Living a good enough life: being more comfortable with achievements

[shootingstar]

Would you agree, not always exhorting yourself to be the best, etc.etc. in life?

Here is a different take on life and life's achievements:

The solution is not about lowering standards, he says. It’s about adjusting the way we think. “High standards are very different from wanting or expecting the best all the time,” he says.

And the same is true for how we should think about our personal accomplishments. “Having very high standards of achievement – working hard, persevering, not being satisfied with what is merely acceptable – no doubt spurs people to achieve things that they would otherwise not achieve,” Prof. Schwartz says. “But there’s a crucial difference between shooting for perfection, realizing you can’t achieve it and yet still being satisfied with your accomplishments and shooting for perfection, thinking you can and should achieve it and thereby living a life of misery and perpetual disappointment.”

I can't see that type of laid back approach could be for everything in one's life -but for me, it's only pushing the best of myself only for certain areas of my life.

The rest I just let others do their thing.
I just go bike and go home.

[Reesha]

That's a great point. One thing that I've always been good at is gauging my happiness to stress ratio. I hold myself to high standards but only so far as working toward these standards will bring me happiness. Once I feel stress, or misery, I start to reflect on how best to change things to bring my life back into balance.

[Brandi]

I have learned that things only have to perfect for me really. And what I see as not perfect some people do. I agree Reesha about the stress part. If I start feeling to much stress I back off.
I had a dad that made me once (or twice) scrub a walkway and a wall and said I had to get it clean enough to eat off of. Actually everything he had me do had to be perfect. even though I never came close and always disappointed him. But lucky for me as an adult and finally figuring it out. He was wrong and I am perfect in my own perfect way! Which is not perfect but I am way happy with that!
Does that make since?

[Tri Girl]

I get this!
At my age (late 30's) many of my friends/peers are still trying to climb the ladder in their careers. I'm trying to figure out how to climb back down the ladder and do as little work as possible yet still make money.

I do my very best at work and try to turn out the best work I can. I also watch the stress-o-meter. If things aren't fun and are causing too much stress- I don't do it anymore (well, not work because I love my job- but in other areas of life).

Life is too short. I always think about my father who worked SO hard his whole life, then died at 54, right before retirement. All that stress and hard work and he didn't get to enjoy life at a slower pace.
I want to enjoy life as much as possible, while still saving for retirement, still working at paying off the house, but still playing and doing the things I love as much as I possibly can. We only get one shot at this, and I'm OK with being on my deathbed and not having won Teacher of the Year, or having 3 degrees or being a CEO. I'm good with having taught thousands of kids and trying to have been a chippy, pleasant, kind-hearted person.

[Reesha]

I threw my friend's quote into my signature, but she just gave a great TED talk at TEDxTraverseCity on a very similar topic. T and I worked at boarding school together from 2006-2008 and we worked HARD. We always found time to sneak off together to blow off some stress by doing yoga, or spinning, or walking. We both loved the job, but it was a bit too high-stress and really took a lot of energy out of us. That spring, she tiptoed around the idea of buying a sailboat, moving onto it and simplifying her life down to raw essentials. Compared to my lifestyle, hers is incredibly simple, while I understand that others take it even further than she does. Still, she went all in on her boat and her new lifestyle and it has really worked out for her. Because of her blog, she was invited to give her TED talk. I think some women here would really enjoy it! Check it out:

http://tedxtraversecity.com/videos

Hers is "My American Dream" by Teresa Carey

[Blueberry]

I threw my friend's quote into my signature, but she just gave a great TED talk at TEDxTraverseCity on a very similar topic. T and I worked at boarding school together from 2006-2008 and we worked HARD. We always found time to sneak off together to blow off some stress by doing yoga, or spinning, or walking. We both loved the job, but it was a bit too high-stress and really took a lot of energy out of us. That spring, she tiptoed around the idea of buying a sailboat, moving onto it and simplifying her life down to raw essentials. Compared to my lifestyle, hers is incredibly simple, while I understand that others take it even further than she does. Still, she went all in on her boat and her new lifestyle and it has really worked out for her. Because of her blog, she was invited to give her TED talk. I think some women here would really enjoy it! Check it out:

http://tedxtraversecity.com/videos

Hers is "My American Dream" by Teresa Carey

Too funny! Her blog is one that I read that motivated me through some very dark days at a former employer. I'm still in the "figuring out what's next" stage - but I'm thankfully not in that place anymore Just in case she wondered if anyone read her writing or cared, I did

[shootingstar]

Life is too short. I always think about my father who worked SO hard his whole life, then died at 54, right before retirement. All that stress and hard work and he didn't get to enjoy life at a slower pace.
I want to enjoy life as much as possible, while still saving for retirement, still working at paying off the house, but still playing and doing the things I love as much as I possibly can. We only get one shot at this, and I'm OK with being on my deathbed and not having won Teacher of the Year, or having 3 degrees or being a CEO. I'm good with having taught thousands of kids and trying to have been a chippy, pleasant, kind-hearted person.

