How To Cope When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough
It’s not as complicated as it seems
The moment you find out you got 2nd or 3rd place. The day when your boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with you after you fought so hard to keep the relationship alive. The friendship that faded away even when you gave it your all. These are the times when we can struggle with a truth that is incredibly hard to swallow. Your best wasn’t good enough.
Try telling that to someone who has perfectionistic tendencies or rarely ever loses. It’s not going to feel like a slap in the face — it’s going to feel like a brick to the face! How on earth can someone give 100% of themselves and still not make it out on top? How can the person who is always #winning at life with their #relationshipgoals suddenly have a confused broken heart? What are we supposed to do when we’ve done all that we can and still don’t win? Let’s look at some options…
Sit With Your Feelings:
Do what? Feel? Feel like a failure? Can someone cue the Grinch’s scream right now? Yes, you need to feel and recognize how you feel. It doesn’t mean you have to feel like a failure, though, because if you truly did give it your best and try your hardest, that is a victory!
In order to cope in a healthy way with not being the best or not having enough to make it work, you need to acknowledge your limitations as a human. No one, I repeat — NO ONE, can always be good enough and that is okay. It may not feel okay to you, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not okay. Especially for people who strive for perfection, accepting the fact that we have fallen short of our expectations (or others) despite our best efforts, is important.
We need to come to a point of accepting where our best got us. Sometimes we end up #1 and sometimes we make it to 3rd, sometimes the relationship or friendship survives because of our persistence and sometimes it ends in heartbreak.
When we acknowledge a negative feeling we may feel the urge to do something that makes us feel better or takes away the negative feeling. This is where drugs, alcohol, eating, not eating, exercise, shopping, gambling, obsessive thinking, etc. have the potential to become a problem. It’s nice to distract ourselves in a way that we know works for us, but just because it works for us, does not mean it’s good for us. Anything within moderation and balance is fine, but taking it to an extreme is not healthy.
Realize What Was Not In Your Control:
Yes, you worked your hardest in the soccer game, or gymnastics competition, or baseball game, football game, or whatever you participated in and you lost to a competitor. You cannot control the fact that your competitor has been playing or practicing since they were 6 and you started when you were 10. Therefore, they have more experience under their belt. You cannot control the fact that your competitor convinced his/her parents to pay for private lessons, giving him/her an upper hand.
Yes, you were the greatest friend imaginable to him/her, you bought them thoughtful gifts on all of the holidays, always offered your shoulder or listening ear, and made them feel special. You cannot control the fact that they simply didn’t want to be friends with you as much you wanted to. You cannot control the fact that there is someone else who gets along with them better than you do.
As much as you give of yourself, you cannot control every factor in every situation. Inevitably, something will not be in your favor and there is nothing you can do about it. So, understand that it’s not always about you! It’s not your fault, it’s not your bad, it’s not that you aren’t good.
Now, I will follow up that statement with this, it’s not easy nor does it feel good to do this. Over time, however, it begins to become normal for you to recognize what is and is not within your means and you don’t have to work so hard to give yourself a break. Your first reaction may not be to beat yourself up, but rather take time to recognize the situation for what it really is.
When life hits us with the hard reality that we will never be enough for everyone and everything, we can easily spiral into harmful behaviors and ways of thinking. This can be avoided by looking at the situation from a healthy perspective. Again — I will not play this off as easy. It takes intentional effort, persistence, and patience with oneself. However, being able to accept when your best isn’t good enough, is incredibly freeing. I do not say this from a place of total victory — I am still in pursuit of acceptance. Yet, the small achievements I’ve had along the way are enough to keep me going until I find that freedom.
