5 Side Effects of Settling for a Second Best Life
Photo by h.koppdelaney
We all want to live the best life we possibly can, don’t we?
Whether it be having relationships we are happy with, doing work that fills us with passion, or trying to follow a healthy lifestyle, each of us would love to be satisfied with our daily lives.
Everyone has their own view of what their ideal life looks like, but we all have one thing in common -it takes a great deal of time, effort, and determination to turn it into a reality.
We can get thrown off course in our pursuit of this ‘better’ life and end up making do with an average way of living. We quietly accept a run-of-the-mill lifestyle and gradually forget about gaining that more fulfilling existence that fired us up in the first place.
This ‘second best will do’ attitude creeps up on us slowly until it steals our desire to do great things. But there are other ways that giving up on getting the best out of life can affect us.
Here are five side effects to look out for:
1. Regrets… You’ve Got More Than a Few
Instead of reflecting on what you did do to make things happen, you waste time worrying about what you didn’t do. And you constantly wonder how different life would have turned out, if you’d just gone ahead and taken action when the moment was right.
Dwelling in the past can become far too comfortable a place to stay. When you spend precious time and mental energy on looking back instead of forward, you end up with a defeatist way of thinking. Regret makes us feel powerless.
If we don’t want to settle for what we have right now, we’ve got to believe we can change things. You simply can’t alter the past, and no amount of replaying history in your mind will rewrite it.
Much more positive than mulling over ‘what if’s and ‘if only’s is to focus on what is possible for you to achieve today.
2. You Suffer From ‘It Should Be Me’ Envy
Other people doing well should inspire us but, sometimes, we get jealous of their success. Maybe you’ve worked just as hard as them, but haven’t reaped the same benefits they have.
We feel frustrated that our own efforts are not being rewarded and ask ourselves whether it’s even worth putting in the work if nothing is going to come of it. Soon, you stop trying to do your best and settle for merely getting by.
Comparing our own level of achievement with someone else’s will almost always leave us disappointed. Success is all relative anyway. What you see as a major ‘win’ might be totally worthless to me, while my idea of a significant milestone could leave you completely cold.
Rather than allowing your own motivation to be reduced when other folk get what they want in life, use their good fortune to spur you on to follow their example.
3. You Get Ready and Set- But Never Get Going
In the past, you prepared yourself for the challenges involved in reaching your brand new life. You probably even got as far as doing something about it. Then, what happened? Very little you’d hoped for – or worse –nothing at all.
It’s so demoralising when our plans don’t produce the results we’d like, despite our best attempts. When this happens once, we can usually pick ourselves up and give it another go. When we’re faced with little change after a few times of trying, it’s much more difficult to recover.
Giving up can seem like a much less painful option than following the motto: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. But, it’s tempting to give up in other areas too and settle for what we have just now. Pretty soon, you don’t see the point in pursuing any activity which could bring you closer to that ‘ultimate’ life you badly want.
Don’t let previous knockbacks drain the power of your dreams to move you to action. Ambitions and aspirations never really go away, so neither should your efforts to make them real.
4. You Stop Cheering on the Achievements of Others
How many times have you written off someone else’s chances of success based on your own experience? ‘If I can’t do it, no one can’, you say. It’s easy to be convinced that other people can achieve excellence when we also believe it true for ourselves.
Exploring how to live a great life is exciting, limitless, and full of potential. That is, until events threaten to curb our enthusiasm and gradually force us to downgrade our grand designs for what is possible. And when we settle for second best, it’s not only our own expectations that we lower- we also expect less from others too.
This is a depressing cycle to get caught in; an uninspiring circle where your disillusionment determines your view of how well other folk can do and how far they can go in life.
Be supportive and encouraging of other people’s quests to reach their goals. You’ll become known as a cheerleader for them and an upbeat presence in their lives. In turn, support for you will come back by the bucketload.
5. You See Your Whole World Through Dark Tinted Glasses
I’m sure there are many achievements that you’ve managed to pull off – both large and small – of which you’re rightly proud. Similarly, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few times when your best laid plans didn’t quite work out as you anticipated. It’s the same for all of us.
If it’s an activity we place a lot of value in, doing less well than we hope for can be devastating. Our confidence is dented, our optimism destroyed. These bad vibes spill over into your general view of what you are capable of. During the post-mortem of how badly you feel you did, the solution is clear- you’ll stop trying and promise to never do it again. So you don’t.
That’s the trouble with giving up on your goal of leading an improved life- you get trapped into thinking that what you have now is all that there can ever be. How depressing is that?!
Instead of looking at your whole life in a negative light, focus in on those little tasks when you struck gold and where you know you did a good job. Once you break the hold that complacency has over you, you’ll realize that you can indeed change the things you’ve given up on.
The aim of living a superior life is nowhere near ever being a lost cause. OK, you might have temporarily settled for less than you originally aimed for, but that can be put right anytime you want. When you decide enough is enough.
There’s no need to endure a way of life that doesn’t satisfy you deep down, just because it’s what you’ve grown accustomed to. You deserve more than second best.
Do you recognize any of these – or other – side effects of settling for second best in your life? How do you make sure you always try to lead the best life you possibly can?
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you.
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Hi Scott,
It is so easy for us to settle for less. This is an important post to warn us of the dangers of doing so.
Everyone in life has their fair share of regrets for the things that they didn’t do. I fully agree with you that this leads to defeatism which can cripple you and your ability to act. If we do indeed focus on what we can do, it helps to turn our lives around.
When we don’t do as well as we hope at something, it is best to look at the setback as a learning opportunity. In this manner, you can salvage something valuable from all the time and effort you have put into it. Failure after all is the surest path to success. When you embrace your setbacks and failures, you are more likely to lead the life you want because you learn from your mistakes.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi The Vizier,
I like your point about using a setback as a learning opportunity. If we can take anything positive from a setback, then our efforts were not in vain.
