Friday Reflections - Stop tolerating "good enough" when "great" is an option
TLDR: When we settle for "good enough", we hold ourselves back from the possibility of experiencing "great". Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.
This past week, my family and I spent a few days in a beach town a few hours south of Austin.
I had heard that Mustang Island was a rare gem on the otherwise underwhelming Texas coast, so we stayed a few minutes away from there at an Airbnb that was a short walk to a highly-rated beach.
For context, I love the beach more than anything else. I revert back to my child self and delight in waking up early to watch the sunrise, playing in the waves, building sand castles, and most of all, boogie boarding. 😎 That said, I'll only swim in clear water because I get freaked out when I can’t see what might be swimming around me.
So imagine my surprise and disappointment when we arrived at the beach that first day and discovered brown, opaque water full of porpita porpitas, Portuguese man o’ wars, and something I had never seen before: tar balls.
A tar ball, as I learned that first day, is “liquid petroleum and tar that has mixed with other elements in the water and hardened into a solid state”. 🤢
From left to right: A porpita porpita, a Portuguese man o' war, and a giant tarball with my foot for scale.
As it turns out, venomous, stinging sea creatures and tar balls are generally accepted parts of the Texas beach experience. Indeed, there were plenty of people swimming that day.
I really wanted to convince myself that we could swim there too. After all, it was so conveniently located, other people seemed to not mind the less-than-ideal conditions, and it seemed unlikely that any beach nearby would be better.
And yet I couldn’t bring myself to settle and have a disappointing few days, especially because the trip was in celebration of my birthday.
So I did more research and found another beach just 10 minutes away to try the next day and figured what the heck, it couldn't be worse than this first one.
When we arrived at the new beach, I was again surprised, but this time also delighted, because the water was clear, and there were no signs of jellyfish or tar balls. I couldn’t believe this water existed a mere 10 minutes away from the other water.
This got me thinking: sometimes we just need to be open to the idea that a new location could result in a better experience, and that settling for “good enough” may hold us back from experiencing “great”.
In my first job out of college (the same one I referenced last week), I worked in an extremely toxic consulting firm environment. Most people quit within their first year.
I first attempted to quit around the 1.5 year mark. Although I had been promoted just a few months earlier, I was miserable. My friend let me know about an open role at the company she worked at and I applied. When I got the call saying I didn’t get the job, I was devastated. It shook my confidence and I didn’t apply to any other jobs.
The second time I attempted to quit was around year 3.5. I told my boss I was leaving and his response was that I would never find another job that would give me even close to the amount of exposure, experience, and management responsibility I was getting at that time, especially without an MBA.
I regrettably believed him and stayed.
One year later, I finally quit for good, but not before he tried to convince me of the same story. That what I had was as good as I was going to get, and that I should be grateful for it. That no one else would give a 25 year old the level of responsibility I had, the yearly promotions I had achieved, or (laughably) the salary I was making.
This time, I told him I disagreed. And that even if that were true, I would rather take a demotion than continue working there.
A couple of months later, I was hired as a strategy consultant for an internal consulting team at Kaiser Permanente - the first person without an MBA that team had ever hired - at a higher starting salary than what I had left behind, and with a team of people who treated me like a human worthy of dignity and respect. That role led to working with KP for over ten years in various capacities, all of which have been formative and net positive experiences.
In other words, my (former) boss was wrong.
I don’t necessarily regret staying at that original job for as long as I did. There are reasons I chose to stay, beyond what I’ve shared here, and the skillset and experience I gained have been invaluable in my career since then.
What I do unequivocally regret is believing that what I had was the best that I could get, that it was better to settle for good enough than risk rejection, and most of all, that I allowed myself to tolerate harassment and the undermining of my worth and potential.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but sometimes it is. Sometimes the grass on your side is brown and crispy and there are much greener pastures to be found.
Sometimes finding those pastures requires free falling into the unknown, leaning on the idea of faith I mentioned a couple weeks ago. Sometimes it requires simply allowing yourself to be curious about what else might exist, and doing a bit of research on other possibilities.
What is always required is the choice to stop allowing yourself to tolerate good enough and instead believe that great is possible for you.
So my invitation to curiosity for you today is:
What are you tolerating, or rationalizing as “fine” or “good enough”?
How certain are you, really, that there are no other viable options? What data do you have to support your level of certainty?
What might it look like to do a bit of research on other possibilities that might exist?
What might it look like to believe that you are worthy of “great”?
As always, drop me a line and let me know what comes to mind. And, if you need help believing "great" is possible or strategizing how to get there, let's chat.
Stay curious,
Jessica
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