Last time, we explored the Myth of Competence—this feeling we have that most everyone around us is capable and competent and, often, that we are not.  This Imposter Syndrome (yes, I’m spelling it with the more common “e” this time; both are correct) can be paralyzing.  If you feel that you are really just faking it and that you’ll be found out as a fraud at any moment, then every decision you make becomes critical and every action you take must be perfect.  That kind of thinking is an absolute recipe for disaster.

I’ve talked before about decision making.  Particularly when you are young, it seems like every decision you make will determine your long-term success or failure, and your happiness or misery in life.  Many parents don’t help this by obsessing over their child’s decisions even more than the kid!  They may want to shield their child from the pain of making what looks to be a mistake or they may be trying to assuage their own regrets, but the kid picks up on the emotions of the parent and gets even more stressed!  I’m glad I was raised during the more hand’s off 1960’s and ‘70s. It’s not that my parents didn’t worry or stress about my decisions; they just kept that worry to themselves.

Let’s talk about a Really Big Decision—choosing your college or university.  And it’s not just THIS decision. There are parents that fret about getting their toddlers into the “right” preschool because that starts a cascade of choices and opportunities that they believe will define their kid’s life.  Good lord!  In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the concept of “threshold” or “good enough” with respect to choosing a college.  There is so much pressure on getting into the best schools!  True, there are certain advantages to Ivy League educations.  The biggest one, and the one most unique to those environments, is the network of people you develop, first met as fellow students and professors.  “Who you know” is important throughout your career and life and the tight networks at the Ivy’s can make a big difference.  But it’s a differentiator, not a requirement for success.  You just need to go to a school that is Good Enough—over a threshold in educational quality that will get you the grounding you need to be successful.  The rest is up to you and your hard work.  In fact, an Ivy League school may be all wrong from a culture perspective for you and you might shrivel!  A different school might provide the right environment for you to thrive.  It just needs to be Good Enough.

That phrase, “Good Enough,” has a bad connotation associated with it, though, and one that needs to be minimalized.  Good Enough is often interpreted as “barely acceptable”.  That’s why I like the concept of “Threshold” better.  If there are 10 schools that meet your qualifications, then they all pass your threshold and are all acceptable.  Each may have its own advantages and disadvantages compared to each other, but they all meet your requirements.  Remember:  the decision you make on which college to attend (above that threshold) is way less important that what you do once you’ve made the decision.  As long as you work hard and apply yourself, you stand a good chance of success after attending any of those schools.  It makes more sense to spend the time really defining your requirements, not on picking The One.  This thought process holds for jobs, for what city you live in, for volunteer activities—almost any “multiple choice” decision.  At the risk of wading into a hornet’s nest, this same philosophy holds with relationships.  There are many, many people out there that any one of us could spend our lives with, happily.  There is no single ONE.  You just need to find one of those people who share your threshold requirements and who is ready to commit and work on the relationship at the same time as you are.  Took me 50 years to figure THAT one out.

So, let’s talk a bit about success and happiness and decisions and regrets.  I believe that I have previously established that I’m a “no regrets” kind of girl.  It’s not that I think I’ve never made a bad decision.  I’ve got a long list of decisions I’ve made that have led to pain and suffering.  It’s just that I have no real regrets—nothing I would necessarily do differently, given the chance.  Why?  Because I needed all those experiences to become the person that I am today, and I kind of like that person.  But also, because I know that if I’d made a different decision, there is no guarantee that the outcome would have been preferable to what actually happened.  We are reading a book right now in our Family Book Club called Midnight Library that explores this premise.  While it takes a more negative approach of “other choices could have been just as bad”, I prefer the more positive approach of “you can still make the outcome of your choices into a good thing.”  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  There is no one pathway to success and happiness.  There are decisions you make and actions that you choose to take based on those decisions.  You can take actions to improve your situation or not.  Those actions are not always easy for you to stomach (meaning you need courage) or easy for you to accomplish (you will need help and time), but there are always actions you can take.  Similarly, you CHOOSE whether to be happy or miserable.  Again, not always easy to choose to be happy, but it’s a choice.  Or, you can choose to be miserable and to play the victim and blame the world or others for your situation—and we all know how I feel about THAT.  There are certainly true victims out there and they deserve our outreach and support.  I’m talking above about those people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives.

Phew!  That was a bit of a rant!  Let me pull this back a bit.  Imposter Syndrome is real and it’s very common.  Like I said last time, it can be humbling and motivating or it can be paralyzing.  I know it is a safe bet to say that most of you reading this who might feel a bit of Imposter Syndrome are not imposters at all.  You are also not perfect.  You will miss deadlines.  You will produce an output that is not your best work.  You will let people and yourself down.  Your goal is, first, to own your mistakes even if no one else sees them and, most importantly, to learn from them and try to do better next time.  This is a never-ending journey.  We’ll all be trying to get better every day of our lives (except for those hopefully short periods of time when we go on vacation from self-betterment and wallow in laziness and crankiness for a bit).  Give yourself a break.  Give others a break.  It’s ok to have high expectations but not to expect perfection.  We are all “above threshold”.  We are all Good Enough.