The fear that you're not good enough

One of the biggest things that I work on with clients, and something that we even devote time to during our life coach training program, is this: the fear that you’re not good enough.

The fear that you’re not good enough is a fear routine that affects everyone, though it shows up differently for each person (for some of you, “not good enough” expresses itself as going into workaholic over-achiever mode; for others it shows up as comparisons; for others it shows up as procrastination and avoidance and not finishing what you start).

So let’s unpack this feeling not good enough thing, a bit.

The Logical Fallacies of “Not Good Enough”

There are logical fallacies that underlie the fear of not being good enough. A logical fallacy is something that might seem logical or try to be based in logic, but the logic falls through because certain underlying assumptions that would make it true, just aren’t there.

Logical Fallacy #1: That “enough” can be clearly defined.

Consider this question: How would you even begin to define what qualifies as “good enough”?

You can probably list several ideas: “I’d be good enough if I…didn’t snap at my kids, made more money, lost X number of pounds, actually committed deeply to my spiritual practice, stopped procrastinating…”

But then we start to deconstruct this definition of “enough”–so please hang in here with me, and read each word, carefully, because this might be the start of your freedom from feeling not enough.

Can you really define what makes a person “enough”? Can you really define what makes you “enough”?

Walk through this with me: If someone makes plenty of money and is the “perfect” weight and is deeply committed to her spiritual practice and never procrastinates, many of the markers we tell ourselves would determine our own “enoughness”…

…how do you know for sure that those factors make her “enough”? Or what if she does all of those things–but she also yells at her kids. What if she has a massive rage-fest, one time a year, and she’s a perfect mother every other day of the year? What then?

I’m sure you see the point I’m getting at–that this “enough” idea is essentially undefinable. The boundaries are loose and impermeable.

Logical Fallacy #2: If I understand where I first started to think I’m not good enough, then I’ll be able to believe that I am good enough.

This one is only partially true. It’s only helpful if you’re going to use that understanding to see, in a compassionate way, the pain that the message-bearer was in when they imprinted their criticism and hurt onto you. In other words, it’s helpful to see that whoever taught you that you weren’t good enough, only taught you that because they didn’t believe that they were good enough.

Unfortunately, I see that a lot of well-intentioned coaches, therapists, workshop leaders, etc., will then encourage their clients to tell that person to “Fuck off” in an angry letter that they’ll never send, or they’ll find all the ways in which the early message-bearer was a screw-up and thus can’t be trusted, or they’ll instruct their clients to “not listen” to that voice, or even to tell that “not enough” voice to “Shut up!” every time they hear it.

That doesn’t work. If you try to feel like you are good enough by yelling at the person who first told you you weren’t “enough” or the voice inside that criticizes you… you’re just doing the same thing; you’ve responded to abuse by becoming the abuser.

Logical Fallacy #3: That finding evidence of your enough-ness and affirming it (“I am enough; I am enough”), will help you to feel like you are good enough.

First, this doesn’t work because it buys right back into the idea that there even is a definition of “good enough.” The loop of trying to find the evidence in the first place, keeps you stuck in perpetually needing to find more evidence.

Second, this doesn’t work because you being good enough isn’t something you need to accrue evidence for. You already are good enough.

Now, I know that you’ve heard this, “You are already good enough” before, but let me illustrate this with a visual picture:

Imagine standing in a room where there’s a table with a buffet of food.

Except, you are standing with your back to a buffet table of food. Imagine it: a long table, tons of food, and it’s all right there, but you’re standing with your back to it. Because you’re standing this way, you’re assuming that there is no food. Because you’re assuming that there is no food, you’re saying “I HAVE FOOD. I HAVE FOOD” over and over, in the hopes that then the food will come.

If you’d only stop assuming that the food isn’t there in the first place, you’d see that it’s actually there. The striving and chaos of hustling to be good enough is predicated on a belief that you aren’t fundamentally good enough, to begin with. This hustling ends up turning you in circles–it’s the hustling that’s distracting you from what’s already there.

It’s all already there. You are already good enough.

