Never Being Good Enough
Most of us spend our lives attempting to reach perfection, and for those of us who don’t try, it’s not really your fault. Who could blame you for giving up trying when the world is constantly beating you down? When we were growing up, there was always someone who was telling us that we could do better or that they expected better from us.
For some of us, it was our oh-so-concerned parents; for others of us, it was our teachers; for the ones that were really unlucky, it was both. It’s hard for us to continuously try our best when it never seems to be enough.
You got an 87 on a test? Why was it not a 95?
Oh, you earned an awesome internship at Drexler? Why did you not get one at BMW? What did YOU do wrong? Everyone reaches a point in their lives where they just want to give up because they are tired of trying and failing. They start to see themselves as failures in life, but…
YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE!!!!!
Does life suck? Yes. Is it by any means fair? Hell no. But the wonderful part about how crappy life can treat us it that it can only make us stronger! Any and every one of us can or has been knocked on our backsides by life. Every time that we stand back up though and face life head on, something miraculous happens. The little fractures in our souls knit themselves back together simply adding to its strength.
I know some of you are rolling your eyes or shaking your heads or even contemplating read no further. I cannot make you believe it, but I believe it’s true. Some of the most highly regarded people in history failed multiple times. Thomas Edison’s first attempt at the light bulb did not work. It took many tries, many failures, to finally succeed. You can only learn by failure. If you never fail, then you never have to really try for anything in life.
Everything in our lives happens for a reason: every failure, every heartbreak, and every hard time. Some of us have experiences, or failures in our life that we wished we didn’t, lessons that you wish had been left untaught. You only see them as dark times, and you wish you could undo them, but you shouldn’t. Every experience in life, no matter how bad has made you who you are, and you are a wonderful person. So, I am telling you that YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH. Are you flawed? Yes, everyone is flawed. How other people criticize you for your flaws should not matter though because I can promise you that they are flawed too.
The secret to being good enough is that you only have to be good enough for you. In the end, you have to life with yourself for the rest of your life, not anybody else. So, from this point on, operate with the mentality that you are good enough because you are the only person that you have to impress!