The worst thing is to fail and learn nothing from the experience. That really is a waste and makes us wonder why we should bother at all in the future.
Everyone has the capacity to be great but somehow we become blind of the things we do that prevents us from its realization. Recognizing fear, ignorance and bigotry within us will give us a clear road map on the way to being on top. :-)
Hi Walter,
Thank you for the comment.
Working on our own roadmap to success is time well spent. The exact route to an improved life will be different for us all, but having a clearer idea of what we need to do to reach it certainly helps guide our actions.
Scott,
This is great insight to know when we aren’t on right track or using our potential. When we focus on what we can’t do or what we don’t have we begin to bring these things into focus and become very obsorbed with what we lack. I also your insight emotions that emerge when we aren’t living a purposeful life. We can start to feel jealous and resentful of others instead of sharing in others joy. All in all we must recognize these signs if we want to seek contentment or fulfillment. Glad I ran across your site. Really like it.
Hi Joe,
Thank you for your comment- and your kind words!
It’s too true that we can overemphasize what we don’t have, rather than celebrating the important things we have achieved. This way of looking at things skews our belief in what we can do.
As you say, being able to step back and recognize the symptoms of our negative way of thinking makes us more able to defeat those ‘defeatist’ thoughts.
Powerful post.
I recently came across a bit of wisdom on twitter (offhand can’t recall the author).
But this is what it said:
“Understanding the past won’t change the past.”
I also had an insight this morning about one of the reasons why we dwell on the past.
I think part of why we do this is because we have an all or nothing mentality! We want what we could have had in the past, and since we’re all or nothing, we’re not willing to let go of what we could have had. Of course, this mentality is strictly insane. Moreover, we are not objective. We can make our present amazing if we try hard enough.
Another reason I think we dwell on the past, even though it’s a subconscious reason, is because we reason that if we dwell on the past then we are free from doing the hard work to make our lives amazing now! After all, it requires a lot less work to dwell on the past than to make giant moves now to improve our life.
Of course, ultimately, our subconscious leads us astray. Because on the deepest level, giving it our all now is far less painful than dealing with the outcome of dwelling on the past.
The good news, is that if we’re aware of this right now, we can work hard, right now, to make our lives amazing.
.
Hi Bamboo,
Thank you for the thoughtful comment.
It’s an interesting idea you mention about how we view our lives in the past. We all reflect on what’s happened to us previously, but I guess the key difference is what we then do with the information we gain.
We can learn from our experience, bring forward these lessons, and apply them to the here and now. Alternatively, we can stay stuck in the past – creating ‘what if’ scenarios and being limited to repeating the same old behaviors with the same old results.
How we view our past is central to how we live right now, so getting a healthy perspective is time well spent.
Great article Scott!
Hi Angel,
Thank you for your kind comment. It’s great to hear from you again!
Very good points Scott and I definitely have seen 2 and 4 be a HUGE problem for some people. It’s really sad that some are so deprived of success and self-esteem that they can’t even be happy about the achievements of others. I used to lack this kind of security too. It came to the point where I would make up any stupid reason I could think of to dismiss someone else’s success. Why? Because I wanted it to be me.
Hi Steven,
It’s a natural reaction when we see other people’s success to want some for ourselves. Better still is when we use their example to spur us on, rather than to begrudge them it.
They’ve done the hard work and probably made mistakes along the way, so they deserve that success. If we can focus on what they did instead of on how we feel, we can learn what can work for us.
Easier said than done sometimes, though.
We should never settle for second best. Only work towards greatness and move any sense of doubt out of the picture like a spoiled snack wrap. Always place yourself above the rest of your fears and believe you can even if the whole world is against you. Believe you can.
Hi Jonathan,
I like your upbeat attitude – especially “believe you can even if the whole world is against you.”
Those words are ultra-motivating.
Hi, great post here! A friend of mine told me that her boss used to said, ““If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards”. I never liked it. I prefer: “If at first you don’t succeed, you’re about average”. So go on trying :-)
My favourite quotation though is from horse trainer Pat Parelli:
“The four elements of success: Talent, Skills, Try, and Luck. Talent, you are born with; Skills, you develop; Try is intestinal fortitude or guts; Luck is spelled w.o.r.k. and is defined when preparation meets opportunity.”
Hi Alliandre,
That’s a great quote from Pat Parelli… Success is a combination of our own abilities and the situation being ‘right’ when we take action.
Some people call this luck; while others view it as just weighing up the situation and judging whether the factors needed for a positive outcome are there. Whichever way you look on it, success relies on our own efforts at the right time. Whenever we think that is…
Extremely thought provoking Scott. Second best isn’t necessarily a bad place to be ( as who says you have to only be a winner? ), but settling for it always is not so wise. May I add the ‘if only’ syndrome whereby people say they would do x or y ‘if only’ the kids were older/I had the time/I could afford it/was younger/not married/was luckier etc.If you accept second best as a normal means of living don’t be surprised when it shows up all over the place. This is a good pick-me-up post Scott, nice one my friend.
Hi John,
It’s great to see you here!
I totally believe that you don’t need to ‘win’ at something to prove yourself worthy in life. Rather, it’s when you try your very best that the rewards come (maybe cheesey, but it’s my belief). I don’t think there’s much point in doing something unless you’re prepared to give it your best shot. You might not get what you want, but at least you tried. Half-hearted efforts really don’t satisfy anyone.
As you suggest, it’s when everything you do in life is half-hearted, that you’ve settled for second best. That’s the waste.