On Letting Yourself Be "Good Enough"

How child psychology can help explain effective performance.

In fourth grade, when I toed the line for the annual Cider Mill Elementary School Turkey Trot, I was pretty keyed up. I’d finished third the previous year, which meant I got a ribbon and, more importantly, had my name called on the school’s loudspeaker. Desperately eager to repeat—or beat—the previous year’s success and once again taste the sweet drip of public validation, I shot off the starting line as if out of a cannon. I was cruising—for about 200 meters. Then I abruptly pulled off to the side, and my fourth grade classmates zoomed by as the three bowls of now not so magically delicious Lucky Charms I had for breakfast worked their way back up my esophagus. I’d made a classic mistake: I wanted it too badly.

As far as tendencies go, caring too much ain’t so bad. And I’ll certainly take it over apathy. But this is something that I’ve seen come up again and again in my own life—and it’s something I saw in some of the athletes I coached this past season in track. Sometimes they’d put so much pressure on themselves that it would cause them to tense up, and they’d either pull back or run so tightly coiled that it would slow them down. It’s a cruel irony that sometimes the more you want something, the more elusive it becomes.

Which got me thinking: How do you care enough to perform well, but not care so much that you sabotage yourself?

The answer, it turns out, might come from an unlikely source: child psychology. Donald Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst and paediatrician who worked with families and wrote extensively about the development of young children, put forth. a now famous psychological theory about what makes for a “good enough” parent—and his insights about effective parenting provide a useful framework for thinking through effective performance.

The Principles of Being “Good Enough”

Winnicott identified three key elements that help children develop resilience and confidence. Each offers a powerful lesson for anyone trying to perform under pressure.

Strategic Imperfection

Most critically, the parent is NOT perfect. They do not meet every need immediately or shield the child from all discomfort. This isn’t harmful; it’s a fundamental step in helping kids tolerate the gap between their hopes and reality, and live with the disappointment and disillusionment that comes along with that.

This is true of performance too. When we demand perfection, we either paralyze ourselves, or create the type of desperation and tension I experienced at the turkey trot. Any type of pursuit—be it running a 100-meter sprint or simply writing an email—requires living with the anxiety that how you hope it will go is very rarely how it actually unfolds.

Dr. Alex Auerbach, a sports and performance psychologist I interviewed not too long back, said that one of the qualities shared by the high-achievers he’s worked with is that they are the best at accepting they are rarely at their best:

When you're in pro sports, or any high performance endeavor, it is incredibly rare that you will be 100 percent. Maybe on opening day of training camp. But on day three, you've practiced for six hours, you’re banged up, your legs are tired. Carry that to game 44 where we played last night in Indianapolis, we land in New York at 3 AM, we have a game 7 PM—no one's a hundred percent that night. The key is to shift that focus to, “How do I give 100 percent of whatever it is I have to give today?”

A Safe “Holding Environment”

The good enough parent creates a “holding environment” where a child can experience difficult emotions without losing a sense of safety. So when a kid has an absolute ripper of a meltdown because they’re told they can’t wear their shirt as pants, the good enough parent doesn’t panic, doesn’t try to fix the feeling, and, most importantly, doesn’t get overwhelmed by the child’s big emotions.

Elite performers develop this same ability to contain the big emotions that sometimes creep in during tense moments. Think of the swimmer or track and field athlete who feels strong activation on the start line. Their stomach might feel tight, their breath shallow, and their palms sweaty. Instead of labeling this as “anxiety” and melting down, they frame it as “excitement”—it’s their body’s natural biological response to prepare for performance. They might take some deep breaths and speak to themselves calmly. Or consider the tennis player who double-faults to lose a match, and then must immediately reset and refocus for the next game.

You’re never going to completely control how you feel, so you work to expand your capacity not to become destabilized by whatever comes up.

Exploration and Curiosity

The good enough parent allows their child to explore and play, understanding that being too overbearing can cause children to see uncertainty as dangerous. Compare a parent who allows their child to survey the playground while sitting a safe distance away versus a parent who follows the child like a shadow saying, “Careful! Careful! Careful!”

Performers must also work to tame their own internal helicopter parent. Often that instinct manifests fear and doubt, which can hold them back from complete engagement with the activity. With practice, they learn to stay out of their own way. In fact, what do we say about someone having a truly remarkable performance? We say they are unconscious—they are completely free from the burdens of their own self-consciousness.

So What Does “Good Enough” Performance Look Like?

It’s often getting started before you feel 100% ready.

It’s finding a way to lower the stakes even when you really care about the outcome, recognizing that your desperation is going to get in the way of achieving what you want.

It’s not just allowing for the possibility of mistakes, but expecting them, such that when they crop up, you can stay psychologically flexible and solutions-oriented instead of shutting down.

It’s staying out of your own way when things are going better than you expected.

It’s being fully engaged, which means being vulnerable and completely open to the possibility of failure.

It means working with reality as it is rather than as you hoped it might be.

It’s believing that you’re already enough before the performance even begins.

If I could go back to that fateful fourth grade day, these are the things I’d tell myself—and also to hold off on the Lucky Charms.