WAVE #18: What If I Let Myself Be Mediocre for a While?

My quiet rebellion of not always pushing for more.

Flor Macias

Mar 19, 2025

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Life lately: Ruth’s Diner with my brother, brunch at Forty Three Bakery with a friend, favorite new jacket gifted, Glow Spa bathhouse, visiting one of my best friends in LA, snowy March in Utah, decadent chia breakfast, first day of Daylight Savings, me in Manhattan Beach

For a while now, I haven’t been chasing anything. Not the dream job. Not a fitness overhaul. Not even an “I-need-a-change” haircut (iykyk).

I’m still moving forward, just without the urgency that used to define me. These days, progress looks like folding my clothes straight out of the dryer instead of letting them sit in a wrinkled pile. Doing what’s expected at work without hunting for recognition. Wearing the “good” outfit on a regular Wednesday instead of saving it for an occasion that may or may not come.

I know these things seem small. Sometimes they’ve felt too trivial to count as successes, especially in a world where others seem to be making big moves, going on big trips, or overhauling their relationships.

But lately, I wonder if this so-called season of mediocrity is something else entirely.

I used to think of mediocrity only as something to outrun. Now, I’m starting to think I’ve been looking at it from the wrong angle.

What is mediocrity, really?

The Latin roots medius (middle) and ocris (jagged mountain) suggest something mid-climb. Not at the peak, not at the bottom, just somewhere in between.

Then came the gospel of ambition and with it the rise of self-optimization that we still see today. Mediocre stopped meaning “ordinary” and started meaning “not enough” and even (gasp) “failure”. Because if you’re not progressing, what are you even doing?

It’s unsettling how quickly “enough” becomes “not quite.” How even when I have health, a stable income, good relationships, it can still feel insufficient. Getting a raise but feeling like the work is still soul-draining. Feeling like people admire you but don’t actually know you. Having free time but feeling too drained to do anything fulfilling.

We fear the middle because we’ve been conditioned to believe that anything short of extraordinary is failure.

Yet as Crispin Thurlow points out:

“Statistically speaking, life in the middle is inevitable and unavoidable for most of us. But is the middle such a bad place to be? In fact, it’s quite a privilege to be. It’s not as good as the top but it’s not as bad as the bottom.”

Somewhere along the way, we devalued anything that isn’t exceptional, even though most of life isn’t. We’ve been conditioned to see the middle as stagnation rather than sustainability, as failure rather than balance. Most of life happens in the middle yet we fight so hard against it.

What if mediocrity is exactly what we need in some areas?

Like many, I wasn’t raised to be mediocre. Maybe you weren’t either.

Maybe you come from a long line of people who worked too hard for you to simply exist in the middle. Parents who labored through long, unforgiving jobs, their exhaustion a currency traded for your future. Or perhaps they carried pioneer grit, immigrant hunger, or academic expectation, handing you a life you were expected to elevate, not simply exist within.

Or maybe you’ve seen firsthand what happens when mediocrity lingers too long. A parent who never did much. A spouse who drifted, numbed by screens and small distractions. Someone in your life who settled so deep into comfort that it calcified into complacency. Maybe you watched, frustrated, as ambition slipped through their fingers and told yourself you’d never let that happen to you.

To be mediocre would be a betrayal.

At least, that’s what I thought.

The more I sat with the idea of mediocrity, the more I saw how deeply it was stitched into me, woven from voices that spoke of survival, not choice. A world that tells us we should always be proving, always improving. Because to be anything less than exceptional is to risk being dismissed.

If you’re like me, the story of avoiding mediocrity has never been about personal ambition alone. It’s also been about lineage and responsibility, the unspoken rule that to rest is to fall behind. That to stop pushing is to risk being seen as lesser. To risk being underestimated. To risk being nothing.

For most of my life, I believed this was simply the cost of existing. That mediocrity was a failure I couldn’t afford.

Now, I’ve started to wonder if I was asking the right questions. Like:

Who benefits when I believe mediocrity is a failure?
Who profits when I constantly strive for more?
What does “success” look like when I define it for myself?
If I let go of the idea of failing, what new possibilities open up?

Amil Niazi, an immigrant and woman of color, likely asked the same questions when she renounced ambition, realizing excellence alone couldn’t overcome systemic barriers. “I finally understood time as finite and had to answer honestly to myself about where and how I was spending it,” she reflects. “A year later, I quit my job to freelance, to spend more time existing, being a person all the time instead of just squeezing it in between commutes and emails.” The real shift wasn’t her leaving, it was letting go of the idea that we must constantly prove our worth in every facet of our lives.

The more I pulled at this thread, the more I found healthier reframes—ones I’m still exploring. I’d love to unravel them with you:

Myth: Mediocrity means failure.
Reframe: No, it just means average. And most of us are average at most things, most of the time. That’s not failure. That’s life.
Myth: It’s shameful.
Reframe: There is nothing shameful about being average. The shame comes from a culture that worships achievement at all costs.
Myth: It lacks effort.
Reframe: Mediocrity doesn't necessarily mean a lack of effort. It can be a conscious choice to maintain a balanced life rather than constantly striving for excellence
Myth: It’s permanent.
Reframe: Mediocrity isn't a fixed state. People can move between mediocrity and excellence at different times of their lives .
Myth: If you’re mediocre at one thing, you’re mediocre at everything.
Reframe: No one is exceptional at everything or average at everything. We all have our strengths and areas where we simply get by—and that’s perfectly fine.

Is it possible to be content with mediocrity without compromising ambition?

Short answer, yes.

You already know this, but I’ll say it anyway: your definition of success will change. It will bend, stretch, break into pieces you don’t recognize, and then remake itself into something you never saw coming. Time will shape it. Loss will shape it. The things that crack you open and the things that stitch you back together—they’ll shape it too.

But success won’t demand that you be extraordinary at all costs. Knowing where to embrace good enough allows you to focus on what truly matters.

The people I admire most aren’t the ones who mastered every skill or dominated every room. They’re the ones who knew when good enough was good enough. Who didn’t let the fear of mediocrity stop them from creating a life that made sense to them.

Constant self-improvement sounds noble, but in my experience, chasing it endlessly hasn’t led to success on my terms. Selective mediocrity clears the way for what truly moves you forward.

Halfway up the mountain: reframing mediocrity’s meaning

Sometimes, stepping into good enough is the only way to see what truly matters.

In that sense, mediocrity isn’t failure. It’s a reckoning. A quiet rebellion. An unspoken ENOUGH.

And when the time comes to continue the climb—and it will(!)—I’ll decide what’s next on my own terms.

For now, sending you mucho amor (much love),

Flor