Why You Really Are Not Good Enough

Not feeling good enough for your job, for someone you like (or worse, someone you’re with), for the group of friends you hang out with, for your salary--this is a painful reality all of us face at one point, in one variant or another. It’s harmful not only to you but everyone around you. You aren’t ‘not’ good enough because there is no such thing as ‘good enough’ and changing your narrative will help you see that.

Humans are wired for shame

Thinking at length—even obsessing over—your failures, your shortcomings, your rejections and your regrets in both your personal and professional life is unnecessary but compulsive.

We can’t help it. We’re socially rewarded for shame and shamed for self-love. But you’re no hero for undervaluing yourself.

The resent and anxiety that comes with the ‘not good enough’ ideation is poison, one that runs so deeply and viciously that it dissolves our ability to grow and improve. Self-acceptance and high self-esteem don’t equate arrogance and they won’t make you complacent and vain.

That’s not what society tells us, though.

The secret to feeling ‘good enough’ (read: understanding that a ‘good enough’ human means literally nothing) is through self-acceptance and being able to listen to yourself. We suffer not only from a technology-driven lack of connection but from a deeper lack of connection with our own values, our bodies, minds, and needs—a lack of connection with ourselves.

And when we only see life through everyone else’s eyes, it’s harder to know and accept ourselves.

The interpersonal and intrapersonal Imposter Syndrome dilemma

I couldn’t stop looking at him. My then-boyfriend was riled up, angry but vibrantly connected with his community in their fight against the State and capitalist oppression. There was something about him that burned constantly. A fuel that never gave out, never needed replenishing. In my life, I have never had a passion light me up so fiercely.

My ex, a fiery Aries, was a revolutionary to the core. There are subjects I care about deeply, but I’ve never been a full-fledged activist for any cause.

I’d accompany him on occasion to marches and protests, but I never felt emotional about it. At the 2017 G20 in Hamburg, I remember walking down the boardwalk and seeing two distinct groups of people who, to me, signaled trouble: policemen in their full-on riot gear and anarchists all in black. I got too nervous and couldn’t stay. I felt like a fraud.

There was something that hung over me in this relationship. Something that, over time and beyond the love we had for one another, was not right. Something that didn’t fit. I didn’t realize until after that it was just a misalignment of character and pathways.

As the years passed and we grew as people, what I should have seen as a divergence in life purposes I saw as my being ‘not good enough’ for this smart, kind and passionate being.

And I started becoming resentful. I knew that my attendance at these marches and community meetings was forced and unenthusiastic, even unauthentic. I saw other girls from his activist community speak with the same zeal and martyrdom that I saw in him. Why wasn’t he with someone like them?

One day, I assured myself, he would find somebody “better”. At the time, I thought it was better than me, not better for him. My self-doubt was a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it wasn’t only on account of our incompatible differences.

The more I imagined I wasn’t good enough, the lower my self-esteem fell, and the needier and more resentful I became.

Being needy is not something I am used to. It is outside of my character. I felt humiliated and I didn’t like myself. The circle was vicious and painful, and all created in my head, by me, and by my negative affirmations. Created by an unreasonable sense of ‘not being good enough’.

We compare ourselves blindly

I tried to change and become more like somebody else. But I’m a businesswoman and an artist. I change the world and connect with people through personal development, creation, and business.

It took my leaving the relationship entirely to understand that there is no such this as being ‘good enough’ for anything or anyone. To understand that the only thing I needed to change was my acceptance of myself as a worthy person. To listen to myself and accept when things aren’t right for me.

It’s human nature to feel like we’re ‘too’ something or not something ‘enough’. Trying to be someone that’s acceptable to everyone will make us unacceptable to ourselves. Because deep inside, we know we’re not being true.

It's like if a mountain would think its too high or not pointy enough.

We can compare ourselves to anybody and feel inferior. Sometimes I compare myself to other women and I don’t feel skinny enough or like my face isn’t symmetrical enough.

In the above situation, it was almost the opposite – I saw these women who were fighters, they were intelligent and didn’t care about looks or the pedestrian worries that most people have (or at least to me, it didn’t seem so). I compared myself to them and thought I wasn’t passionate enough.

But I am, just about other things. It took me a long time to understand we are all different but the same in our uniqueness.

