 Today's video is on why good enough is good enough. Now this for me is kind of a personal one because I've spent a lot of time teaching people about their own wellbeing and self-care and I feel like the biggest fraud going because actually I get this stuff kind of more right these days but I look backwards and I used to get it so, so, so wrong. And part of this is about societal perception. So if I look back a little time and I think about time when I used to be very, very productive in my work. I was obsessed with my work and this was a time when my eating disorder was not in control as well and there were many things that weren't good. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, I worked relentlessly and do you know what? I got so much praise for those things. So when people would say, how do you get so much done? And I'd say, well, I don't sleep. My family never see me. I just work every hour of the day. I used to get up at four in the morning to work and people go, oh, good for you. No, not good. So I've worked towards a place where actually trying to be a bit happier and healthier and trying to reduce these unrelenting standards which is something my therapist and I worked very carefully on for a long, long time. So I wouldn't profess to be an expert but I certainly think that moving towards a place where perfection isn't the goal but where good enough is considered genuinely good enough is really important. And so I was thinking about, you know, what are my top tips for this? What are the things that I would hope to teach my children and other children? What are the things that I think that as adults we should be role-modelling? And as always, I've got three, three tips which I think are helpful here, things that we can try to embrace. So the first is about doing things, hobbies, activities, just for the sheer joy of doing them. Not because you're good at them. In fact, especially if you're not good at them. Just doing things because you like doing it. So, you know, if you're someone who has tried a musical instrument in the past or you've done a bit of drawing or whatever it might be, an activity that you did and you liked it, but you didn't keep doing it because you couldn't do it up to this level or you weren't especially amazing. You're not gonna be a world class at it or whatever. Pick that back up and just do it. Just do it for the fun. Give yourself the opportunity to relax into that, to enjoy it and to role-model trying new things. And it's really important role-modelling for the kids around us. When we do something just because it makes us feel happy and it makes us laugh and smile and connect with something on a deeper level, that's so powerful. And as adults in particular, we often really step away from those activities. And when we look at children, often they will do all these different things when they're younger. And then as they work through their kind of school career, then their hobbies and their focus really narrows down just to those things that they show real potential for. But why should you stop playing hockey just because you're not gonna make the team? Why can't you do it just for fun? Why can't you keep painting just because you enjoy painting? Why does it have to be that you're doing it to a certain level? So let's do things just for fun, not because we're good at them and especially if we're not good at them. My next tip is just around the general approach to day-to-day life and this is something I try to embrace myself. I try to encourage my children. And this is that done is better than perfect. This is something I think I picked up from Brené Brown or maybe you can correct me where I got that idea from, but done is better than perfect. So this is the idea that it's actually better to complete tasks to a kind of 80% standard than to try and get them to a point where you're absolutely happy with them because you never will be. And a great example of this for me is actually when I'm writing books. So I love to write, I'm the author of several books, I blim in hate editing. But if I'm forgiving of myself and I say, right, do you know what? I'm gonna get this to a point where it's okay, where it conveys what I want it to, where it makes people feel the way I want them to feel and it's doing a good enough job of that and I'm gonna forgive myself and walk away at that point. I do the same with my video editing. So my production value is they're not amazing but the content hopefully makes you think and inspires action. If I only published videos at the point at which I was completely 100% happy with them, there'd be no videos on my channel and then I wouldn't make a difference. So actually this is something we can all do in our day to day life. Are there things currently on your to-do list that you're not ticking off because you haven't quite met the standards that you've set for yourself? Could you just reduce those standards a little bit to get those things done? And out there and understand that good enough is good enough. My final kind of tip here is actually recognizing that mistakes and failures, those times when things go wrong, are the most amazing opportunities to learn and if we embrace our mistakes, if we embrace our failures as a moment that we can reflect on and laugh about and learn from, then actually we begin to see them in quite a different way. We won't always know the answers. We won't always get things right. And the thing I'm thinking about here is how we try and change our mindset around those moments into a positive one rather than them being times when we can beat ourselves up about. So allowing ourselves to be forgiving of when things don't go right but then also going, okay, what could I do differently next time? What can I learn from this experience? And maybe if appropriate, just really having a good laugh about it. Every now and then we'll get things majorly wrong and sometimes it's really funny and we can either go inwards and really beat ourselves up and wish we'd have done things differently and constantly rake over that, or we can just have a good laugh about it and consider what would I do differently in the future? The other thing there is that when we kind of learn out loud and we talk about what we're gaining from those experiences when things haven't gone so well, that's really fantastic role modeling for the kids around us. When we are open and vulnerable about the fact that sometimes we don't know the answers or sometimes we make mistakes or get things wrong and we role model how would I learn from that? What could I do differently? Who could I ask? What support is there to help me do this differently another time? How could I build on the skills that I have so that next time I'm better equipped? All of those kinds of questions and actions are fantastic role modeling to children. If instead we take that kind of more old fashioned approach of being the sage on the stage and the expert in everything and never showing any weakness then that basically shows our children that we've got to be perfect and it doesn't help them to understand how we learn and so we then aren't able to teach them and guide them through that process by role modeling it but only by teaching it and often when we do with rather than simply explain to then it's much more powerful. On that note, I was recently at a talk for parents and an idea was shared called Fail of the Day and the lady who was talking whose name completely escapes me and sorry for not crediting you. I'm not good at that. But the lady who shared her idea said that at the end of each day she would encourage parents to sit around with the family and actually talk about something that went wrong that day, a failure, a mistake, a learning moment and then exploring, you know, either laughing about it, just looking back and being really hearted about it or thinking what they do differently next time and having that fail of a day is a real learning moment and so instead of focusing on just what went well and what you're proud of today and that can be great too but also focusing in on what went wrong and what can I learn from that and how can I do things differently another time? So yeah, good enough is good enough. We're living in a society where perfection feels like it's the norm, where even though, you know, we teach all the time about not comparing our bloopers to everyone else's highlight reels on the social media and all those other places, we still do it, it's really built into us. Let's try instead to focus on keeping things real, keeping things honest, being vulnerable and learning out loud. You happy to give it a go with me? Please, please do. I hope it gave you some food for thought and remember those three tips. Do things just for the joy of doing them even and especially if you're rubbish at them. Done is better than perfect and embrace mistakes as learning opportunities and maybe think about having a fail of the day. Thanks for watching. I hope you found it helpful. Please subscribe. New videos every Tuesday and Friday. Comment with your ideas on this and let me know that you're coming on this journey too. See you next time. Bye.