Embracing the Good-Enough

Like everyone else in Britain and around the world, I have been following the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games with awe and wonder. From the Olympic opening ceremony onwards, I have been impressed, moved and inspired by the drive and achievement shown by all the athletes. I have been swept up in the many personal stories of dedication, determination and achievement, often in the face of adversity.

We can all identify with these stories, as they mirror our own struggles to give meaning and direction to our lives, to strive, to never give up, to achieve our goals. We can all see ourselves constantly pushing towards the higher, longer, faster... We can all celebrate this universal yearning to become still better than we are, to grow and to succeed.

Elite athletes spend their entire lives pushing their boundaries, stretching their performance that little bit further, never being satisfied with where they are now and constantly focused on the next personal best, the next world record. Their lives are a continual struggle to improve their performance, to reach the next level, to live as if there are no limits to their potential.

The rest of us are not elite athletes, yet we are being forced to behave as if we were. The language of our social and political discourse is all about performance, targets and goals. We are constantly exhorted to work harder, smarter, leaner. Whatever we have achieved today, it is never good enough. Management by objectives, public spending targets, improved productivity. Every day we are targeted, incentivised, monitored, evaluated and ultimately found wanting. We haven't done enough, we haven't worked quite hard enough to succeed, we must do better.

We are forced to live in an individual performance culture, where we are responsible for our own success. We have internalised these cultural values; like the Stakhanovite horse Boxer in George Orwell's Animal Farm, we feel that "we must work harder" to succeed even in the face of overwhelming odds. And if we fail, well then it can only be our fault. We just didn't try hard enough, we didn't want it enough, we didn't transcend our limitations - of poverty, of physical and mental ability, of educational attainment, of social status.

Being made to think and feel like this is a gross violation of our human right to be satisfied with our lives as they are, to be happy in the present, to lead a 'good life', to recognise that there are limits to our abilities. There is no long-term happiness in constantly striving to be better than you are - we may find our happiness in accepting who we are and celebrating our own intrinsic value as a human being instead. Swap the negative mindset of failure against a future 'better self' ("I'm simply not good enough") to the liberating mindset of just being who you are - and you are 'good enough' in all your present glory.