Hustling to do things to be good enough, isn’t what makes someone good enough.

Saying, “I am good enough; I feel good enough” over and over isn’t what makes you feel that way.

The Truth About Enough

Here’s what does make you start feeling good enough:
No longer assuming that you’re not good enough.
No longer turning your back to the fact that you are good enough.
No longer trying to find evidence that you are good enough.

All you need is to question definitions of “enough” (or deserving, worthiness, or “mattering” to others). As you question, listen carefully to what the voice is saying and the wound that it expresses.

Start to ask yourself why this voice would say this. What wound might prompt a voice to say such a thing–that you aren’t enough, aren’t deserving, or don’t matter?

That’s where you’ll find the help you’re looking for–within the voice that sounds so angry, but that is actually so wounded and so desperate for help that it’s going to start screaming, if it has to. If you’re desperate for water, your behavior will get more desperate. The hungrier you are, the more irritable you are. When you’re emotionally starving, the needs of those emotions, demanding nourishment, also get more extreme.

Listen to the voices of not good enough, and you’ll learn what they are really saying.

The voices of “not good enough” are really saying…

This voice that tells you that you aren’t enough…might just be an addiction. It literally might be this thing that you turn to, as a means of self-sabotage and playing victim. You might realize with startling clarity that you don’t actually, truly, honestly believe you “aren’t enough,” and that it’s become something of a habit to tell yourself this for any number of reasons.

It’s through listening without attachment to this voice, that you learn this valuable information and can then give less weight to the message–next time it comes up, you might take a breath and say to yourself, “Ah, yes. I totally see how I’m turning to that old message, again.”

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This voice that tells you that you aren’t enough…might have a fear that its needs won’t be met. Maybe you go to a place of thinking about how you’re “not good enough” because assuming that your lack of goodness is the major problem in your life, feels less vulnerable than actually taking action and making changes.

It’s through listening without attachment to that voice, that you’ll learn this valuable information and can get to the important business of meeting your truest needs.

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This voice that tells you that you aren’t enough…might be confused about what it means to make mistakes, and thus it might have a fear of making them. This “not good enough” voice might think that making mistakes is the worst thing in the world, and that it’s protecting you by telling you that you aren’t good enough. This voice might think that then, you won’t go out into the world and make mistakes or be rejected or risk failure. It might be a self-protection mechanism disguised in angry inner critic voices.

The voice of not enough might not realize that actually, what would really help when you make mistakes is developing resilience through self-forgiveness.

The voice of feeling not enough might have also been taught that forgiveness is for wimps and chumps who let people take advantage of them; forgiveness is the same as pretending something didn’t happen; forgiveness means that what abuses did happen are somehow okay.

It’s through listening without attachment to this voice, not hoping and praying that you’ll finally figure out the “not enough” equation, that you might realize: “Holy shit. No one ever taught me about forgiveness, in my family. People were mad at you until the storm passed, and if I made a mistake, I had to bow and scrape my way into their good graces until they stopped being mad, which is not actually ‘forgiveness.’ If I learn how to actually forgive–what that process looks like–I’ll have another option for recognizing that when I make mistakes, I can repair that without beating up on myself.”

It’s listening to the voice–not rejecting it, making it bad or wrong, or trying to sprinkle affirmation fairy dust on it until it goes away–that gives you this incredibly insightful information.
 

Flip It

Next time you ask yourself what it is that you struggle with, don’t say that your primary issue is “feeling like I’m not good enough.”

Say that your primary issue is struggling with listening to the voice. Say that your challenge is really about wanting to ignore the voice or beat that voice down (you and me both, sister–this is an ongoing journey).

Next time you’re tempted to go into “not enough” or any messages that are close-cousins, here’s one simple mantra that can replace those forced affirmations: “I’ll discover something, if I listen without attachment.”

Or here are two questions to ask yourself: “What are my definitions of ‘good enough’ and ‘not good enough’? Can I really define these?”

Spend less time searching for the enough-ness (trust me; the buffet table is right there).

Spend more time noticing and deconstructing the stuff that sits in the way when you’re ready to pull up a chair and feast.