+1 TriGirl!

[solobiker]

I get this!
At my age (late 30's) many of my friends/peers are still trying to climb the ladder in their careers. I'm trying to figure out how to climb back down the ladder and do as little work as possible yet still make money.

I do my very best at work and try to turn out the best work I can. I also watch the stress-o-meter. If things aren't fun and are causing too much stress- I don't do it anymore (well, not work because I love my job- but in other areas of life).

Life is too short. I always think about my father who worked SO hard his whole life, then died at 54, right before retirement. All that stress and hard work and he didn't get to enjoy life at a slower pace.
I want to enjoy life as much as possible, while still saving for retirement, still working at paying off the house, but still playing and doing the things I love as much as I possibly can. We only get one shot at this, and I'm OK with being on my deathbed and not having won Teacher of the Year, or having 3 degrees or being a CEO. I'm good with having taught thousands of kids and trying to have been a chippy, pleasant, kind-hearted person.

+1 I agree. I'm in my early 40s took an upper management position thinking it was the thing to do to advance my career. Talk about total stress and misery. I lasted in that position for about 1.5 years then decided to step down. Could not be happier...once my day is done at work it is done....no more fielding calls at night or on weekends. In my field I have seen a lot of people work their lives away only to end up in a nursing home in the end.

I now live life to what I feel is the fullest for me and I can laugh at myself. Like you Trigirl...except with older people I am happy with knowing I have helped well over couple hundred people rehab back to home after surgery, strokes, pneumonia...etc. Have a great day/night everyone

[roadie gal]

I used to think that I had to excel at everything. Instead of just being a good doc I had to be an administrator as well. I tried being in charge of EMS in the city I was working in. I failed at that. I just wasn't interested in putting in the time, and I hated it. I still wince when I think about it. Then I tried working at a teaching hospital. But my heart wasn't in that either. I have finally come to understand that I need to play to my strengths. I'm a good "pit doc", and I enjoy it. So that's enough.

It's taken me a long time to realize that appearance (as in being important or in charge) is less important than substance (being good at what I do and being happy about it). I'm a much calmer and more content person for knowing that.

Now I'm looking toward what, if anything, I want to do when I retire, which will hopefully be in the next 3-5 years. I may just allow myself to do nothing.

[grey]

I get this!
At my age (late 30's) many of my friends/peers are still trying to climb the ladder in their careers. I'm trying to figure out how to climb back down the ladder and do as little work as possible yet still make money.

I do my very best at work and try to turn out the best work I can. I also watch the stress-o-meter. If things aren't fun and are causing too much stress- I don't do it anymore (well, not work because I love my job- but in other areas of life).

Life is too short. I always think about my father who worked SO hard his whole life, then died at 54, right before retirement. All that stress and hard work and he didn't get to enjoy life at a slower pace.
I want to enjoy life as much as possible, while still saving for retirement, still working at paying off the house, but still playing and doing the things I love as much as I possibly can. We only get one shot at this, and I'm OK with being on my deathbed and not having won Teacher of the Year, or having 3 degrees or being a CEO. I'm good with having taught thousands of kids and trying to have been a chippy, pleasant, kind-hearted person.

