Getting A Handle On Your Fear Of Being Not Good Enough (So You Can Get On With Your Life)

There are plenty of unforeseen hurdles that can put a hold on life as you know it. But there is nothing like the fear of being not good enough to stop it in its tracks indefinitely.

“Time and tide wait for no man.” This centuries-old insight may seem cliché in its obviousness. But consider the ways we ask those autocrats of life to do just that -- to wait.

Wait until I figure this out.

Wait until I fall in love.

Wait until I’m out of debt.

Wait until I get rid of this fear of not being good enough.

Even as you are pleading for life to pause so you can catch up, it is moving on. And the gap between where you are and where you want to be -- could be...should be -- only expands.

If your life is held back by a fear of not being good enough, it’s time to make peace with “now.” Reaching the future, let alone feeling satisfaction with it, is impossible when you haven’t made peace with where you currently are and have been.

Author Lori Deschene says, “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.”

There is far more that is right with you than is wrong with you. And if you are going to get past your fear of being not good enough, you need to brave the journey into your goodness.

Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? “Why do I need to be brave to look at what is good about myself?”

Well, think about it. How much time do you spend ruminating over your perceived flaws and failures? How often does your inner critic tell you not to bother setting goals because you won’t achieve them, anyway? How quickly can you write a list of all the things you don’t like about yourself?

Now turn the tables. How much time do you spend being grateful for your gifts and achievements? How often do you dream about manifesting a new idea...and feel excited about it? How quickly can you write a list of all the things you like about yourself?

It’s important to start noticing the automatic mental and emotional habits that don’t serve you well. Do you automatically assume you are to blame for everything that goes wrong in your life? Do you talk yourself out of taking action because you are afraid of failing? Do you compare yourself with others, and somehow always come out on the short end?

You may have to do some fearless soul-searching to find the destructive string of thoughts that ultimately tell you you’re not good enough. But if you can’t immediately trace the thoughts, you can always look at your behaviors -- and then the motives behind them.

Do you try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of worthlessness by being self-destructive and sabotaging your own efforts? Do you go the other way and try to prove your worth through achievement?

Once you recognize these habits, you can start intercepting them before they create a downward spiral.

The only way to get a handle on your fear of being not good enough is to face the fear.

Not always so easy, obviously. But until you do, you will unconsciously operate from a place of “not good enough” in all your choices, behaviors and relationships. And you will never be in control of your own life.

So, the choice is yours. But “time and tide wait for no man,” so you must choose. You can pass on today, knowing that you will never get it back. Or you can stop the insanity. Find the origin of your fear of being not good enough, and choose compassionate, life-affirming thoughts and behaviors.

When you realize that your fear of being not good enough really comes from a yearning to be loved, everything will change. You will finally have the opportunity to push your perfectionism, guilt, and perceived failures to the background.

And in their place you will stand naked, raw, and vulnerable to the purity of being loved simply because you are.

Perhaps Fred Rogers was channeling a Higher Power when he said:

“To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

Put your hand over your heart.

That’s where the love starts.

If you need to get a handle on your fear of being not good enough, please reach out. We can help you can get on with your life.