Photo by Moses Mitchell
I’ve spent most of my life feeling I wasn’t good enough, as I’m sure many of us have. But recently it occurred to me that I actually don’t want to be good enough. Or, maybe I should say I really don’t want to strive to be good enough anymore. I consider it self-abusive when that striving leads me to compare myself to some standard of what my often-warped mind considers good enough. Maybe it has to do with the various people filling my Instagram or Facebook feed who I’m convinced must have achieved the standard of good enough that I’m seeking. The lives they describe through their pictures and posts make me believe they’ve done something right which I clearly have not. That’s just one example of the hell of comparison always at our fingertips, and one reason I’ve backed way off of spending my time in those arenas.
Holding this idea of being good enough to deserve certain life experiences has us so separated from what is natural to us. Given that we have so much input via social media, it is even easier to beat ourselves down the not good enough path until we feel like we’ll never get it right. I’ve heard so many people, including myself, express that what is in the way of the fulfillment of their dreams is the fact that they’ve never felt like they were good enough for them. Good enough to be loved, good enough for financial wealth, good enough to express their talents, and on and on.
We all need to leave good enough alone already. Break up with good enough now. Who wants to be good enough anyway? It sounds kind of mediocre in my opinion. Like just enough, but not too much. No thanks. I’d rather strive for more than good enough. Like great, extraordinary, above average, shining bright, too much, and every other descriptor that puts me in the attitude of loving myself and out of the mindset of comparison. Better yet, I’d like to leave the striving alone as well, and just sink into the understanding of myself as all of those qualities by my very nature.
I know most of us came down with not good enough syndrome somewhere in childhood because we either wondered why our parents couldn’t love us or show up for us the way we needed, or our friends left us out, or our first crush rejected us, or any great number of things that lodge this assessment of ourselves in our heads. But it’s not natural to us and we need to get in touch with that fact. The natural order of things goes a little more like this: we all came from the same creator/source energy, have that energy coursing through us, therefore making us all inherently the same and all intrinsically connected. If this is so, there isn’t even ever a question of not good enough. We made that up while we experienced the myriad of things that humans go through in this often-fucked up world.
“You are beautifully enough. Your stories of ‘not good enough’ are fictional novels written by a culture still hiding its light under a bushel of shame. The REAL story, your TRUE autobiography, is one of inherent magnificence, courage and divinity flowing through your soul-veins. So you decide which book to read – the fictional novel written by those who do not SEE you, or the HOLY BOOK written by your glorious spirit.” – Jeff Brown
If we know who we are and where we came from and we believe in our connectedness to all things and to the creator source energy then not good enough would cease to be an option. Let’s spend some time getting in touch with this truth by questioning our thoughts, processing our emotions around all those past little and big traumas, and seeing that most of the time the things we made to mean we were not good enough had very little to do with us and far more to do with the one whose actions we were interpreting. Let us start by questioning the beliefs and not just letting our subconscious convince us that this thought we’ve been thinking over and over again is actually real. Let’s ask ourselves how we got to thinking this way about ourselves, and if in reality there is any truth to it.
Let’s all take the advice of Bob Marley, and Marcus Garvey who inspired those song lyrics. Freedom is an inside job. I choose to question and replace my imprisoning stories with those which free my will to act on my own behalf.