WTF Is Settling is Bullsh*t?

Hello, dear reader. Welcome to Settling Is Bullshit – a blog of sweary life advice for humans trying to get better at adulting.

Ideally, this would have been my first post – a lovely little introduction explaining what I’m all about. Alas, I had other shit on my mind. And I’m a big believer in doing things well over trying to do them perfectly. But more on that below…

I want to start by talking about the title of this blog. Does it seem a bit aggressive to you? Are you perhaps thinking, “don’t we all have to settle sometimes?” It’s pretty unrealistic to outright reject the concept of settling, right?

Nope. Fuck settling. It’s bullshit, and I refuse to participate in the lie that any of us deserve less. That is a hill I will metaphorically die on.

HOWEVER. As we proceed with this introduction, I also need to point out that I deeply and firmly believe in the power of “good enough.” If you want to get anywhere with your progress and growth and healing and forward momentum, you have to get to a place of deciding that whatever it is, it’s fucking good enough.

How can both of these things be true? How can I say, “never settle!” in the same breath that I tell you that you have to find your good enough?

Because they aren’t the same thing.

Settling is Bullshit

First, some definitions.

Bullshit: “to talk nonsense to, especially with the intention of deceiving or misleading” – and in the context here, we’re talking about deceiving oneself or others into believing in the lie of settling.

Settle has a lot of definitions, but on this blog, we’re essentially using this one: “to move to a lower level and stay there; to drop.”

Settling is making concessions to your innermost desires. It’s saying, “I don’t think I can do/get/be better than this, so I guess I’ll just stay here.”

Settling is accepting less than you deserve, less than the universe has in store for you.

Settling is sinking instead of continuing to swim even though you can’t yet see the shoreline. 

Settling is giving up (on yourself). 

Settling, my friends, is bullshit.

You deserve better. You deserve more. You deserve the love and success and maturity and healthy ways of being that your higher self is striving for.

And good enough is what will get you there.

The Difference Between Settling and Good Enough

Y’all, things have to be good enough. All the things. You have to find the place or point where whatever it is qualifies as good enough or else you’ll never move forward with your life/project/relationship/anything. 

Good enough is the stepping stone to better. It’s a pause or a junction or an opportunity to build momentum toward the next thing. Settling is sinking; good enough is rising to greater heights.

Good enough is also the antidote to perfectionism. Nothing – and I do mean nothing – in this world will ever be perfect. People won’t be perfect. Artistic creations won’t be perfect. Your job, your relationships, your home, your pets, your lawn, your butt… none of it will ever be perfect. And if you spend your time/life/energy chasing that impossible goal, you’re going to stay stuck in some level of dissatisfaction for the rest of your life. Which sounds pretty shitty to me.

Good enough means accepting imperfection. It means setting aside the inner critic and the perfectionist and the entire idea of “not good enough” that plagues so many of us and keeps us from even starting. 

Good enough recognizes that this – whatever this is – is a step toward better/best. It’s a vital step toward instead of just stopping. 

Settling is stopping before your heart feels content with what is. Settling is telling yourself you can’t do better, so you may as well just accept whatever you can get. 

Good enough is looking at what’s in front of you, what you made, what you worked on, the connections you’ve built, and saying, “yeah! This feels good to me. I can be proud of this or enjoy this fully, even if it’s not exactly what I thought/wanted/hoped.”

You have to find your good enough for everything, especially yourself.

We Are All Good Enough

Now, when it comes to stuff – a painting, a meal, a house, a work project – it’s easier to see that it’s up to us to decide what counts as good enough. That’s true for these blog posts I’m writing. If I didn’t hit a point where I could let go and say, “yeah, that’s good enough,” I wouldn’t ever post anything. I’d still be working on the post about getting started. Or, the one about wants vs. needs that I didn’t manage to write a conclusion for and posted anyway. 

So, I have to hit the point of good enough if I want to keep going. And I’m the only one who can decide what counts as good enough – whether it’s a blog post or my damn self.

And if it’s hard to find our good enough with stuff, it can feel impossible to find it when we’re looking at ourselves. It can be so fucking hard for us to give ourselves permission to believe that we’re good enough. Because the “not good enough” shit runs deep. It’s pretty much been the go-to story any time anything hasn’t gone as I’d hoped or (even more often) when I simply started worrying that something in my life wasn’t going to go my way. The underlying demon behind almost all of my fears is/was not good enough.

And that’s bullshit. Because all of us are already good enough. You are good enough. I promise. You’re good enough! I will even break out the all caps and yell this at you: YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH!! 

How do I know this? Because we’re all good enough. We’re good enough to deserve love, to deserve happiness, to deserve to be treated well. We’re good enough to have friends, to care about others and be cared for, to show up for ourselves by doing the stupid, annoying adult shit that we don’t want to do (fuckinging dental floss. Ugh).

And that’s why settling is bullshit. Settling is buying into the lie that you aren’t good enough for the things you truly want. It’s giving up on yourself. And I know in my soul that you deserve better than that.

You Can Do It!

That’s why I’m here writing this shit. We all need cheerleaders. We need people to believe in us. 

Maybe you (like me) have done a decade+ of therapy, and/or 12-step recovery, and/or read a billion and a half books about boundaries and trauma and neuroscience to figure out how to be better at human-ing. Or maybe you just watched every episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and learned how to be a better friend/person in the world! And maybe, as a result of all that work you’ve invested in yourself, you’ve entered the realm of sparkly humans who do manage to love ourselves, choose ourselves, believe in ourselves – most of the time. If so, rad! Glad you made it, and welcome to the club. It’s really fucking hard to make it here.

And if not, if you still struggle with self worth, with boundaries, with trauma, with codependency, with people pleasing, with perfectionism, with anxiety, with all the ways that relating to people can feel fucking impossible sometimes – you’re not alone in that, either. That shit is so hard. And loving yourself, putting yourself first, takes a lot of effort even when you’ve finally got your feet solidly under you in that arena.

No matter how solid the foundation of self-love feels at times, it’s never fully 100%. ‘Cause unless we had perfect shiny childhoods with loving, emotionally available caregivers and a deep sense of safety in the world – we’re building a new foundation on top of a shitty old one. No amount of work and healing and processing will undo our past. All we can do is clear and level enough of the rubble to build something better on top.

In my case, that rubble looks like the childhood trauma and subsequent addiction that are always gonna be there in the background. I’ve done a TON of work around all of it. I’ve come incredibly far. And 9 days out of 10, I’d say I’m rockin’ it in my life – even on the bad days when I’m bursting into tears at random and have to give up on getting any work done (because thanks, CPTSD). 

But mostly, I get to live in the space of believing in my own worth and value and light. And even with all the work I’ve done, the best I can manage, I think, is like 93.6% capacity for living on team “I genuinely love myself.” And let me tell ya, I really need other people in my life to manage the gap when the shitty voices start to get loud.

So, I want to be a voice that believes in you. That helps you find your footing again on the obstacle course of life. I want to share vulnerability, and talk about hard shit, and share the lessons and resources I’ve stumbled across over the many years I’ve been plugging away at showing up in the world with more kindness and compassion and authenticity, and hopefully I’ll make you laugh now and then along the way. 

Because you deserve that. Life is much too fucking hard not to be able to laugh about it. And everyone deserves a cheerleader. 

So if nobody else told you this today, you’re doing great. You got this! Just don’t give up.