How to be “Good Enough” (and Why That’s Good Enough)

I think this is the most I’ve paid attention to the Olympics in my life. My in-laws are borderline obsessed so it’s been on a lot at the house, and it’s been a hot discussion in the group text. Unpopular opinion: I’m not a huge Olympics guy. I personally find it a bit ceremonial for my taste and impossible to keep track of things. I understand approximately zero rules of nearly all the events.

But look, I’m not a monster. I can appreciate the brilliance and prowess of the individuals competing. The Olympics are amongst the most prestigious and awe-inspiring displays of human achievement and competition there is. Not to mention the gravity of the entire world uniting for a common purpose and experience. As a student of human behavior and performance, it’s not lost on me how impressive these human beings are. These people are as close to perfection as it comes.

And that’s what I want to discuss today: Perfection.

I believe one of the reasons we have such admiration, respect, and appreciation for these athletes, particularly in the West, is because we value greatness and perfectionism a lot in our culture. Of course, it’s inspiring. Of course, there’s national pride at play (I won’t lie, I got a little emotional watching USA Basketball play the other – I do understand those rules). However, a lot of my professional education has revealed that when we have a strong emotional charge (positive or negative), it often reflects what we value.

We use the word perfectionist a lot, and wear it like a badge of honor. It’s kind of like that interview question, “What’s your biggest weakness?” and somebody answers, "I just care too much." Please… When people say, "I’m a perfectionist," their words say it’s a bad thing, but there seems to be an undertone of pride, like "I’m somebody who strives for greatness, who has high standards."

However, for a long time, psychologists actually considered perfectionism a type of neurosis. In the 80s, psychologist David Burns, who wrote the tome on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Feeling Good, described perfectionists as “those whose standards are high beyond reach or reason, people who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment.” This is what I might call delusional.

Modern psychology research looks at what they call maximizing. Barry Schwartz, in his book The Paradox of Choice, popularized this concept. A maximizer strives to make the best possible decision by exhaustively exploring all available options. They seek the optimal outcome and are not satisfied with "good enough." Now, this may not sound like a problem to you. What’s wrong with wanting the best? Well, in the short term, you’d be right; maximizers do seem to make out better. In one study by Schwartz, maximizing college grads landed higher-status jobs and received 20% more money in the first few years out of school. They also tend to get promoted quicker. However, they often end up more miserable because they always feel like they could do better. The goal post always moves. And in the long run, they tend to burn out because getting the best possible thing all the time is exhausting. 

When maximizers burn out and drop out of the game, another, less intense group just keeps churning along and ends up better off in the long run. That’s right, the old tortoise and the hare—Aesop’s greatest fable.

These people are called satisficers—those who “aim for a decision that meets their criteria for adequacy.” Once they find an option that is "good enough," they stop searching and settle for it. This leads to less stress and more sustainability, so over time these people end up happier, healthier, wealthier, and more successful.  

Consider a “dieter” in health and fitness. A dieter overhauls every aspect of their life: sleep, movement, exercise, diet, meditation, colonics every Thursday, etc. They try to maximize every aspect of their health and become intolerable of any mistakes. We all know how this story ends – the average diet lasts about 5 weeks, and 95% of people who lose weight in a given year end up regaining the weight (and often more than they started with), all while leaving the metabolism damaged in its wake.

In contrast, Blue Zones, the regions of the world that house the healthiest, longest living individuals, have a core tenant that encapsulates “good enough”: eat to 80% fullness.

Maximizing and perfectionism are cut from the same cloth: an intolerance of failure and an unacceptance of anything but the best in every aspect of life. Research shows this leads to more stress, less fulfillment, lower self-esteem, more pessimism, and actually less success because it’s not sustainable. They are more critical of both themselves and others, leading to being poor leaders and, frankly, just a bad hang.

Now, I am not saying that maximizing and perfectionism don’t have their place. Let’s get back to those glorious Olympians. They are perfectionists and maximizers in the most beautiful sense. But we need to acknowledge that their rules of engagement are different, and the costs they’re willing and able to pay to afford perfectionism are immense. If we apply Olympic mindsets to our lives, we’ll be miserable.

