When Good Enough is Enough

Let’s start with an interesting observation: so many “influencers,” “optimizers,” and “wellness” and “happiness” gurus don’t have partners or kids. Yes, strive to be healthy and excellent and all that, but sometimes the key to adult life — perhaps especially if you’ve got kids — is that you’ve just got to order a pizza and move on.

To be clear, this does not mean throw the baby out with the bathwater. Simply saying, “To hell with it all, things are crazy,” can be the first step toward developing a lifetime of unhealthy habits that are hard to unwind. But it is perhaps equally harmful to be overly rigid, unable to adjust or release from whatever healthy habits you may have.

(For what it’s worth, I think of myself as pretty healthy and my medical history would support that: my morning routine over the last year has been “struggle to make coffee and drink it.”)

Whether it’s sleep, nutrition, exercise, getting morning light, meditation, or any number of other behaviors, sustaining them over the long haul — particularly as a functioning adult with other obligations in the world — probably depends on three overarching principles:

1. Do the thing as best you can.
2. Don’t freak out if you can’t do the thing.
3. But don’t let that be permission for forgetting about the thing altogether.