You’re not Good Enough, You’re Great Enough
Next week, we’re hosting a retreat in the Atlas Mountains, in Morocco, for 40 members of our Wise Humanity Community of students and clients. They actually suggested the topic: feeling not good enough. So we thought we’d post about it again.
Now, this kind of self-doubt is very common. It can be deep-rooted in our upbringing but is also part of everyone’s personal growth journey.
A certain level of self-doubt is a great companion: it shows us that there’s always so much more to learn. It can also lead us to gather more people and resources to help towards our goals.
However, self-doubt can grow into a haunting beast that paralyses us. Not only does it throw in our face all the areas of our personal or technical capabilities where we feel inadequate, but it can also make us feel not good enough for anything: for our dreams, our job, our love relationship, parenting or even just the next task in our to-do list. Just not enough.
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One of our students actually coined the term not‑enough‑ism.
The good news is that, if you find yourself stuck in the story of not‑enough‑ism, just remember that it’s only a story, a narrative, and there are various ways out of it. See if any of these alternative narratives resonate with you.
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When I need to confute an unhelpful narrative, I love to use paradoxes.
Here’s an anecdote coming from a conversation between Elisabeth, the other Co-Founder of Wise Humanity, and her dad. She shared her fear of not being good enough to fulfil her potential, to which her dad replied: “Don’t worry. Nobody ever does.”
The force is strong with this mental map.
I've spent a few minutes trying to think of examples of people who really fulfilled their potential completely... and I couldn't think of anyone. Not one.
Think of a great, inspiring leader. Gandhi or Mandela, for example. Did they fulfil their potential? They did amazing things, but couldn’t they have achieved even more?
I can imagine Gandhi felt that he failed when he saw the violence of the Indian partition. Or Mandela could feel that he failed to create a political party that could withstand corrupt influences. Did they really fulfil their whole potential?
Nobody does. Ever.
How powerful is this mental map? We set the bar so high by design, that we should just drop not-enough-ism altogether.
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What does "good enough" even mean? Here’s another paradox that I find inspiring.
How will I know that I've been enough? By achieving a certain objective? If that's the case, then I'm deceiving myself. Can I really take personal, individual credit even just for my contributions towards achieving a goal?
Say I’m an entrepreneur who’s growing a business, or a Marketing Director who’s leading a new company strategy. I may as well succeed in my goals, but what about all the people who enabled me? And it’s not only my co-workers who contributed to the same goal. What about those who enabled my contribution? All the people who gave me my education; those who advised me; those who inspired me, whether intentionally or randomly; my clients who believed in me, the whole system around me that enabled my success; etc. The list goes on forever.
There's no individual achievement, ever.
If we think we've achieved something just by ourselves, we are delusional.
It’s great to realise I’m growing my business or making more customers happy: it’s a fantastic, fulfilling feeling. May I rejoice and be energised by it! However, if I define myself by this success and inflate my ego, I’m deceiving myself. I’ve never been alone on this successful journey.
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The point I'm trying to make is that "being enough" is a delusional objective. Even when I’ve actually been enough (and I’ve achieved what I wanted), I've only played a part in a much bigger play enabled by the whole system around me. It’s the system that was enough.
So, what is happening when I don’t feel enough is, I’m thinking that I’ll have to deliver the whole contribution by myself, unaided. I’m putting the whole burden upon myself in isolation. But it’s both an emotional and logical mistake because it’ll be the whole system I’m part of that will (or will not) deliver the final outcome, not just me. So, if I think of “being enough” that way, I’ll never be enough… cos I’ll never be the whole system.
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Finally, another powerful mental map that can lead me out of not-enough-ism is to realise that I am always enough. I’m enough for anything I've been put in this world for. It's almost by definition. I can't not be enough for what I've been put in this world for. Please pause and re-read this sentence:
I can’t not be enough for what I’ve been put in this world for.
So, if I use higher, tougher standards to measure how good I am, it's not the task that I’m trying to achieve that is making me feel not enough, it's my arbitrary standards. Let me repeat it: it’s not the task, it’s not my goal, it’s my arbitrary standards that make me feel not enough.
And it’s really good homework to explore where those arbitrary standards came from – oftentimes from our upbringing, society or the need to please – and how I can replace them with a more empowering story about myself.
And in the meantime, I can let go of the concept of "being enough" altogether. I don't even need to tell myself that I am enough. I am just right. Right for what I was put in this world for. What I've been put in this world for is defined by who I am, so I can't not be right for it.
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So, in conclusion, just drop not-enough-ism altogether. It’s not serving you.
Nobody’s ever good enough, because it’s the system that makes things happen, not the individual in isolation.
And nobody’s ever not good enough, because you can’t not be enough for what you’ve been put in this world for.
You can obviously continue on your personal growth journey because you’re driven by being the best version of yourself and by making your best impact in this world, but you'll do that from a place of expansion, not from a place of "lacking something in order to be enough".
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Ok, one last word. I thought I’d post about the feeling of not being enough because it’s the theme of next week’s retreat, and I’ve reused a lot of what I wrote in another blog over two years ago. I could have changed it more or I could have written an entirely new blog about it, but you know what? I thought it was good enough.