Olympic Mindset 1: Finite Games

Although I do not understand the rules of water polo or fencing, there are defined rules, known players, and a clear endpoint. In life, we’re playing what’s called an infinite game—no set rules, no winning, and it goes on forever. People can be healthy by many definitions and methods. People can be great parents with different religions and communication styles. People become wealthy in many ways. Being a manager, a leader, a friend, or a lover allows for many different approaches, none necessarily being the best for all of us. You also can’t “win” at parenting or friendship.

Yet, we try to play life as if it’s a dressage competition (that’s right, I know what dancing horses are), leading to burnout, short-term thinking and decision-making, ethical compromises, an erosion of trust, and a lack of flexibility and adaptability that life really requires. 

Olympic Mindset 2: The Law of Trade-offs

Everything in life is a trade-off. To be truly great at anything, we need to dedicate time and energy to it. But that inherently means we won’t be able to dedicate time and energy to other things (often things we care about).

I was talking to a physical therapist who works with an Olympic hurdle jumper. This athlete thinks of nothing but training. Girlfriend? Nope. Family events? Nope. Buffalo chicken sandwich and a few brewskies on a Friday? Nope. No children, no hobbies, no spare time. He is a perfectionist, and that’s what makes him and those like him so spectacular.

However, that’s in a single area of his life, a single identity. Most of us have multiple identities—I’m a husband, a brother, a friend, a fitness enthusiast, an employee, a manager, a podcaster, and a writer. I care about these identities, and because I have so many, I have a ceiling in how great I can become in each. But I’m okay with that and accept those realities, which brings us to mindset #3…

Olympic Mindset 3: An Acceptance of Reality

Author Mark Manson has a quote: “Mediocrity, as a goal, sucks. But mediocrity, as a result, is OK.” Often in life, we come up short—we fail, make mistakes, don’t get what we want, and end up mediocre (at best) in most areas. Fighting this reality brings pain. This is the problem with maximizing and perfectionism—an intolerance of anything but the best, all the time, in everything. That’s a fight against reality. Psychologist Nathaniel Branden says, “Respect for reality is the foundation of mental health.”

Yes, our beloved Olympians are disappointed and heartbroken when they lose. Of course they are! They spent their lives pursuing this. But they accept the results, and this acceptance builds character and resilience and helps drive improvement, so they’re ready to go for 2028 in LA. I find more and more of my work focusing on the acceptance of certain emotions and realities as a starting point to behavior change (Nod to the great Carl Rogers: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”). 

You’re not going to bat 1000 in baseball (and certainly not in life), but a 300 hitter is a Hall of Famer. Great marriages aren’t the ones that are perfect all of the time, but the ones that embrace and accept each other’s flaws. Ironically, when we accept those flaws, we actually start to improve because we’re not spending so much time and energy complaining about our spouse not doing the dishes.

So, I am not arguing that we don’t set high standards, have lofty goals, or try to become a handball Olympian in 2028. Go for it and work your ass off. But I am arguing that we practice acceptance of results and reality if we’re once again watching handball on TV, trying to understand the rules, in 2028.

In most of life, we will simply have to settle for “good enough.” That’s not a bad thing; it’s a natural reality of playing an infinite game most of the time and respecting the law of trade-offs.

Find Your Good Enough

My sister-in-law leans towards maximizing in her work. The girl GRINDS and is great at what she does, yet she doesn’t seem to experience the downsides of perfectionism because:

1. She treats it as an infinite game – she wants to be promoted and successful in her career, but “winning” isn’t the objective. She works hard, loves what she does, enjoys the people she works with, and seeks continuous growth. There’s not an endpoint she’s seeking where she can say, “Okay, now I’m happy.” It goes on forever.

 2. She abides by the law of tradeoffs – she gives up many things to spend more time and energy on work, but it’s a conscious choice, and she’s perfectly happy with that. In many other areas of her life, she’s content saying, “I’m good, thanks.”  

3. She accepts reality – she has very high standards for herself, and if she doesn’t hit a promotion or land the right role, sure, she’s bummed. But she’s able to reevaluate and make new decisions from a grounded, informed place.

The point is that you should have lofty goals and work hard towards those goals. Go ahead and be a maximizer in some instances. If you want to be an Olympian, awesome. If you want to maximize your parenting, that’s amazing. But we need to accept the reality of tradeoffs and our shortcomings. We need to understand that most of our goals in life are part of an infinite game. 

We all have to define what’s good enough in the areas of life we care about and understand that that’s good enough, or the goalposts keep moving, and we’re miserable forever.