I'm not sure if it's original to any particular author but I first read this phrase a few years ago and it stuck in my normally fluid brain. "Good is the enemy of better."
I can't recall exactly but I think I read it in a James Hollis book. I've read pretty much everything this author has written and I've attended many of his lectures. He's a visionary but more importantly, he has the ability to speak about personalities, complexes and the like in a language that everyone can understand and relate to. In the C. G. Jung community, he's one the the main guys (although these intellectual types wouldn't put it this way").
HIs website describes his most recent book, "What Matters Most" in this way:
"This book is designed to stir thoughts in the reader, possibly to reorient directions, priorities, and values. If we fail to engage in some form of cogent dialog with the questions which emerge from our depths, then we will live an unconscious, unreflective, accidental life.... Having a more interesting life, a life that disturbs complacency, a life that pulls us out of the comfortable and thereby demands a larger spiritual engagement than we planned or that feels comfortable, is what matters most."
I bring this up because as with most of us, I'm beginning to process the year 2009 and reflect on what I might change in 2010. Yes, I'm talking about resolutions. The phrase, "good is the enemy of better" is helpful because I don't want to ignore anything that might be going well. For example, maybe there's something that's working ok in my business but if I challenge myself a bit more, I could make it much better. Or perhaps there's a banjo lick that I've been using over the years and I like it very much. Does that mean I can't make it better? Of course not. The easy thing would be to sit back and nestle into a state of complacency but that's boring.
Change is good but not for the sake of change.
