I owe you all an apology.
One of my goals is to transform lives with this podcast. And I haven’t been doing you any favors with my effort these past few months.
Some of the most important lessons I’ve been learning during the whole COVID-19 lockdown aren’t coming across effectively in the episodes I’ve created that are dedicated to sharing them.
Specifically, the last two episodes haven’t quite hit their mark. How do I know? I know because when I went to craft the show notes, and the social media posts to promote the new episodes, I felt compelled to better explain the points I was trying to make.
I write better than I talk, and I communicate best when I write and review and revise. But in the throes of The Apocalypse that is 2020, I haven’t put in the time to do that.
And my efforts to share what are for me transformative insights have suffered because of it.
Zeb and I have started having evening date nights on our patio. For my birthday, I got myself an awesome patio umbrella with LED lights in it, and it creates the perfect backyard oasis to watch the sun go down, then sweater-up and chat over a few cocktails while the kids sleep inside. And this week, during one of the above-mentioned patio date nights, I piped up with something along the lines of “That was the point I was trying to make with that episode” and Zeb said, “Well, you need to go back and put a finer point on it.”
He went on to explain that because I CAN talk and communicate effectively fairly naturally, I sometimes don’t put in the extra work to communicate with excellence.
In his book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins writes:
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
While it is probably a little of an overstretch for me to even say that these last few episodes have been GOOD, I have let ADEQUATE become the enemy of great when it comes to the Work Hard, Mom Harder podcast.
I owe you better. I owe myself better. And when we know better, it’s our responsibility to do better.
Of course it has me thinking of areas where this concept of good becoming the enemy of great applies for me personally.
Growing up, I was naturally very good at the piano. I learned to play by ear, I was naturally able to sight read music, I was emotive and expressive and competitive. So I excelled at a young age. But when it came time to go to the next level – to embrace theory, and technique, and put in longer hours of practice to achieve mastery – I didn’t follow through. I was comfortable being good – and occasionally (with the right piece of music for example), I could win in a competition against better musicians. Being GOOD was the enemy of becoming GREAT.
With Anson doing his homeschool – his “good” subject is math, so I often leave him to his own devices when he is doing his math worksheets. When homeschool started, he would buzz through a worksheet in a couple of minutes, no questions, no backward numbers, no whining. “My good subject is math!” He would proclaim. But I didn’t support him, or challenge him, partly because I was saving my mental fortitude for the handwriting and reading exercises where he struggled more. So now, math has devolved for Anson. There are now math tantrums. Questions he used to confidently answer are met with doubt, and this really comical I DON’T KNOW face.
GOOD is the enemy of GREAT – and in this case, it isn’t entirely Anson’s fault.
On the flip side, the philosopher Voltaire once wrote that “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Learning to read has been a challenge for Anson as well. For whatever reason, sounding out words makes him super frustrated. He can MEMORIZE the entire “Dragons Love Tacos” book and “reads” it to people, no problem. But ask him to sound out a simple three letter word, and the gloves are off.
This morning that led to a pretty epic cry session in his bedroom, punctuated with cries of “I CAN’T READ! I’ll NEVER learn to read!”
In an effort to calm him down, I responded, “Oh Anson, you CAN learn to read. Just look! What does that word say?” I pointed to his name on a big sign in his room.
“ANSON. But I only know that because YOU TAUGHT IT TO ME!”
When he gets super frustrated, Anson clings to the impression that if you don’t inherently know something, you’ll never know it. The desire to be good from the start keeps Anson from even starting.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
The Work Hard Mom Harder podcast wouldn’t exist if I had waited around to be perfect at podcasting. Or even, quite frankly good.
I would never have started my business, Erica Walter Writes, if I felt like I needed to have it all figured out and a perfect business plan and locked in product offerings, before I could even begin.
We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Do not let unrealistic expectations of perfection, either your own, or the expectations of others, stop you from starting something important to you.
But on the flip side, and the challenge I’m accepting as I record this and that I encourage you to accept as well: once you’ve started – don’t stop pushing. Don’t let good be the enemy of great. Don’t stop at good – because you deserve to live into your greatness.
In episode 36 I shared the lesson that “Your Best just keeps getting better.” Showing up every day and doing the work will help you improve. It will get you results. It will get you to good, which might just unlock the motivation you need to get to your best. That was the finer point that my husband challenged me to make the other night as we drank gin & tonics under the LED lights of my new red patio umbrella.
Getting to good is GOOD, but only you can decide if you’re going to let that be good enough.
This podcast was created to help working parents live their BEST life, on and off the clock.
Not an adequate life. Not a good life. The BEST LIFE. Your best life is going to look different than mine is, and I won’t tell you what your Best Life should look like. Only YOU know that. Only I know what my best life looks like, and guess what? I’m not there yet.
My best keeps getting BETTER and that means every time I reach a new level, there’s a higher one to be attained.
Where are you settling for good enough? Where would some motivation to push get you a transformation? Is it a relationship? A project? Is it in your wellness, in your home? Today I extend the challenge: go for the transformation. Don’t let good be the enemy of great.
Go for your BEST life.