Stop Settling For Less With This One Easy Step

Settling has been on my heart heavy this week.

If you’re reading this, Valentine’s Day has come and gone and the love decorations are now on clearance. But your life’s desires and love life don’t have to also be on clearance.

My 20s taught me the art of settling when it comes to relationships. I was always love drunk over some guy that I wouldn’t even hold a conversation with today. Or I was in a friendship that was sucking the life out of me.

Why? Because, I was young and dumb and used to settling for well enough.

We’ve all heard the saying, “don’t settle for less than you deserve.” It’s plastered all over Pinterest quotes and Instagram graphics. It is usually referring to relationships. But what if we’re constantly settling in other areas of our lives too.

Me personally, I’ve settled at jobs, in friendships and for crappy apartments (more on this later). I’ve settled for almond milk at Dunkin when they’re out of oat milk.

Life is constantly forcing us to settle for convenience. Women especially are often expected to settle for less than or we’re considered difficult. But if you don’t already know, I’m not a woman who conforms to societal norms. So let me put you on game bestie. But first, a blast back to my past of settling for less.

Settling For Crumbs And Chaos

As previously mentioned in my article on slowing down in a rush, we often compare and assume everyone else has it together. So at 25, I was ready to move out from my parent’s place and buy myself a condo. I had set a deadline for May 1st and things were looking promising.

I had paid my HOA fees, picked out a color scheme for every room and had a closing scheduled for late April. But something just felt off. After going over my forced pros and cons list for the condo, I realized it wasn’t actually what I wanted. I wanted to move out so bad, I was willing to settle for the first place I had looked into.

A cancelled contract and a waste of inspection fees later, I decided I would look to rent. Just until I made a decision about what I really wanted. Fast forward a week or so and I went to look at a rental unit that seemed promising from the pictures. As I was walking in the door, the person who turned in their application a few minutes before me was walking out.

Gotta be quicker than that.

The Crumbs and Chaos

My bad luck quickly seemed to turnover as the agent gave me the keys to a unit upstairs that would soon be available. As I entered the apartment, I noticed how dark and cold it was. It didn’t look anything like my Pinterest board inspiration. The previous renters really did the place in. I mean the walls and bathroom were visibly dirty. The kitchen was as small as a box. It was what I would consider crumbs. But also chaos, because my God, what were these people doing before they moved out?!

However, it was on the third floor, so there was a crappy balcony and a huge walk in closet. The silver lining.

At this point I was just ready to have something to call my own. I figured they would paint and bring the apartment back to life, so I filled out an application with high hopes this time.

Denied, I was denied. Given what the unit looked like, I’d say audacity was at an all time high.

But still, I felt defeated and I cried out to God. I was met with peace and a feeling of surrender. I decided that it just wasn’t my time to move out. I’d wait another year, maybe get a better job and try again.

And a few days later, an apartment popped up around the neighborhood that I had grown up in. I’d looked in that area several times and couldn’t find anything that was reasonable in price and aesthetics. I put my big girl panties back on and decided I would throw something at the wall again to see if it’d stick.

It stuck! After all of the chaos, crumbs and settling I was willing to do, it stuck. I officially moved into my apartment on May 1st. Crazy right?

Reasons Why We Settle For Less

There are several reasons why we settle.

Time

I believe the most popular reason being timing. Timing is everything, at least to us on earth. We are constantly rushing towards something. Locations, deadlines, life events. All things we are rushing towards because we have this belief that we are running out of time to do them. That is the reason why a lot of people fail at their waiting seasons. As women, the pressure to settle down and have kids by a certain age is on. For men, the timing to have your finances, career and life together by a certain age is pressure.

And sadly, a lot of us rush into things because we fear we are running out of time. Like all the husbands and wives will run out. And all the jobs and apartments in the world will somehow be filled. But honestly, we are rushing because we’re competing with others who also have a distorted response to time.

Convenience & Fear

Short and to the point, it is convenient to settle. It’s convenient to stay in relationships, at jobs and in current mindsets. Not because we ultimately want to, but because going after what we want is scary. Which leads to fear. Sometimes we cling onto things that God didn’t call us to because we fear what we want is not available to us. So we settle for safe.

We fear the unknown and changes in our routine. Stepping out onto faith is hard, especially if we are not sure of the next step. Oftentimes, our mind convinces us that there may not be a next step. That is a lie. There is always a next step.

Learned Behavior

We take in a lot of things that we see from the people around us. Whether the information is coming from family, friends, peers, etc. , we take on their habits. If you saw your family settle for well enough in your childhood, you may also carry on that learned behavior. And even as an adult, if you are constantly seeing your friends overly compromise on their desires and needs, that may rub off on you.

From Settling To Surrender

As promised, there is one easy step to stop settling in every area in your life.

Surrender.

One thing life has taught us over the past few years is that life is gonna life. And we can either surrender and go with the sway of things or we can try to resist and have daily emotional breakdowns.

Surrender may not always be easy if you’re like me and you have some major control issues. But becoming familiar to surrender makes it easier to recognize when you may need to surrender. The funny thing is none of us are actually in control.

Whenever we are uncomfortable in our current season, we often try to cling onto things that God didn’t call us to. Whether that is a relationship, job opportunity, apartment or whatever the case may be. The enemy will often try to trick us by making us believe that we are behind or left out.

In turn, we start comparing, competing and trying to cling onto whatever we can to avoid feeling left out or behind. But in reality, we’re settling. And when you start settling, you are operating outside of God’s will for your life.

When you surrender, you give God full authority to let things organically fall into place. And when you trust that things will organically fall into place, you give faith the room to do its thing. Having faith will blow your mind every time.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite scriptures from Proverbs 3:5-6.

5Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)