Good Enough

If you are like me, you have spent a certain amount of your life waiting. Perhaps you were waiting for that first published story, or that first publishing contract, or that first award. Or maybe you have been waiting for your first true love, or first great job, or simply your first big break. The waiting can take so many forms. There’s your life as you live it every day, and then there’s the life you can see all around you – the published books, the people in love, the cool jobs. If you are like me you have always been able to feel the difference between what you are living, and what you believe you could be living. I lived this way for so long I grew accustomed to a nameless anticipation and dissatisfaction. If you had asked me, I would have said it had something to do with publishing a book, but it went beyond that. It permeated my entire life. I woke up with it and I went to bed with it. It followed me to work and joined me in all my conversations. On most days, I felt like a prisoner who had grown accustomed to prison, who would make the best of it, but who dreamed still of life beyond the walls.

The question I never seriously asked myself during that time was, “What do I think will be different when I stop waiting?” Had I asked it honestly, I believe my answer would have been everyone’s answer: “I’ll know I’m good enough.” Somehow the publishing contract, or the lover, or the job will answer that insidious question. Unless, of course, we decide the publishing contract isn’t enough; it needs to be a three-book deal, or it needs to be a six-figure deal. Enough can keep changing.

I would like to report that I was able to answer that question definitively for myself once and for all, but I have learned I must answer it every day. When I remember that I am already good enough, something does indeed change. I see opportunity I did not perceive before. When I was waiting for the answer, I believed that only someone who knows he’s good enough could go down certain roads. On the days I answer that question for myself, the only question is which roads I wish to travel, just as I ask myself which stories I wish to tell.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.