I think it's so common for us to feel like what we have isn't enough or what we're doing isn't enough or who we are isn't enough.
Let me ask you, how many times you put our head on our pillow at night, feeling you could have done more, that you didn't do enough? Maybe you think you could have done more at work, with your kids, or your partner, in our workouts or around the house. More, more, more. We are constantly bombarded by this thought that we need to do more or we need to be more.
We so often feel like who we are isn't enough. We play so many roles in our lives. Whatever role that we are playing, we never feel like we are enough, and we not only feel like we're not enough for others, we oftentimes don't feel like we're enough for ourselves.
I personally believe that we shouldn't live this life where we're constantly feeling like enough is never enough. We need to realize how fortunate we are to have what we have and recognize that that already is enough. We need to realize that if we tried our best, we did enough.
The question is how can we break this mentality?
First of all, we need to become aware of who and what in our life is making us feel like we're not enough. Typically these thoughts are driven from either inside or outside sources.
These sources are either influencing the way that we see ourselves and our lives, or they are triggering us to compare our lives both leading us to believe that it's not enough.
It's so important that first of all you identify it because oftentimes I feel like we have these thoughts and we have these frustrations and we feel like we're not enough, but we just don't know where it's coming from. And it's because we're going throughout our day not having that keen awareness towards the certain things that might be the very trigger.
A couple of internal triggers include:
Many times our feelings of not enough stem from us comparing ourselves to others. Whether that be our neighbors, the perfect mom at school, the people we follow on social media, or even the stranger that we see at the grocery store. The first step is to become aware of when and where you are comparing yourself. Again, awareness in and of itself is so powerful because just becoming aware in the moment of when you are comparing, the moment you identify it, it has less power over you because you are actively recognizing that you're in the mode of comparison.
When you become aware of when you are falling into comparing yourself with others, you have to take a moment to practice gratitude in that moment. Practice gratitude. It's difficult to fall victim to comparison when you feel so overwhelmed by how much you have to be grateful for.
Another internal trigger for our "not enough" mentally is when we start to compare ourselves an where we are and where we thought we would be at this point in time. Not being far enough or close enough our goal can makes us feel we are not enough. In this situation my recommendation is that you seat down and re-evaluate your goals. We tend to overestimate what we can do in the long term and we underestimate what we can do in one day. Often we set goals that if we were to live in a perfect world they might be achievable but they are not realistic. Many times we set unrealistic goals, many time achieve our goals but just not in the same time frame we ambition when we started. Don't get fixated with time. Continue to pursue your goals and know that you are exactly where you need to be right now. Sometimes we just need that reminder and re-evaluate our goals. Accepting that timmign is not always going to be perfect, is critical to not feeling we are not enough just because we are not making as quick progress towards our goals as we expected.
A couple of internal triggers include:
The first way is that this can come from a direct interaction with people in our lives. Family members, colleagues at work, others parent's at our kid's school, friends, neighbors or even strangers may sometimes make comments that can make us feel we are not enough, we are not doing enough or we don't have enough. If that person is someone close to you, I bet they are not doing or saying anything with the intent of making you feel that way.
As always awareness is the first most important step in overcoming this trigger. Knowing who and when or what is that they say or do that triggers you to feel not enough. Once are aware, you have two alternatives to overcome this trigger:
Confront the person, on a productive and respectful way. Most likely they are not aware that they are making you feel that way, and most likely is not their intent. Just sharing with them how what they do or say makes you feel can create the awareness on their side to stop doing that which is making you feel not enough.
Avoid that person in situations where you now are aware it triggers you feeling not enough.
Our feelings of not enough can also stem from our need to impress. When it comes to this driver, first of all, you need to ask yourself why you feel the need to impress, and who in your life do you feel like you need to impress, and why do you feel like you need to impress them? Again, it's this simple notion of bringing awareness to what it is that you are feeling and why you're feeling it. Because once you bring awareness to that, then what you can do is redefine what impressive actually means to you. Like if impressive to you means chasing a life of more, whether that be doing more, having more, being more, you need to redefine what impressive actually means. Like really, what it actually means to you.
This is something I've actively done, and it is drastically changed the way that I view myself and my life. And just to be real with you, this is something that I'm constantly doing. I'm constantly reminding myself of what does impressive actually mean? When I take inventory of three to five people in my life that I just think that they're just impressive human beings, it's not the people that have the most. It's not the people that dress the best. It's people that are making a massive, massive impact on my life. They have done incredible things. They have said incredible things. They live in a way that's humble and that is truly just coming from this love out of their heart. That's what an impressive life to me is, and I constantly have to remind myself of that because we live in a society where we equate more things to more impressive.
Behind our desire to impress we are ultimately, we are chasing "perfection", and that is what is making us feel like we aren't enough. I can promise you 10 times out of 10 as a human when you compare yourself to perfect, you will never feel like enough because honestly perfection is just not attainable, nor is it enjoyable. Personally I've come to the conclusion that perfection is not impressive to me. Being real is what is impressive to me. So I want to challenge you to impress others by being authentic and not impressing others by having the best things or doing the best things or having more things or being the best at everything.
Ultimately, choosing to impress others by being authentic is what's going to bring you more happiness in your life. And not to mention, that's going to be the most influential in people's lives. You are going to be so much more influential as a person when you're real and raw and authentic rather than putting on this fake façade of perfection.
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