Picture this: you are born to a working class family and see your parents work their tails off just to live paycheck to paycheck. You are determined to be more, do more, earn more. You work menial jobs until you have the ability to create your dream. You put in the time, sweat and tears into building your dream and the life you dreamed for your family. You spend day in and day out building this dream along with every penny you have. You dream starts to take off, causing you to travel the world and work early mornings and late nights. Only for you to realize one thing: you are missing every single thing at home. You miss dance recitals, you miss time with your spouse, you miss everything that matters.
You then realize everything you worked for, wasn’t actually what you needed. Or what life was about. You realize that money and success does not buy happiness.
{If you picked up the uncanny parallel to The Greatest Showman, I blame this on my obsessed two-year-old and the movie on repeat.}
Earlier this year, I took a leap and expanded my business to encompass more overhead and more responsibilities. I was excited for everything that could be, a million dreams, if you will. I was excited to be more. To do more. The business took off. I found myself working every day that I could. I had meetings, appointments and long days.
And it hit me: when I have success in one part of my life, another part suffers.
If my house was spotless and I’ve played countless board games with my kids, my work wasn’t successful. If work was busy and successful, I wasn’t home or I was stressed and not actually present with my family.
We all dream of more: a bigger house, a bigger bank account, a bigger title at work. We want a perfectly filtered Instagram and four million followers. We want the newest car. The newest phone. So many of us fall into the comparison funk. We scroll our social media feeds and see everyone else’s success and only focus on our shortcomings. It’s only when you seemingly “have it all” that you realize that in fact you don’t have the most important thing: happiness.
We all want success and want to be successful. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but success can be measured in so many other ways than just a job promotion and a 5,000 square foot house. Success is seeing your kid smiling at pick up, lounging on the couch during family movie night, a pizza picnic at the park. Success is having a date night with your spouse when you haven’t really seen each other in a month.
The biggest thing I’ve learned this year is that mediocre is perfectly fine.
It’s actually the sweet spot of life. When work is steady but not overwhelming, my car is the very definition of mediocre, my house hasn’t been swept in weeks, but every single person in my house is happy, that’s what life is about. My dream of success isn’t beneficial to my kids or to my husband. My success or failure doesn’t define me, but doing what is best for my family does. So, maybe I have to turn down some business so I can make a sporting event or after school event. In the grand scheme of life, being present for my family is the most important to me.
I love this post Stephanie, and completely agree! More is not always better, and everything has a price.