I’m Not Good Enough—And That’s OK

by Charles “Chuck “Ritter

Failure. Adversity. Struggle. Friction. Not being good enough. These words associate with feelings we generally try to avoid because they cause stress, anxiety, irritation, and unpleasant internal feelings. But we shouldn’t avoid them; instead, we need to embrace them. The only true path to being fulfilled and legendary in life is through these words. I can tell you right now I’m not good enough, and that’s difficult to say, but it’s also something I’m excited about.

Someone once said, “A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.” Think about that concept as you read.

Early in my career, I really wanted to go to Ranger School, which is known as one of the toughest schools in the military. I didn’t get a chance to go as a young infantryman. And when I graduated from the U.S. Army Special Forces Qualification Course in 2003 the deployment tempo was so wild that it wasn’t until 2010 that I finally got my chance as a decently-senior sergeant first class/E7.

It was a unit policy that one had to attend a three-week Pre-Ranger course before Ranger School, regardless of rank or background. My boss got me into the Ranger Regiment’s Pre-Ranger course, which is considered the best in the Army. It would be Pre-Ranger right to Ranger School at Benning, back-to-back.

I trained hard. I was very physically fit. I hit the books: Infantry Squad and Platoon and the Ranger Handbook. I did a lot of land navigation and tactical training. And so, I went to fulfill my dream.

…but I failed Pre-Ranger.

Not only was I not good enough to earn my Ranger tab, I wasn’t good enough to even get to Ranger School.

During land navigation, at my first attack point, I opened my compass and discovered it was broken. I had failed to do something as fundamentally basic as conducting pre-combat checks on mission-critical equipment. I ran back, grabbed a new compass, returned to my attack point, and opened it, only to find it was also broken. I didn’t learn my lesson the first time.

In the self-assessment that followed, I found that I had tripped over my ego. Ego isn’t a bad thing; it’s just our sense of self-worth. We all have one, but we often let it get in our way. It becomes problematic when it’s unbalanced, and you find yourself in the bandwidth of arrogance and hubris, which is precisely where I was and why I blew off something as essential as a pre-combat check.

I never got a chance to go back. That was my shot, and I blew it. Because of that arrogance and hubris, I don’t have a Ranger tab. I learned a lot from that experience. I grew from it, and never again blew off the basics and fundamentals.

Fast-forward from 2010 to 2021, when I was eligible for the Command Select Board for command sergeant major. I put a lot of time and effort into updating my records and board file. I was extremely confident. I had three valor awards, three purple hearts, and very strong evaluations. I was a shoo-in—or so I thought.

When the board results came out and the names were listed, mine wasn’t one of them. In the eyes of the Army, I wasn’t good enough to be a command sergeant major.

I talked to a few people with specific knowledge of that board. They said, “Chuck, it’s not your competence; you’re very competent. The consensus on you is that you shouldn’t be a Command Sergeant Major because of your personality.”

I was taken aback at first. But after some thought, I realized that it was a fair assessment. At certain levels in the Army, the system views risk differently. People don’t want to deal with problems, and I get it. I wouldn’t want to deal with working for me.

That stresses me out just thinking about it.

Not everybody has to be a provocateur. Not everybody has to be that boat captain, always going full speed ahead toward the objective, creating a ton of wake, disrupting the water for everybody else. But I do; I am that guy. 

I evaluated the situation and said, “Okay, I am not what the Army needs as a command sergeant major. The criticisms are valid, and if I’m going to fix that, I need to retool my personality.”

Some of my core values are authenticity, courage, and humor, to name a few. I realized I wasn’t prepared to retool. I was okay with not being good enough, even though it was a blow to my ego. That was the only time I competed for command sergeant major. But I had to make a decision about what to do next because I had time left in the Army due to impending surgeries related to wounds I previously received in combat.

The wounds were bad, and my recovery took a long time. In fact, when I attended the Pre-Ranger course I was still missing my front teeth because they hadn’t finished rebuilding my upper jaw from the first time I was wounded. In 2008, I was in an RG33 MRAP, or mine-resistant light armored vehicle, when it was hit by 500lb of explosives that ripped it apart, killing two people and severely wounding the rest of us. It crushed my body. It took four years to rebuild parts of my face, mainly my nose and jaw, and I didn’t receive my final surgery from that incident (and my front teeth) until 2012. It caused substantial brain damage, destroyed both my hips and my back, and caused chronic lung issues.

In 2013, shortly after being cleared from the first time I was wounded, I took three rounds from a PKM, a Russian-made machine gun, during combat operations in Afghanistan. In 2014, I was shot again, also with a PKM. I was also seriously injured in combat a year before the Pre-Ranger course. My final surgery tied to all of that—my second hip replacement—is this coming November. With all of the above experiences reminding me of my own shortcomings (as well as my own mortality), the question now is: “What do I do with my remaining time?”

I decided to retire from the Army and invest my efforts toward positively impacting the force in any way possible. The Army has been an amazing experience from start to finish. I’m thankful for even the weirdest, most absurd adversity and struggle. There has been some truly bizarre adversity and struggle. I feel truly blessed for it. But I am ready for something different. I want to help others find their own sense of arete.

More than that, we need to embrace and weaponize the concept of not being good enough. We need to embrace adversity. Life is a never-ending cycle of struggle and not being good enough. But we can keep trying. Even with my injuries, I always enjoyed the challenge and discomfort of still scoring above a 290 on a PT test or a 540 on the new ACFT. We adjust, we adapt, and we conquer.

Everything is perishable, so being great at something in the past doesn’t necessarily mean you’re still good enough at it today to stay relevant. Life is a constant cycle of figuring out what we want to excel at, prioritizing those things based on necessity or preference, and mastering them to reach our goals. Sometimes, our goals aren’t realistic, and we need to accept that we’re not good enough— even if it hurts our ego. Along the way, we’ll often fail, but that failure is a powerful tool.

Failure and defeat aren’t synonyms. Failure and adversity are springboards to becoming legendary. Right now, I’m on the road to retirement, and I am not good enough to leave the military and do what I need to do to be successful on the outside. I’m okay with that, and I’m also excited about it. I love the constant cycle of moving from ignorance to competence. That’s why I’m in multiple programs to help prepare me for that journey and help me become good enough.  

I’ll wrap this up by sharing one of my morning affirmations, “Embrace adversity. Use every failure to improve. Embrace not being good enough. Weaponize it for self-development in the endless pursuit of excellence. In doing so, hopefully, I inspire others to do the same.” That’s why I enjoy doing seemingly stupid things like taking an ACFT three days before a hip replacement. Maybe some young soldier is on the other side struggling through his events, and he sees my old broke ass doing it and goes, “Okay, I can do this. I just need to up my game.”

It goes back to the original saying: a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul if you have the right mindset.

Live with Purpose, Embrace Adversity, and Pursue Arete.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on October 10, 2024.

Chuck Ritter is an active-duty Army Special Forces sergeant major stationed at Fort Liberty, NC. He is set to retire in 2025. He is a co-founder of Objective Arete LLC, a veteran-owned self-development company. Chuck previously co-hosted/produced the Pineland Underground Podcast and serves on the Board of Directors for the Dreams 4 All Foundation.

He has been awarded the Silver Star Medal, Bronze Star for Valor, Army Commendation Medal for Valor, three Purple Heart Medals, the Triple E Valor and Courage award, and most importantly, the NDSM and Air Assault Badge.

He is attending Norwich University, completing a B.S. in Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis. In 2025, he will apply to the Duke University MBA program.

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