When “Over-” Isn’t About Effort at All: Learning to Be Good Enough

A moment from earlier this year has stayed with me—quiet, ordinary, easy to overlook at the time. It surfaced during a simple task long before I understood how much it would shift.

I remember it clearly.

I was at the sink, rinsing a bowl. Warm water moved across my hands. Morning light stretched along the counter, pale and unhurried, the way dawn settles over Bulguksa temple in Gyeongju before the world wakes. Nothing dramatic. Nothing signaling insight.

Still, something was moving underneath.

As I stood there, the familiar “over-” patterns rose the way they always had: overthinking, overpreparing, overperforming, overexplaining to avoid misunderstanding. These habits had once felt like protection, especially while growing up between cultures, responsibilities, and expectations. Many of us learn early that belonging depends on being more, never simply enough.

Then, in the middle of rinsing that bowl, a quiet question surfaced:

What if this “over-” isn’t something that needs perfecting? What if it belongs in the same category as “good enough”?

The thought felt almost too simple. Too gentle. And yet something inside loosened, just enough to make space for a fuller breath. I didn’t recognize the shift then, but looking back, that moment marked the beginning of a quiet realignment.

The 80% Rule and the Meaning of “Good Enough”

In the weeks that followed, a concept from Positive Intelligence kept resurfacing for me. Shirzad Chamine’s 80/20 distinction—only a small fraction of life requires precision while the rest thrives in “good enough”—began to settle in differently after that morning. Until then, I had assumed my perfectionistic edges belonged in that narrow 20%: the realm of what had to shine.

That assumption didn’t hold.

My “overthinking,” “overperforming,” and vigilant self-monitoring were never 20% matters. They were 80% responses, adaptations shaped by belonging, responsibility, and the instinct to stay safe in spaces that didn’t always make room for someone like me.

They were survival strategies. Borrowed armor. Fluent languages learned in rooms that offered too little and demanded too much, like a child learning which footsteps mean safety and which require bracing.

A softer realization eventually followed:

Even my identity—my need to feel grounded, real, whole—belongs in the 80%.

Being “good enough” as myself was already its own kind of grace. A homecoming I hadn’t known I missed. A freedom I didn’t realize I needed.

Once that took root, the urgency behind all my “over-” behaviors began to ease.

A Temporary Joy, But a Real One

The relief arrived briefly, like a warm gust, and faded just as quickly. Old patterns reassert themselves. The nervous system remembers its training.

Even so, fleeting clarity is still clarity.

Since then, I’ve returned to that shift in moments of pressure or doubt. Each time, something loosens again, and I move a little closer to the version of myself that feels right for this season—not the over-functioning or polished one, not the one carrying every inherited expectation, but the one who can simply breathe.

What Unclenching Feels Like

That morning showed me what it feels like when identity starts to soften. It wasn’t dramatic, just a widening: more room in the chest, more ease in the throat, more gentleness toward myself.

It’s the kind of change that only reveals its significance later. Like a seonamu (Korean pine) bending as it grows—finding strength in its irregular shape—or like the moon reflecting clearly only when the water is still.

What “Perfect” Means Now

The experience didn’t erase ambition or care for the work I do. It redirected them.

Perfection stopped resembling armor and began to look more like honesty. It became a question:

What version of me feels most real right now?

Not the one performing competence, or shaped by pressure, or bracing for what might be expected. Just the version standing at the sink, hands warm under the water, breathing a little deeper.

Each time I return to that question, something settles. Coherence feels possible. Belonging becomes something created rather than earned. Identity becomes a place to rest.

And months later, the softening continues.