143 - What If Average Was Actually Enough?
You're tired, you're trying, and the world keeps telling you it's still not enough.
But what if the goal wasn't to be extraordinary?
What if average was actually enough? Not a consolation prize, not giving up.
A choice.
What you'll learn
Why the relentless pursuit of extraordinary is quietly making us miserable
The systems we live in are designed to make average feel like failure
How the season of life you're in should shape what you go all in on, and what you consciously let be average
What changes when we stop treating ordinary as something to be ashamed of
Building a life that genuinely fits looks different than you'd expec
The problem with a world that can't stop chasing
Average gets a bad reputation. And I don't think that's an accident.
Educational systems that shame C grades. Workplaces that reward whoever climbs highest. Social media that celebrates the highlight reel and makes everyone else feel quietly inadequate.
A version of success built on the idea that what you have is never quite enough. That there's always another goal, another milestone, always something more.
And people are exhausted.
Because if every single person, every single day, is oriented toward being above average and achieving more than those around them, that world can't actually exist. By definition. Average is always part of it.
So maybe we've built a version of success that most people were never going to reach, and then told everyone who didn't get there that they just hadn't tried hard enough. I think that's less a personal failing and more a design flaw.
What we lose when ordinary becomes shameful
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a constant state of not enough, a quiet feeling that you should be doing more, achieving more, becoming more, just to justify the life you're living.
And that exhaustion tends to build slowly, underneath the productivity and the goal-setting and the relentless push to optimise, until one day you look up and realise you can't quite remember the last time something felt like enough.
"What if the goal could just be to be average? What if the goal could be to lower our expectations a little bit and not always keep climbing and chasing and doing and being and not trying to have the next best big thing?"
— Amy Green
That's not a small question. For a lot of us, it's a confronting one. Because we've spent so long treating ordinary as something to move past that we've maybe lost the ability to recognise it as something worth staying in.
But ordinary is where most of life actually happens. The Tuesday evenings. The unremarkable meals. The conversations that don't make it onto a highlight reel. The slow, quiet accumulation of days that don't look like much from the outside but are, if we're honest, kind of the whole point.
"Not everything has to be extraordinary and exceptional in life. You can have some things that are average. Perfectly okay." — Amy Green
Average isn't everywhere. It's intentional.
This is really about being honest with yourself about what actually deserves your best,
and what might be quietly stealing it.
Because the season of life you're in matters, a lot.
What you go all in on can shift depending on where you are, what you prioritise in one season might not be available in the next, and the version of success you were chasing a while back might not fit the person you are right now.
When we refuse to let some things be average, we can end up giving everything a little less than it deserves. The things that matter most get whatever's left over after the pursuit of more has taken its share.
Consciously choosing what gets your extraordinary and what gets your average isn't lowering the bar. I think it's finally being honest about where the bar was always meant to be.
What ordinary makes possible
Here's what shifts when you stop treating ordinary as failure.
The noise quiets, the comparison fades. And what you're left with is an ordinary, average, beautifully mundane life that's genuinely rich in the ways that actually matter.
"When ordinary is genuinely good and seen as enough, when your life without having to be exceptional all of the time exists, then there can still be so much meaning and joy and connection and dignity in that and satisfaction. It's not lowering the bar at all. It's finally building something that's right for you." — Amy Green
That's not settling. I think that's clarity — the kind that only shows up once you stop measuring your life against a standard that was never really designed to fit it.
"We need to be able to look at the ordinary and the beige and the grey in our lives and call it good. Call it great. Because this is what truly matters when it comes to designing a successful, healthy, happy and well life." — Amy Green
The beige days. The grey ones. The ones that don't photograph well and don't make good stories. Maybe those are the ones actually holding everything together — and they deserve more than being treated as obstacles between you and the next extraordinary moment.
The question worth sitting with
What is actually enough for me right now?
Sit with that honestly. Without the noise of what everyone else is doing. Without the pressure of what you think you should want.
Without wondering what else you could achieve. Without thinking about what the next milestone should be.
Just this. Just what's genuinely enough, in the season you're in, for the person you actually are.
Because when you can answer that, something changes. The pursuit stops feeling like the point. And the life you're already living starts to look a lot more like enough.
That's the power of average. And I think it was always available to you.
The Wellness Paradox — available now to pre-order
The Wellness Paradox explores the six paradoxes that keep us trapped in a version of success that was never designed to make us well. It's not a checklist, and it's not another self-care plan. It's an honest look at the systems we've inherited, and an invitation to start living differently.
It's for anyone who is tired of being told to do more.
Pre-order on Amazon → amazon.com
About Amy Green
Amy Green is a futurist, keynote speaker, and author of The Wellness Paradox. She is the founder of The Wellness Strategy and has spent years studying the intersection of how we work, how we live, and the systems that shape both. Her work reaches educators, executives, and leaders who are ready to think differently about what success really means.
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