What really is good enough to us and how do we live by it?
While we often hear of the benefits of focusing on good enough, it can feel like a fair response to good enough is ‘yes I know it only needs to be good enough, but…’. It can feel easy to find exceptions for why this thing needs to be more than good enough.
In these moments where good enough, frankly doesn’t feel good enough, what is the value of a good enough approach and what helps us connect to what really is good enough and to find the perspective that allows us to let go?
What is the value of good enough?
We’ve likely all heard: ‘Good enough is the enemy of perfection’.
If we play with that a little.
What would it be like to always ensure everything is perfect?
What would be different if we only worked to good enough?
It is important to note that a high standard or expectations around quality, even what good looks like, is not the same as perfection.
Pursuing perfection is ultimately an impossible task. If perfection is when something is free of any flaws or defaults, we cannot reach it because we cannot control everything that would allow something to be perfect.
Yet it is easy to pursue perfection, often to avoid the vulnerability of not being able to control the outcome of good enough, or to deny recognising there is so much we cannot control.
Pursuing perfection means we may not have to share something until we guarantee it is perfect and we can be sure we’re safe from failure. Or we can avoid starting something because we know we will not be perfect and cannot guarantee we may fall in our attempts.
In pursuing perfection what do we risk not doing or missing out on?
Good enough offer the freedom to do things, to try things, armed with a better understanding of the realities of life: we may fail, it may not work out, that is okay. Good enough acknowledges that and allows us to incorporate the prospect of things not going to plan into our approach in a way perfection doesn’t allow.
So if good enough allows all these things, how do we connect to it in the moments where perfection feels safer and easier?
What does good enough actually look like vs abstract good enough?
The challenge can be that the image of what something needs to be and why, the story we’ve created and the beliefs behind it — be they perfectionism, fear of failure, or unconscious patterns or ideas that we are not even aware of — are often clearer than what good enough in that context would look like.
When we embark on something or start a task or project, how clear are we on what good enough would actually look like?
How realistic is that?
And by realistic that means, given what we can control, the context in which we are acting and the conditions, such as resources, timeframes, other competing priorities, what realistically is good enough?
What if good enough is constantly changing?
What if in the moment good enough is a relative and shifting term?
If so, that means we constantly need to reconsider what good enough is.
For example, you have a close friend’s birthday and it is important for you to contribute to the birthday being special for them. This means getting a card and a gift that is personal to them, and despite social gatherings being energy draining, being at their party from the start to the end and engaged in it and with everyone.
Nearer the time you feel unwell. You’re recovered by the party, but you’ve been unable to get a personal present. What does good enough look like then?
The party is after work. That day at work is your first day back from being unwell, and you’re still feeling residual tiredness from recovering. You’ve got to catch up on work and have been pulled in to help finish a project that is due by the end of the day. In short, it is a long, and intense day, you have to work later than expected, in fact you’d intended to wrap up a little early. By the end of the day you’re exhausted and drained. When it comes to the birthday party what does good enough realistically look like now?
It could simply be that you show up, you are present for your friend.
As in this example, where the context changes from your initial expectations, how often do we take stock of what good enough looks like?
What is the impact if that idea of good enough hasn’t shifted from the initial expectation?
What really is good enough for us vs the stories we tell ourselves in the moment?
When we’re caught in the unreal expectations of the moment and we’re masterfully avoiding the idea of good enough, what are the stories saying that mean we are resisting revisiting what may be good enough in this situation?
And if we were to look back at that moment when we were 80, how would we wish we would have approached this moment?
Often with perspective, good enough can feel clearer.
For example, hen we’re 80 we almost always wont be wishing we had spent that evening finishing emails or re-re-checking a piece of work.
In the party example, if we imagined we were 80, how may we wish we had approached it in the moment?
Perspective often allows us to consider what actually matters.
If good enough is the enemy of perfection then perspective and knowing what really matters are the allies of good enough.
It may not be this specific question, but what can offer us the perspective to really clarify what good enough looks like?
What is good enough really for us?
Perspective and what matters are also a reminder that only we can really know what good enough is, means and looks like for us.
How often do we ask what it is for us and how we know what good enough is?
How will we know we have reached good enough? What will we feel?
And what gets in the way of us trusting these markers?
The challenging paradox of good enough is that only we can define it, of course external inputs will help us do that, but unlike perfection which is arguably objective, good enough is subjective. Good enough requires us to trust in our judgement, to accept good enough. That is to trust that good enough is good enough.
It is also accepting that our good enough in a specific context may not be good enough for the outcomes we are hoping to achieve, and sometimes we cannot know that until we try.
To be comfortable with good enough is to accept failure is also possible, it is to accept uncertainty, it is to be vulnerable.
Accepting good enough is difficult, we’ve written before about the value of adjusting our approach in knowing something is difficult.
So in knowing good enough is vulnerable, may involve failure, what do you need to support you in the pursuit of good enough?
When we pursue good enough, what is the impact for us and others?
What would it be to know good enough is good enough?
Pursuing and accepting good enough is to say we are human, to invite others to have a go without needing to be perfect, ultimately to remind ourselves and to re-learn that regardless of how things go we are always good enough and that we are learning.
What would it be like to only pursue good enough?
What would help to focus on good enough?
If you knew things were always good enough, what would feel possible?
What would a good enough approach look like day-to-day?
What would it be like if we all only focused on good enough?
