The messaging we receive from advertisers, the entertainment industry, and sometimes even family members about what success looks like can be intense. If we aren’t amazing athletes, awe-inspiring chefs, or hotshot CEOs, we aren’t trying hard enough.
Overall, I know better than to buy into this nonsense, but recently negative self-talk barged through my front door. “Your front tooth is crooked,” it announced, pushing past me. “You still can’t multiply?” it asked, running a finger over the coffee table to check for dust. “Also, you haven’t come up with a cure for cancer yet. What exactly are you doing with your time?”
As I often do when toxic self-talk arrives, I hid in the hall closet, took a few deep breaths, and rang up my sense of humor. “Help,” I whispered. Here’s what we came up with:
Cleaning: Yes, your furniture is dusty, the soap dispenser in your bathroom is a tad gooey, and you wouldn’t suggest anyone lick your floors. Good news: Most people don’t lick floors. Dogs do, but they also consider the cat’s litter box a buffet — so, I say if the health department hasn’t shown up, the dust bunnies on your stairs haven’t grown teeth, and you have enough clean dishes for your next meal, you’re golden.
Cooking: True, you probably won’t be asked to host a cooking show on Netflix. But your tuna melt got a “This is good!” response from your partner, and you make decent chocolate chip cookies, which are the most important food in existence anyway. Bravo.
Communicating: Sometimes you can’t think of basic words, like “tree,” when you’re trying to tell a funny story or remember how to spell certain words. If you can’t remember a word while sharing a humorous story, the worst that can happen is you ruin the punchline. Oh well. In terms of spelling, sans professional lexicologists and spell check, very few of us understand why some words are spelled the way they are. Silent letters make absolutely no sense. So if you struggle to spell “fluorescent,” for example, unless you’re in a spelling bee, or sell fluorescent light bulbs, it doesn’t really matter that much.
Appearance: Not on the cover of Vogue? Most of us aren’t. Also, our beauty standards are ludicrous, so much so that some people spend big bucks on cosmetic surgery, fillers, and chemical peels (aren’t we supposed to avoid chemicals?), and download apps that make their skin look so smooth, you’d swear they just walked into a piece of Saran Wrap. I get it. It can be disconcerting to look in the mirror and realize that your jawline is beginning to resemble a cow’s udder. But I say if your teeth aren’t too fuzzy, the dark circles under your eyes aren’t terrifying children, and you don’t smell like a dirty tube sock, you’re killing it.
Parenting: It can be challenging to stay on top of your daughter’s homework, while also working, shopping, cooking, cleaning, exercising, driving a carload of kids to soccer practice, and creating a podcast on global warming. But you haven’t driven off and left your kid in the frozen food section of the grocery store, and she hasn’t robbed a bank — yet. You’re doing fine.
Career: Not raking in the cash? No biggie. Yes, wealthy people can afford to buy lattes every day, and they probably don’t stand in the pasta aisle comparing unit prices of linguine. But having a boatload of money doesn’t save them from struggling with many of the same things we all do –– sore knees, insomnia, dandruff, the inability to remember basic words, like “tree,” and gas. I say, if you’re engaging in something you care about, are kindhearted, and remember to mute yourself on Zoom before belching, you’re doing great.
Self-help gurus love to tell us that anything is possible, but this simply isn’t true. We aren’t all going to win a Nobel Prize in literature, be on the cover of Glamour magazine, or have enough money to build our own rocket. What we do have, however, that no one else has, is ourselves. Good enough.
