Learning from a loser

Humble cottage, million-dollar view. (Image by David Mark)

Every couple of years, my father does battle with the humid, salty coastal air to painstakingly, single-handedly repaint his entire cedar-sided home.

And every step of the way, he wants to show off his progress. “Come look!” If I am not available for a physical audience, I will get a report by phone of which sections have been done since we last spoke.

I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture, but I have inherited my dad’s habit of show and tell. I love to celebrate my accomplishments, no matter how minor. And it’s always better when I can share with someone else. “Whitney! Inbox Zero in less than twenty minutes!” (There’s usually a screen shot.)

As silly as it probably is to crow about these tiny wins, I believe that this basic centeredness and satisfaction is a much better foundation for success than constant striving. If you never let yourself enjoy what you’ve accomplished, you will never feel successful, no matter how much money or fame or accolades you have. The external markers don’t matter, because success depends on how we measure it. Therefore, if you never feel successful, you never will be. All that striving will be for nothing.

In defiance of a key tenet of modern society, I assert that more is not better and it will not heal the sense of lack in a person’s heart. A lot of the big, audacious goals that we push for are ultimately meaningless. Checking them off the list won’t fix what’s broken inside us.

I totally get it if you don’t want to listen to me. My gospel of appreciating our fundamental okayness violates what so many people were taught as children. It is a completely different narrative, one that is often received with well-founded skepticism.

After all, who would want to follow my example? Many of the things I do are routine tasks, easily completed by most professionals. And it would reasonable to scoff at my modest home or my modest bank account. In fact, you could pretty easily make the case that I’m kind of a loser, living a mediocre life with a mediocre level of accomplishment and success. I don’t blame you if you want more for yourself.

However, if you are tired of seeing only how much farther you have to go, being anxious about how you are going to get there, and feeling ashamed of how little you’ve done, I want to invite you to try a different way. What if where you are now is already okay, as unfinished and incomplete as your story may be? What if you could acknowledge that you’ve done the best you can with what you have, and you could let yourself feel good about some small part of it? It doesn’t matter if everyone else could do it — you did it, and you matter. How might it change how you see the part of your life that is yet to come if you appreciate how your life looks at this moment?

My dad’s greatest accomplishment, one for which I will be grateful for the rest of my life, is that he didn’t drink alcohol today — and for a lot more todays reaching back a few decades now. He changed his entire family legacy from sadness and suffering to one of lightness and possibility. He knows that appreciating small moments of growth and progress — and allowing others to encourage us and cheer us on — is how we build a life we are proud of.

Yeah, maybe I’m a loser. I’m not rich and I’m not famous. I don’t have a large social media following. I didn’t go to an elite college and I’ve never had a high-paying job. I’m easily satisfied and I don’t put too much pressure on myself to live up to an external standard. I’m happy with the smallest of steps forward. And that’s exactly why you might learn something from me.