The Need to Be Exceptional, and the Beauty of Falling Short.

I was listening to an episode of The Psychology of Your 20s the other day, where the host talked about how so many young women learn to measure their worth by how exceptional they can be. Not just competent or consistent — exceptional.

It wasn’t framed as ambition. It was framed as survival. And hearing that out loud felt strangely familiar, like someone naming a pattern I’d been living without realizing it.

Because I’ve spent a lot of my twenties trying to be exceptional in every room I walked into — even in the places I deeply loved.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to treat success not as something to savor, but as something to maintain. Every milestone became less of a celebration and more of a responsibility — a standard I had to match, or else it didn’t count.

As a woman in my twenties, I felt this subtle pressure to be impressive all the time. To stay ahead. To keep achieving. To earn my place over and over again.

If I slipped even slightly, I convinced myself it meant I didn’t belong.

And the strangest part? This mindset grew in the very spaces that brought me joy.

On the Stage:

Theatre was my first love. Anything I know about presence, emotion, communicating with my whole body, I learned it under stage lights.

But even in something I adored, I quietly measured myself against impossible standards. If I got a role, I downplayed it. If I delivered a strong performance, I brushed it off as luck or timing. I didn’t know how to let myself enjoy what I’d earned.

I thought if I didn’t surpass my last performance, the one before it didn’t matter. I thought if I slipped, even once, I didn’t deserve to take up space on that stage.

In the Miss America Organization:

I treated every phase of competition like a scoreboard. If I didn’t outdo my last performance, it erased everything I had done well. If I won something, I explained it away. If I placed highly, I convinced myself I “got lucky.”

I can still picture myself walking out of Friday night preliminaries with a silver talent award in my hand—an award I should’ve been proud of—telling my mom, “I don’t know why they gave it to me. I was so weak at the end of my song.”

Isn’t it wild how we can be standing in the exact place we once prayed to be—and still convince ourselves we don’t deserve to be there?

On the Sidelines:

Looking back, I see all the ways I treated success like a performance instead of a gift.

Sideline reporting at Georgia Southern should’ve been one of the most exciting chapters of my life. But instead of letting myself enjoy it, I carried this heavy belief that I hadn’t earned any of it. That I was handed opportunities I wasn’t “qualified enough” or “talented enough” to deserve.

Every game became a test. A flawless hit meant I could breathe until the next one.A stumble meant I’d failed.

I’d drive home in silence, replaying moments no one else noticed. The crowd barely remembered. My producers didn’t mention. But I felt them like bruises.

And when someone complimented my work, my first word—always—was, “Really?” Not out of humility, but disbelief.

The Trap of Earned Worth

That’s the exhausting part of this version of exceptional: you start to believe accomplishment is only real if it’s perfect. You start to believe worth is only valid if you never slip.

You stop seeing success as something you created. You stop seeing yourself as someone who has grown. You start seeing everything as either evidence you belong—or evidence you don’t.

It leaves no room for humanity. No room for learning. No room for grace.

And then, I began to fall short... over and over again.

The turning point didn’t come from one specific setback. It came from a collection of moments in my twenties thus far — moments where life didn’t unfold the way I planned, where I didn’t meet my own expectations, where “exceptional” wasn’t possible because I was simply human.

And strangely, those were the moments that softened me. Not in a defeated way — in a grounded way.

They made me ask questions I had avoided for years:

What if exceptional isn’t the goal?

What if the pressure to exceed myself constantly is the very thing keeping me from fully living my life?

What if being human is enough?

I discovered that the most beautiful parts of me don’t show up in my best moments. They show up in the in-between—the growing, the trying, the not-quite-perfect-but-still-showing-up.

And there is a softness in that. A freedom, actually.

When exceptional stopped being my only setting, I finally had room to breathe. To learn. To evolve. To belong—even when I wasn’t shining.

still care deeply. I still prepare. I still love the work.

But I don’t measure my worth by how flawless I am anymore. I don’t let every slip rewrite my story. I don’t treat success like an obligation.

I belong because I am here. Because I show up. Because I am growing.

Falling short isn’t failure. It’s where becoming begins.

With Heart,

Megan Wright