Good Enough Seldom Is

With clarity and conviction in her voice I could tell she was a woman who knew what she wanted. 

“Margherita pizza, cooked well done, extra basil.” 

Yet when the pizza arrived, it wasn’t done exactly the way she wanted it done. After some initial griping to the other guests at the table about what was served to her, she quietly consumed her undercooked, slightly basil’d pizza, accepting less than what she wanted with every bite.

Why is it that we are so willing to accept less than what we know we want for ourselves?

Sometimes we settle because habitually we’ve always settled. We’ve been conditioned to settle because it’s always been easier and safer to accept less instead of fighting for what we know we want and deserve. Sometimes we don’t ask for what we want for fear of losing what we already have in front of us, even if what we have in front of us is less than what we know we deserve to have.

I’m not talking about pizza.

I’ve done my fair share of settling. And on some level I always knew when I was. Denial or distraction could never hide the truth, no matter how good I was at denial or distraction. 

While I did have the clarity as to what I knew what I wanted for me, the lack of conviction of my worthiness to receive it made settling for less a viable option. An easy option. A comfortably familiar option. 

Was I really unworthy? Or was I simply willing to believe that I was?

I had the ability to accept either as being true.

Unworthiness is a learned behavior, often reinforced by life experiences perpetuating the narrative. But any learned behavior can be unlearned, no matter how deeply engrained that belief may be.

Understanding and accepting this premise allowed me to begin to doubt the presence of some cosmically ordained inherent unworthiness I believed I was carrying around with me. That doubt, however small, was a crack in the wall between where I was in life and where I wanted to be. 

Doubt is transformational in disempowering the grip of any undesirable learned behavior, including the grip of unworthiness.

I am free to settle if I want to. But now if I do it’s a choice. It’s no longer a habitual response to willingly and fearfully accept a life of less than I know I was created to live.

Just because someone puts an undercooked pizza in front of you doesn’t mean you have to eat it.

Because “good enough” seldom is.

Photo by Julia Caesar on Unsplash