Good, Better, Perfect

As a life-long perfectionist, anything less than 100 percent never felt good enough.

Tutorials on perfection came early in my life.

One afternoon when I was in fifth grade, I jumped off the school bus and skipped up our dirt lane to the house. The rusty screen door slammed behind me as I plunked my textbooks on the coffee table. I was eager to show my mother my history test. 97, A+.

“Mom?” I called.

“In here.” Her voice rang from the kitchen. Tiptoeing in, I placed my paper on the plywood kitchen table.

Mom looked up, her face flushed with sweat. She smiled and wiped her calloused hands on her well-worn homemade apron. Filling a cup of steaming coffee, she sat at the table, sinking into the seat cushions. She was a petite, bleach blonde, dynamo with the energy of a Jack Russell terrier and the tenacity of a pit bull.

“Got my history paper back today,” I faking a frown. Pretending to be sad, I hoped she thought I had done poorly. She’d be so surprised at seeing a great grade!

“Hmm,” she muttered as she carefully inspected each page like it was an employment contract. “Did anyone get a 100?” She looked up at me, one thin eyebrow, darkened with pencil, raised slightly.

“Well, yes, there was one person who did,” I said. Something in her tone suggested I should shift gears. Smiling quickly, I replied, “But, I got the second highest grade!”

She paused. Her chipped fingernails tapped expectantly, one finger at a time. My throat felt coated with dust and I swallowed hard. Maybe this was the time to slip out for a bathroom break.

“Why didn’t you get a 100?” she asked quietly, pushing the test back to me over the plastic-topped tablecloth. Sipping her coffee, she peered over the butterfly-rimmed mug.

The table seemed to tilt.

“This is pretty good,” she continued, baby blue eyes boring into mine with laser-like intensity, “but I think you can do better.”

As my heart sank, a seed was planted that I wasn’t quite good enough. Mom thirsted for perfection, perhaps a remanent of growing up unseen in a blue-collar family of eleven children. One of her favorite maxims was: “Good, better, best, never let it rest.”

I think sometimes she confused best with perfect.

Later, those early lessons in perfectionism followed me to medical school. As all aspiring med students do, I put in long hours studying and learning. My hard work was rewarded with my induction into AOA — the honor medical society reserved for students in the top 10 percent of their class.

That achievement was validating, however, my surgery professor’s evaluation still stings: “Very good student, but not quite up to the level of honors.” His words might as well have read “Perfectly Adequate” — like the academic equivalent of a participation trophy.

Perfectionism became a theme in my life, wired into my psyche, and I wore it proudly like a family crest. If the seed of doubt had been planted, I was going to weed it out by constantly striving for excellence. Though it drove my ambition, perfectionism also froze me in place due to fear of falling short. It shaped my expectations of colleagues and employees — including those of my family.

Years later, I discovered that I had fostered that impossible standard for my children. My daughter, Kristen, now an adult and singer-songwriter in Nashville, wrote a song that spoke to the elusive goal of perfectionism. Called “Good Enough”, she sang about letting go of the relentless pursuit I’d carried from my mom’s kitchen table:

What’s good enough?
It moves around and up and down,
And if you start to look,
It’ll never be found.

When she played it for me, I realized the ripple effects had traveled further than I’d ever imagined.

Thankfully she chose to immortalize my obsession through music rather than penning the next “Mommie Dearest.”

Message received.  It was time to break free from this mindset.

I sought what every self-proclaimed perfectionist reaches for in time of doubt: a self-help book. I discovered one called “The Four Agreements” by Miguel Ruiz. Each agreement frames a personal code of conduct based on Toltec wisdom. They are designed to help one find personal freedom and happiness.

The fourth agreement struck me: Always do your best.

At first, I thought it reinforced perfectionism, but its meaning is more forgiving: your best changes depending on what life throws at you.

The Fourth Agreement offers leeway. Your best is different when going to work after being up all night with a crying baby, when exercising after having the flu, or when you’re struggling to pay the bills.

That was the exact life lesson I needed. It helped me loosen perfectionism’s grip on me, though the release did not come overnight. In fact, my children believe I am still a work in progress.

I’ve also come to understand there are instances when perfect is the goal and nothing less will do. Particularly as a physician, people’s health and lives are at stake and “good enough” doesn’t always secure the desired outcome. After surgery for an infected appendix, for instance, you don’t want to hear your surgeon say, “Got most of it!”

However, for many aspects of life, perfection is a target that is unachievable and unnecessary, particularly because life gets in the way.

Though I never start my morning thinking, “How can I mess up?”, I now offer myself the grace to do what I can that day.

Recently, I’ve wrestled with having multiple cancer surgeries reset my fitness goals, travel plans, and even simple pleasures. On some days, my best is just getting dressed — not running a 5K.

As A.L. Williams writes in his motivational book: “All you can do is all you can do, but all you can do is enough.”

If Mom could have lived with less doubt and more freedom, she may have been more content. She was always good enough and did the best she could. I wish she knew that. I wish I told her that. I’m grateful my daughter reminded me.

Mom’s words stay with me: Good, better, best. They come with a caveat now. Perfect may be the aspiration, but good enough — truly good enough — is where peace lives.

Thanks for reading. Check out other posts for life lessons on Courage, Grit, Imposter Syndrome, Wonder.

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Listen to “Good Enough” by Kristen Englenz here:
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