Settle for More

by Megyn Kelly

To know who I am, you have to know where I’m from. My family raised me in upstate New York with the core message: Be whoever you are. That person may (or may not) be extraordinary. We’re not going to lie to make you feel better, but we’ll love you no matter what. In our house, it wasn’t “You are special.” It was more like “You don’t seem that special so far, but we don’t care.” That foundation of you-are-nothing-remarkable-and-that’s-okay worked very well for me. When I was growing up, I felt zero pressure to achieve. I mean zero. As a result, I was able to figure out for myself what I wanted to do and find my own motivation. I grew up happy and, thanks to my parents’ honesty, had no delusions of grandeur. Early on, I knew what I was and wasn’t good at, because no one ever oversold my talents. My parents would never have even considered the trophies-for-everyone parenting philosophy now so in vogue. In our family, trophies were for winners, and there was no pressure to win. If you did win, you were praised. If you didn’t, everyone would have a laugh and a big meal and call it a day. My family simply did not believe in false praise. As a result, I grew up the opposite of spoiled. Everything about my outlook—my values, my sense of right and wrong, my independence—began there.