Yes, I’ve written before about the Great British Baking Show but seriously, there are so many layers in this seemingly simple reality show. 

Today I’m highlighting one of the key messages that the show is about: failure. Every episode I love to see how the bakers deal with failure—there’s always a few people who mess up one of their bakes, or think they mess up one of their bakes. And because this is television we get to see all of their drama up close. 

There are some people who take failure in stride. Some who maintain composure during stressful moments. (Generally, the ones who stay calm under stress are the ones who ultimately have a good shot at winning. Eventually the good bakers who keep losing it will crumble under the pressure.) What I love to watch is how the bakers handle knowing that they did their best, and their best wasn’t good enough. I love watching this because that is a really hard concept to grasp for me. If I produce something that isn’t good enough, I tell myself it wasn’t my best—because it makes me feel better to think that I just need to apply myself more. But I love how definitively they know what their best is and they find out rather quickly if it’s good enough by someone else’s standards. In this way they get to be proud of themselves, even if they don’t win. In my way, I often miss that pride because I just think about how not ‘good enough’ I am. 

This distinction was made very clear when there was a baker who, like me, couldn’t really handle doing her best and not winning. Eventually, she won the season and said, “Now I know I’m good enough.” She is one in 13,000 bakers to get this title. If she’s just ‘good enough,’ what is everyone else? If she hadn’t won she would leave feeling like a failure, not feeling like a runner-up in a highly competitive competition. This is the problem for her and for me and countless others who are only ‘good enough’ when we achieve a very difficult, near impossible, uncommon feat. So it’s time she and I, and the rest of us, start applying some of the wisdom of the other bakers—the ones who not only stay calm under stress—but who are comfortable recognizing when they have done their best and accepting when that isn’t the best out there.

For more reading on failure, check out this post about failing as a new manager, or this one about taking risks in general.