the word enough is significant -- it means that the good has to be really good -- good enough to get the job done, whatever the job may be, and whether professional or personal.   But enough also means that once the job is done, stop and move on.  Don't endeavor to go above and beyond because in most circumstances it's neither necessary nor worth it.

It's something I started trying to imbue in my employees back in the early 2000s.  I was running a nonprofit organization that was under-resourced, under-staffed, and always would be no matter how much money we raised, because the depth of the need we were trying to serve was immense. I kept stressing to all the bright young lawyers and professionals right out of school that our standard had to be "good enough"-- that if we went beyond that, we would serve fewer people with the help they needed.  Wasn't it better to do just what was necessary to get the job done and then move onto the next person, rather than going all out for one, and neglecting the next?

As I got older, and especially once I had children and started balancing work with motherhood, I realized that good enough is the standard to reach for in virtually everything.  After too many periods in my life when I tried to be all things to all people, and was nearly crushed under the weight of my own expectations, I realized that I couldn't beat myself up over trying to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect advocate or the perfect friend.  I'd never achieve even one of those things even in isolation, let alone in combination.   But if I set my sights on good enough, I took a lot of pressure off myself AND accomplished a whole lot more. 

We've all heard the maxim "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of good."  In the world in which I live, I pretty much see most people do just that all the time.  And that's no criticism of them, per se -- I am surrounded by very bright, highly educated and successful people.  They got where they are by being driven to excellence.  So it seems contrary to all of a sudden talk about being "good enough" but I think the reality of  leading a busy and multi-faceted life (whether one is parenting or not), means we need to let go of perfectionism and the need to always be excellent because let's face it, excellence is rarely what's needed in most situations.

My kids don't need me to be the most perfect mother ever -- volunteering at every single event and activity, always giving them organic, 100% natural, homemade food at every turn, tending to their every need the moment they have it.   Because let's face it, that would be entirely insufferable!   But they need me to be supportive, to show up when I can, to nourish them well, and love them enough to let them be independent.  Good enough!!!

Work doesn't need me to work 16 hours a day, to the exclusion of all else, nor does it require that everything I write or produce be an exhaustive academic discourse on the subject at hand.   Rather, I'm required to multi-task, to make complicated concepts simple enough for people to understand, and to get things done in a timely and nimble fashion, rather than a perfect one.   Good enough!!!

And lord knows my husband and friends don't want perfection out of me -- how tedious would that be?  Right?   Good enough!

And the best part of good enough?   It eliminates so much guilt!  I don't feel guilty for all the things I can't get to, or can't manage to do.  Instead, I look at what I can accomplish, knowing that in whatever realm I'm doing it, that things are a little bit better for those around me because of what I do, rather than what I don't get to.  

For those of you that are too hard on yourself, it's going to take some work to get comfortable with good enough.   But start practicing -- strive for good enough in one aspect of your life at a time -- let go a little bit at a time and become comfortable with it.   Expand a little bit at a time and see what it can do to help transform your life.  I would bet that after a while, you'll feel a lot less pressure and a lot less guilt about very many things.   And what's not good enough about that?