The Ordinary Impact

There’s a strange relief in realizing how much energy we’ve been spending trying to be something no one actually expects us to be. Perfect. Perfect responses. Perfect timing. Perfect choices. Perfect versions of ourselves that never quite show up when we need them most. John Steinbeck offers a gentler invitation: “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” At first glance, it sounds almost too simple. But the more you sit with it, the more it begins to untangle something deep. Perfection demands performance.  Goodness asks for presence. Perfection keeps score.  Goodness pays attention. Perfection is loud and anxious and exhausting.  Goodness is quieter. Steadier. More human. So much of our frustration comes from confusing the two. We hold ourselves to impossible standards, then feel shame when we can’t meet them. We delay starting until conditions are ideal. We withhold kindness from ourselves until we’ve “earned” it. But goodness was never meant to be e...

It is difficult to breathe in  Colorado . The elevation seems to have that effect. One  website  described it as the air pressure outside being lower than the air pressure in a person’s lungs, which makes it difficult to breathe (among other things). I’ve experienced it. Running through the mountains - with no one else around - I felt shortness of breath, and after trying to push through it (like I’ve been known to do), I relented and walked for a bit. Hiking in the mountains had a similar effect. While running (and hiking) with my five year old, I experienced a different feeling. My attention was given to his breathing and his success, and I didn’t notice that I had a problem breathing. Sure, I was moving at a slower pace, but there is something to the idea of helping someone else succeed rather than being self-focused. In social-psychology it is called  moral elevation  (or sometimes just elevation). It’s been studied in detail within the past thirty ye...