Don’t settle for anything less.

As I drank my cup of coffee this morning I thought “this really tastes good”. And it’s not by coincidence either. Store brand coffee beans were OK but not great. So, while at one of my day jobs that has an operating Cafe, I tasted their coffee and it was really good. No friends, I mean really, really good. The brand… Intelligentsia, was a bit on the expensive side, but when I noticed that Gourmet Garage here in NYC stocked that brand, my wheels began to turn. I bought a bag of those coffee beans, along with a bag of Gourmet Garage’s own house coffee beans and decided to mix them. I took action and made something work… (for me) that I wanted, but didn’t want to spend the money for. In short, I didn’t settle.

I don’t settle for things anymore. I search out ways to make everything work for me. How did I get past settling… I sure didn’t wake up one morning and say “I’m not going to settle anymore… that would be too easy. So honestly, I don’t know how it started. Maybe it was about 10 years ago, while watching Sex & The City (one of my acting credits). The episode was Broadway Actor Nathan Lane playing “Bobby” a Cabaret singer with very gay tendencies. He announced his engagement to “Mitzi” a very wealthy Hampton’s Socialite. While everyone scoffed at the obvious mismatched pair. They seemed very happy to have each others companionship. At the end of every episode Sarah Jessica Parker did a voice over saying something that reflected the mood and tone of the episode and the situation she found herself in. This episode her voice over said ” Some people are settling down, some people are just settling, and some people refuse to settle for anything less.

On my computer I have a program called “Stickies“, computer generated post it notes, and for years a stickie in the down left corner on my screen read the above quote. That simple quote affected me so, that I kept it with me for so many years and began to believe in it. I am now one of those people who refuse to settle for anything less. You can be too.

-Jeff