Conditions of Satisfaction
(Photo: Jess Barnard}
One morning last week, my eighth grader sat on the stool at the kitchen counter and sighed heavily. He was frustrated. They were learning how to do rotations in math—some algebra or geometry concept that I have no recollection of ever learning—and he said he was bad at them.
I asked if he was able to do the problem. In my head, I was preparing to say something positive and encouraging, assuming he got the problem wrong. But he simply looked at me and said, “Um, yes,” as if it was a ridiculous question to ask in the first place.
Well, excuse me.
“They have us use tracing paper so we could figure out how the graph moves when you rotate it,” he said.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
“That’s like cheating. That’s not figuring it out all by yourself.” He rolled his eyes.
On the one hand, I appreciate that he wants to understand the concept, to know how to solve the problem on his own without the aid of anything or anyone else. ( I wonder where he gets his Type A perfectionist tendencies and stubbornness from.)
But I told him that he didn't always have to take the most difficult path. Consciously choosing an easier path, a path with less obstacles will still get him to where he's needs to go. He doesn’t have to make it hard for the sake of making it hard.
Yet, I feel like that’s been our default strategy these days—taking the path of greatest resistance as if to prove something. To whom, I’m not sure, but for me, it's probably that whiny inner voice that lives inside my head.
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Our interaction hit on something that I’ve been thinking about lately—how we set expectations, how we manage them, and how we determine if and when we are satisfied with our effort and what we’ve created or achieved.
It feels like for many of us, we’ve lost the ability to be satisfied. Feeling satisfied with one’s effort used to equate to a baseline sense of contentment. But now, feeling satisfied seems to be synonymous with “settling.” The stakes have been ratcheted up so that the only acceptable outcome is perfection, doing your absolute best, a 10 out of 10.
That means feeling content always feels just out of reach. There seems to be a constant and unsettling sense of disappointment, like a picture frame askew or a wool sweater that's itchy and doesn't quite fit right. And our inner critic is ready to tell us that there’s something we could have done better or differently.
It's not to say that you shouldn't strive to do your best or have goals that challenge you—those are all important things in our lives—but the goal posts are constantly shifting often without even knowing it. You don't realize it until you're ready to check the thing off your list or celebrate and you don’t quite feel the way you expected too. It’s exhausting.
Not every thing has to be an A goal. My son should have felt satisfied that he solved his math problem—that was the assignment. Yet he didn’t because he expected that he would solve the problem in a complex, sophisticated way. Even though his teacher didn’t explicitly ask him to do it that way. Even though his teacher gave the class a tool to aid them. Even though that wasn’t the purpose of the assignment. It was his own expectations that caused his frustration. He thought doing his homework a certain way would prove that he was smart and good at math.
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Back in 2017, I attended Lauren Fleshman’s Wilder retreat in Bend, Oregon. For four days, we ran and wrote, building a daily practice around each discipline. During one sessions, we gathered in a room at the lodge and talked about Conditions of Satisfaction.
I'd never heard the term before. While Conditions of Satisfaction can look like goals—they should be measurable, specific, and time-bound criteria—they aren't goals. But they can help you think differently about expectations and what success looks like.
For example, I’m in the process of rebuilding my running practice. My Conditions of Satisfaction are: 1) run three times a week, and 2) make one of those sessions something challenging, maybe hill repeats or pick-ups. If I check off both boxes, I will be satisfied. My satisfaction doesn’t hinge on my pace, time, or even how I felt during those runs.
For writing, my Conditions of Satisfaction might be to write 1000 words a day on a new project, Monday through Friday. I don’t get to complain that I didn't write more than 1000 words, that I didn’t write seven days a week, or that my writing sucks. I get to be satisfied with accomplishing what I set out to accomplish, which helps me build towards a larger writing goal.
(I like to capitalize Conditions of Satisfaction because they are just important as all those lofty GOALS. Maybe even more so.)
I’d forgotten about the Conditions of Satisfaction until last week. I don't think I've really thought about them since I got home from Bend all those years ago.
But I love the way they can divorce your expectations from your inner critic. I love that they help move you toward a goal without judging the quality of the effort or the weight of external expectations. I love that I can revisit and update them as needed, when the conditions start to feel stale. And I love that in the longer term, it can create more happiness and contentment.
At least I hope so. It's worth a try, right?
I wanted to leave you with a couple of things that I loved reading recently:
If there's one thing you read, please read this story about a farmer and two sweet lambs. Warning, you might need tissues for this one.
This book about the power of rest and retreat. I've only read about 1/3 but I've probably highlighted about half of what I've read so far.
This one about what it means to feel at home and to make a home.
Thanks for reading,
Christine
P.S. You can find an archive of previous newsletters here and subscribe here.
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