I don’t have a quote or picture to go with this post. Already I’m starting out my post about “Never Enough Syndrome” thinking I should apologize for not having “enough” in it. Brene Brown talks a lot about this, as does Tara Brach and I’m sure many others. It is a pretty common occurrence in our world and in our society. We are trained to believe and think that we and others and our experience of life in general is somehow lacking. There isn’t a clear sense of what is missing exactly, just something isn’t quite right.
In my 20’s and 30’s, I went through a long chain of jobs and romantic relationships thinking that somehow I deserved something better than what I was getting and that if I kept moving I would be able to find the perfect person and job. It took me a long time to realize that no job would be perfect and if I could settle into something that was good enough, I could learn a lot about myself and life that I was avoiding when I moved on before giving it a chance.
As far as trying to find the right romantic partner and relationship, I learned a great deal about letting go of expectations. My desire for something in particular led me to superimpose what I wanted onto several people who were, in fact, nothing at all like what I really wanted. My striving toward the goal in my mind blinded me to the reality I was actually living in.
I have had plenty of times where I didn’t feel super patient with myself and then found it very painful to have to live with myself whether I liked it or not. I don’t think it works to pretend or to have a surface level attitude change. That is the equivalent of plastering on a happy face and just hiding the pain underneath. Instead, the thing that has brought me relief from this sort of pain has been to accept it. If that means accepting some flaws about me that seem too much, too crazy, not good enough, attractive enough, or whatever other quality, then that is what it means. Once I’ve gotten to the place of acceptance, or “Radical Acceptance” if you will, I felt some relief and a release from trying to fix the unfixable.
I wish I could say that everything works perfectly now that I’ve learned all these lessons. But, that is just not how life works. Being able to accept things as they are, including the ways that life can be disappointing or unfair, is the path to freedom. What goes along with this acceptance of things as they are is an opening up for new feelings and ideas. In that open space, I have found a better understanding of all that I do have power and control over and it is a lot more than I thought it would be when I was looking at life through the constricted and frightened viewpoint of “not enough.”
Maybe I am not enough depending on what the criteria is. I am not as young as I used to be, I have changed, I have always had certain limitations and still do. I have made some serious mistakes and I think there is a very good chance I’ll have to deal with learning some more lessons the hard way-through experience and making mistakes. In accepting all of this, even the idea that I’m not enough (depending on the definition), I actually paradoxically feel much more OK and enough as I am.
I hope this post about me and my experience will be helpful to others who also have the experience of feeling not enough. I hope you who are reading this will feel hopeful about the future and see a way to move forward out of the pain of thinking you and/or your world are no good. This is all we have as far as we know. We need to take care of it, we have the capacity for love and we can turn that on ourselves and have it be a part of our everyday experience. Each moment is another opportunity to remember to let our love and gratitude shine through. We are here, that is enough.