It’s hard to explain without sounding cliché. We can feel inferior about anything. But everyone has faults, they just lie in different places.

When you look at how much money somebody makes compared to you, you forget to take into account how hard they’ve worked, how long they’ve been at it or maybe how many relationships they’ve lost in the process.

When you feel like a peasant when you fly economy (quoting somebody who told me this), you forget that first-class passengers have a 7x greater carbon footprint than economy ones, and you can actually feel good taking that extra step for the earth in economy.

We aren’t better than anyone else and we aren’t worse than them either. Superiority and inferiority are myths. We are just animals. Can a cat with long hair claim superiority over a cat with short hair? If it tried, all the other cats would give about zero fucks and would continue walking on my keyboard without a care in the world.

Ranking our quality as humans is equally as ridiculous. Listen to the cats.

The Professional Imposter Syndrome

But when it comes to work, things may be a little different than just accepting we’re all humans. Work requires skill and competence.

Not feeling good enough in the professional sphere is called the ‘Imposter Syndrome’. The imposter syndrome is when professionals feel like they are not worth their salt. That you just got lucky professionally, and one day somebody’s going to find you out for the fraud that you are.

It doesn’t only plague beginner professionals: Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has admitted to feeling undeserving and insecure in his position, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou is known to have said:

“I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.'”

According to the International Journal of Behavioral Science, 70% of people suffer from Imposter Syndrome. It’s our inability to internalize and accept our successes.

According to Dr. Valerie Young, a researcher on the Imposter Syndrome, there are five different archetypes of the Imposter Syndrome:

• The Perfectionist: Overachiever and high goal setters who feel excessive anxiety when they don’t reach the goal. Everything. Must. Be. Perfect. If they miss their insanely high objective, they feel they are not good enough or not cut out for their work.
• The Superman/superwoman: People who feel like phonies in their workplace try to make up for it by working far longer hours than their colleagues. They let their passions and hobbies fall aside and will never feel like they’ve worked enough to earn their title.
• The Natural Genius: These people judge their competence based on ease and ‘natural’ ability to do something. Also setting their standards extremely high, they judge themselves for not being able to get something right the first time. They always got good grades and had an easy time excelling in school, and any sign of struggle means failure to them. Setbacks induce extreme feelings of shame.
• The Soloist: These people are unable to get help from anyone. They have to do everything on their own. To them, asking for help will only reveal their phoniness and that they’re a fraud.
• The Expert: These people will never feel qualified enough. They won’t start a job if they don’t have every single qualification and they measure their worth based on ‘how much’ they know. No matter how long they have been in their role, they’ll never feel like they ‘know enough’ to qualify.

Do you relate with any of these? When we compare ourselves to other professionals or other people, we only see what they show: their success, their smiles, and their happiness. And we forget that there’s pain, too. We forget they’re also comparing themselves.

Changing the narrative in your mind

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s all a head game. The ability to feel ‘good enough’ is not in changing to fit what you think you should be, but learning to accept yourself exactly as you are.

I know what you’re thinking: “If I accept myself as I am, won’t that stop me from growing, improving, and working hard to succeed?”

Nope. Accept who you are now: your weight, your financial situation, your skills, your passions, your character. Self-acceptance is the first step toward self-love, which is the gateway to finding your truest, greatest success, only defined by you.

When you accept yourself, you worry far less about what other people think, and you stop defining and designing your life based on the opinions or lives of others. That's when you can start discovering what you do best, and how you can best serve people.

The narrative in your mind is powerful, and one fueled by shame does not help you make the decisions that are best for you. It doesn’t help you choose the right people to spend your time with or how you will approach your work.

Telling yourself you’re not good enough every day will make you believe that you aren’t. And it will change you.

Telling yourself that you ARE enough every day will give you the power to listen to your values, desires, and needs and work towards them accordingly. Learn to listen to yourself when you feel something isn’t right. Say no to people and activities that don’t make you excited to see or do.

Accept your negative experiences in the same way as you do your positive ones. Love yourself when you’re in the dumps (and when there’s a dry season or a sad season, which there always will be) and celebrate each and every one of your achievements.

The key is in your hands. People are all the same and they’re all different. We all suffer and we all succeed.

Post originally published on the Maeva Everywhere blog