Enough
Fabian Mesaglio
CNA Engineering Manager at Caylent | Software Architecture | Building & Scaling High-Performing Teams | Cloud & AI Advocate
The time we live in confronts us with the impossibility of competing with the image we create; nothing is enough, nothing pleases, nothing can fill that glass that oscillates between empty and full, with our perception as the only measure of value in determining its state.
Engaged in the eternal pursuit of an elusive happiness that moves away from us as if it were a magnet with the opposite pole, appearing within reach but at an insurmountable distance, it exhausts us and appears elusive, hiding in the shadow of every failure.
We often find ourselves running towards the mirage of happiness, only to stumble upon the inconsistency of our own definitions. We strive to believe that joy is a formula, a set of conditions that, once met, will bring us eternal bliss. But life, the Universe, is not a formula. It is a journey, and we are the navigators. We have the power to decide how we feel, and it is at this point that we truly begin to understand happiness.
Amid all these feelings of unease, the impostor syndrome bends us. It imposes personal improvements far from what is truly necessary, putting us on a path where anxiety whispers in our ears that we are not everything others expect of us. At this point, we reach the actual trap; we will never live up to what we imagine others expect, and if only we could see beyond our anxieties and speculations, we would understand that the only person we need to convince is the one we see in the mirror every morning, who ultimately does not need to be any thinner, any fatter, any taller, any shorter, any more accommodating, any more athletic because they are already what truly exists in the present.
This does not mean we cannot plan and act accordingly to feel better about some personal characteristics. It shows us that if we do not learn to feel good about our now, we will always live expecting some change to happen tomorrow, anxious or distressed, waiting for something that never really arrives.
The most important person in your life is you. If you have ever been on a plane, the flight attendants tell you before the flight begins that if we have someone in our care and the oxygen masks fall due to a problem on the flight, we should be the first to put on the oxygen; otherwise, we would faint, leaving those who depend on us unprotected.
The people around you will always demand from you what they dare not demand from themselves. They will project their own frustrations onto you because it is always easier to project our fears and insecurities onto others than to take responsibility for them. But this is where it all begins. For some reason, we believe that those who make up the society around us are adequate critics of our situation. A million flies eat feces...
All this happens because we believe there is a unit of value in which perfection is a logical parameter, but "perfection" is nothing more than a subjective appreciation and only makes sense from the point of view of an observer. Since what is perfect for someone can be imperfect for another person. At this point, we return to the "self,” that is, to the only person in the Universe who can evaluate the level of perfection to which they aspire.
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For some reason, that "Self" has a biased, fearful look in the constant search for something more; why can't it be as simple as loving oneself? Why can't we leave the opinion of others as an essential component? And there is a reason: there is a group of neurons that we all have as social beings; they are called mirror neurons; they produce synapses based on what they interpret about what happens to someone else, they make us empathetic, they allow us to infer the sensations and emotions of others around us, yes, we are going to feel those sensations and feelings that the state of those other people produces in us. Thus, we are condemned to the addiction of social feedback as part of our self-assessment since our mirror neurons put others in our minds as satellites of our thinking, making us believe that they are part of us. If many see me that way, I must be wrong... and this is a big mistake.
First, we must understand that we are the owners and the responsible ones for our destiny. We must embrace change and understand that homeostasis is an illusion and chaos determines life’s existence. Thus, we must learn to love ourselves with our mistakes and flaws. Internalize that no matter how much the person you see in the mirror changes, inside, they remain the same, and that the reality in which you live, finally, is produced from within and not from outside your mind; your whole world is interpreted by the gray matter that inhabits between your ears, and the option to be happy or miserable depends absolutely on your decision, and not on the opinions of others.
One of life’s greatest truths is that we cannot truly love anyone without first loving ourselves. To love is to give the best version of ourselves to others. If we do not believe in ourselves being the best, we are not giving our loved ones what they deserve. So, the first step on this journey is to start loving ourselves. We must understand that we are a work in progress, on the path to something extraordinary. Every step we take toward our purpose is a step that completes us, but it does not make us better. Because, in truth, we are already enough.
So, for all of this, let's repeat together:
By Fabian Mesaglio