Maybe There Isn’t Anything Wrong With You

One of the most discouraging things I come across in our culture is our refusal to encourage.

It comes out in small annoying ways.

Like how the first thing teachers report to you about your child are the things they did NOT do well in and how they can improve vs. what they did great in.

Or how most customers put more energy into feedback when you went wrong vs. when you did decently enough.

There’s a strange school of thought some of us have that if we affirm others too easily, we would be “spoiling them” or somehow not goading them towards excellence.

I wish we would stop our addiction to inadequacy. We seem to like making ourselves and each other feel like we’re just not good enough, like we’re not doing alright, like there’s something wrong with us.

The worst of the self-help and hustle industry pushes us to believe a toxic idea of how you are Not OK, so push yourself to be More Than OK then you can look down benignly at all the Not OK masses from your throne of More Enlightenment, More Money, More Ketones, More Returns on My Investments, More Marks for my kids’ tests etc.

It's an endless chase for More More More so I don’t have to feel Less Less Less.

The danger of building our self-worth this way is that all these things can fall apart on you, all those things can leave you, all those things can disappoint you. This is an excruciating truth that we already know - but refuse to admit.

Your self’s worth is supposed to be non-negotiable. Inalienable. It is your spiritual inheritance for simply being a miraculous human being or a beloved child of God, depending on your belief system.

You were born with worth.

You had so much worth - even before you had a name, had certifications, had a LinkedIn profile, had money, had assets, had networks, had girlfriends, had whatever you’ve been accumulating and stockpiling. You still have that worth.

Think about how much we rejoice and celebrate the birth of a baby or even the announcement of pregnancy. The greatest accomplishment the baby has to his or her name is just sheer existence. Even just knowing there was just a cell of you, even before the beginnings of a heartbeat of you, was enough to create immense joy in someone else. We were worthy and Good Enough back then. So why not now? What changed for us?

So do you believe your Self in and of itself has worth - or not? For that’s what self-worth means. The naked and unadorned self and nothing else and believing that it’s a worthy thing.

Or do you think this is some bull-shit fairy tale that only unaccomplished people tell to console themselves for not being (fill in the blank enough)?

The lovely part is that if you believe you have non-negotiable worth of your own, you’d have a far easier time believing in and reinforcing the worth of other people.

If you don’t see your own worth than you’re far more likely to do things or say things that perpetuate the culture of collective deep shameful inadequacy.

I don't think many of us are having it easy these days. I think there's more good people out there feeling grossly inadequate than there are good people feeling appropriately adequate.

There’s more than enough messages and data-points all around us saying We Are Not Doing Enough, Trying Enough, Being Enough. We hardly need even more reinforcement, more heavy bludgeoning of our weaknesses. I think most of us got the message from the systems we’ve been in well enough: we’re just not great.

I think it is the main reason why anxiety is rising so fast, so sharp and spreading so far and wide amongst us - even amongst our Richest, Smartest, most Beautiful and Best.

Because as long as you believe you’re Never Enough and you never have Enough, you’ll always be deeply insecure and anxious. It’s never been about our stuff. It’s always been about our story of self.

Anxiety is rooted in a deeply negative story of self. The more negative our story, the higher our anxiety. The more positive our story, the lesser our anxiety.

Too many of us are walking around hiding our secret panic attacks, our imposter syndromes, our silent fretting, our perfectionist streaks, our anxieties. I hate it. It's making us all grotesquely bent out of shape inside and feeling alone.

It’s not that there’s no place for a message of improvement. Of course, there will always be a need to get better and be better. It’s just that the message has been delivered in overkill.

So I do wish we would do our little part to balance the excesses of our system's devotion to Inadequacy by sowing into each other’s stories of Adequacy.

I wish we could compliment, affirm and encourage each other more.

Not because we did something exceptional but because there’s something already quite lovely and worthy about who we are, as we are.

And that at the deepest core level in the spirit, maybe there’s nothing wrong with us and we are Good Enough.