Read This If You’re Worried That You’ll Never Find 'The One'

25 Little Things You Are Settling For Without Realizing It (And How To Stop)

If there’s one consistently true thing about humans, it’s that we constantly undermine our potential for greatness. We set our sights on good enough, instead of being great. We set our sights on surviving, instead of living. We take the easy way out. We take what we’ve been given. We don’t even know when we’re settling for just enough when our lives could be filled with so much more.

1. It feels good to celebrate our own success, but it feels better when we can truly be excited for the success of someone else, even if their success somehow trumps ours.

2. It feels good to be confident in our abilities, but it feels better when we are challenged and broken down so we can rise up from the flames as a better version of ourselves.

3. It feels good to be happy, but it feels better to live with a passion that leads us astray from happiness and demands of us the full-range of emotion.

4. It feels good to be secure, but it feels better to live within the heartbreaking insecurity of not knowing what’s next simply to understand what it means to be alive.

5. It feels good to hold tight to what we love, but it feels better to let it all go and let what’s meant to stay, stay, and what’s meant to go, go.

6. It feels good to have money, but it feels better to be compensated of any amount when we are compensated for work that gives us purpose.

7. It feels good to be compensated, but it feels better to do work that is independent of compensation, that we would do regardless of the material value it possesses.

8. It feels good to be paid for our passion, but it feels better to know that we would pursue that passion endlessly even if it never made us a cent.

9. It feels good to receive a job we are qualified for, but it feels better to get a job we have to rise up to fulfill.

10. It feels good to be educated, but it feels better to be educated on our experience, our trials, our obstacles, our heartbreaks, our breakdowns.

11. It feels good to win the approval of someone, but it feels better to win the approval of ourselves.

12. It feels good to be loved, but it feels better to truly want to give love to others without a hope of something in return.

13. It feels good to be appreciated, but it feels better to be grateful without having to force that gratefulness in any way, to know what it’s like to be honored and grateful and touched.

14. It feels good to be famous, but it feels better to have a genuine curiosity for our own lives.

15. It feels good to be recognized, but it feels better to give ourselves value intrinsically, instead of needing it to be given extrinsically.

16. It feels good to be complimented, but it feels better when that compliment isn’t a surprise to us and is something that we already see in ourselves.

17. It feels good to be done with work, but it feels better to do passionate work that demands more of us than the bare minimum, that requires hard work we never want an excuse out of.

18. It feels good to complete a goal, but it feels better to abandon one in pursuit of something bigger and better that we now see a path for.

19. It feels good to have a plan and a dream and blueprint for our lives, but it feels better to be surprised by a path we could not have dreamt up, yet is exactly what we didn’t know we needed.

20. It feels good to commit, but it feels better when that statement of commitment is not necessary to know where we stand in a relationship.

21. It feels good to find out we’re good enough, but it feels better to expand into the greatness that comes when we stop trying to be just enough of something.

22. It feels good to be snarky and bitter, but it feels better to believe in hope and joy and love and change and spread that light, instead of subtracting the light by adding in more darkness.

23. It feels good to be content, but it feels better to grow and heal, which requires a vulnerability that does not have much room for contentment.

24. It feels good to make up our minds, but it feels better to leave ourselves in that brave, open space where our minds can change, our bags could get packed, and we could uproot our lives at any point when our intuition calls.

25. It feels good to collect material worth, but it feels better when our lives are independent of material worth and our worthiness is simply determined by the amount of love we can add back into the world. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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