I was talking to a friend who was exhausted by her teaching. She was staying up late at night grading papers, spending 30 minutes on each one. She knew it was unsustainable, but she couldn’t see a way out of it. She told me she really valued being an excellent teacher.

“What about sometimes being a good enough teacher?” I suggested.

My friend shuttered (literally!).

She wanted to be a great teacher and for her, great teaching meant significant time with each student’s paper.

Of course I understood. I have high standards for myself too. I want to be a great teacher, a great parent, a great wife, a great friend, a great coach, a great podcaster . . . . and on and on.

Here’s the thing, though: The road to burnout is paved with greatness. The pressure to be great in all things, or even most things, all the time, is unsustainable.

It’s much more sustainable to sometimes be a good enough teacher, a good enough parent, a good enough partner

but for most of us (especially us perfectionists) that feels awful.

The problem is, we have “good enough” all wrong.

Good enough is the antidote to burnout, but we often do it wrong.

Good enough feels terrible when we see it as failure, when we say “good enough,” but really mean terrible. At these times, we see good enough as a consolation prize. “It’s good enough because I can’t do better.”

Good enough is empowering when we see it as our minimum baseline - and only we can decide what “good enough” is for us.

Good enough is a way of saying, I’d often like to do more, but this is my minimum. Your minimum may or may not be minimal.

For me, being a good enough parent means my kids know they’re loved - even if I forgot to order that notebook I said I would get.

Being a good enough teacher means my students know I want them to succeed - even when I’m slow on returning papers.

My minimum baseline as a podcaster is that I record a podcast every week – that’s it. At this point in my podcasting journey, that’s good enough – even if it’s short, even if I don’t love it.

Our “good enough” minimum baseline changes over time.

That’s the thing about “good enough.” It’s not failure — it’s knowing that even when things are difficult, you can still define your own standards. There are lines I would never cross as a parent, teacher, coach, spouse – because of who I am.

“Good enough” is actually great. It lets me know that I don’t have to be perfect in order to be me. Good enough defines my values and commitments. For me, “good enough” often involves presence. Showing up imperfectly.

Good enough is not the voice of failure. It’s the voice of compassion.

This week, decide your minimum baseline. Maybe you've been calling your parent every day and talking for 20 minutes. Maybe your “good enough” is calling every day for two minutes, just to check in. Maybe your “good enough” is to call every other day and to text on the other days. Many days you’ll do more than your minimum baseline, but knowing your minimum baseline will let you say, with confidence, for today, this is definitely good enough.❤️

Do you have a minimum baseline for daily fun? If you don't, you might want one! We often think of "fun" as something exceptional -- a party, a vacation, an event -- and those things can be wonderful, but we can also have more fun in our daily lives -- regardless of what's going on. That's the topic of this week's podcast.

Episode #113: Have More Fun!

How often do you have fun? Adult life can be long on responsibility and short on fun, can't it? If you want to have more fun, this is the episode for you! In this episode:

✅ Why it's not always easy to find fun and why sometimes we don't even know what fun means anymore

✅ The importance of choosing fun with our bodies and not just our heads

✅ Why we often treat fun as something exceptional rather than every day and how to change that

✅ How to have fun deepening your relationship with fun

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Love, Rachel

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P.S. Someone wrote to say, "I want to do your group coaching, but I start school in September and worry that I won't keep up." I so relate! In the coaching membership that changed my life, I always thought I wasn't using it enough. The magic of coaching is that it works in between sessions, because you're rewiring how you think. You learn a new way of thinking about things and it changes how you respond to things in your daily life. Every week you reinforce the new patterns. Doing it in a group means you get to learn from other people's experiences and to be supported in community.

You'll get a replay of every week's session if you can't attend live, and a private Facebook group for support between live calls. We start August 20, over Zoom. For more information or to sign up, go to coachingwithrachel.com/yearofyou.

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