+1
I'm 34. I've not made much money since I left employment to go the self-employment route 8 years ago (marketing and graphic design, publications). However, my life is better. It's not so stressful. I've made money at times to allow my husband to cross into self-employment as well (he spent 8 years as a special ed teacher, oy! Now he's a home remodeler), and he's doing quite well. It has bothered me that I don't make half the income for our household, but I came to realize that what I do, and continue to do, is very important.
If I had remained employed, we would not have had time to buy a couple of rentals. One of those houses we wouldn't have found if I had not been watching the listings every day, and beaten everyone else to the deal. If I were employed, I wouldn't have known the lady selling the other rental, and again, gotten a deal. If I were employed, I wouldn't have seen a way out of debt for us. And now, as we're trying to get closer to our dream of being off the grid, of opening up a small cottage-style vacation spot, I've had the time to be able to work part time for B&B's, garden centers, organic restaurants, etc that gains me experience in all the things we want to offer at our little getaway. I garden organically, because I want a HUGE organic garden in that little vacation spot. I want, instead of making big breakfasts, to be serving HUGE Mediterranean-style dinners where the wine and conversation flow. So I keep working at recipes, making my own up, perfecting classics, and getting better and faster at large meals.
We are not wealthy. We've never made more than 45k in a year. But we've made it work, we're building up our savings, I'm home enough that I can make sure we eat really well & handle details and life's little crisis'. We both work HARD, just because I don't make much in dollars doesn't mean I don't contribute, and some days I have to remind myself of WHY a full time job for me wouldn't work for us, even if the money might be nice. I've tried to go back twice, and the results were just terrible: misery, work-induced poor eating habits, high stress, a messy house, never seeing the hubs and a dog that just couldn't handle me being away. I am where I should be.

[smilingcat]

Just my 2 cents.

For those who are mega rich, their seems to be Midas complex at work. A hoarding behavior but unlike regular hoarders who hoard everything, newspaper, magazines, trash, animals, instead they hoard money.

These hoarders seems very much a high functioning both socially and economically (they got $$). And no matter how much they have, they are missing something in their lives and make it up in $$. More money you have, you can almost buy your way out of misery or sadness. But it doesn't quite do it. So they keep on accumulating more $$.

Bigger house,
bigger plane or Learjet,
faster and more expensive car...
Hermes, Tiffany's...

Sad part is I've seen too many executives whose family life is in shambles. divorced 3, 4 even 5 times. Very common. Their kids or wives in drug rehab or in/out of jail. Very common. Something is missing. Absentee spouse does not lend to a happy functional family.

Living a good life is not about having $$$ its about quality of life and putting what is important to you first.

I've been forced into an early retirement. Did take a short term stint as an engineering manager but gave it up after only 5 month. Gave my job to someone who really needed a job and had been out of work for 2+ years. His wife was so grateful. I'm truly happy to get them out of a funk. It means a lot to me. Employer was very happy with my replacement, husband is happy so is his family and me too.

I don't regret giving up the job. It was a permanent position but it just was not for me.

The early retirement is allowing me to pursue things that's really important to me, environment.

solar cells for electricity
solar power to heat and cool your house. It's lot cheaper than solar cell/electricity.
CO2 sequestering technology and no you don't need to liquify CO2 and pump into old well.
and on and on...

I've been at it for a while and will continue to do so. Some are low tech solution and can be done without $$.

I'm happy that I've given up the high tech career. 30years is too long.
I am doing things which means a lot to me personally. This, is a very good life. I don't think we should say "good enough life" we should say, "life you dreamed of"

wish everyone well. I wish everyone to find their nirvana.

[ridebikeme]

What a great thread! I've enjoyed reading everyones posts, and for many of you actually feel the compassion that you have for your lives, family and career choice(s).

I have always had jobs that I truly enjoyed...that was actually a promise that I made myself as I graduated with my BS many years ago.For some reason, it just didn't make sense to go to a job where one made a lot of money, and on the other hand, hated every minute of it. With that promise, I've also put myself in a situation where the pay scale is very low, and it's very likely that I will not ever be able to retire.

In the early 90's, I started work in the bike industry and truly loved it! I took as many classes as I could, worked for a great shop with lots of guidance both on the mechanical side of things but also in the training area as well. Needless to say, I found what I am truly passionate about. Since then, I've continued to gain experience, managed a small shop and finally bought that same shop. So 19 years later, I'm truly enjoying going to work every day. That isn't to say that life is all roses, the economy has definitely taken its toll and many have moved out of this area. And it also means that I took all of my savings to purchase the shop.

The area that I live in is an outdoor paradise! I also realize that with that luxury, it also means that it's difficult to earn a living regardless of what your career choice might be. And although I knew all of this, I still decided to make the decision to buy the shop. I knew that I could live simple and enjoy the great outdoors. How much better can life be when you can walk out your front door at anytime of the year and ride either on the road or off, backpack, ski, snowshoe, kayak etc... you get the picture. And one of the best features is as I go to bed each night, I can hear the river and the sound puts me to sleep.