Why You Are Enough
Women Seeking Wisdom - Kathryn Marker
Why You Are Enough No culture is perfect. As far as things go, I don’t mind ours, but we do seem to have some pretty awful cultural myths that really bring us down. One of our biggest ones is held more in our subconscious, but seems to be a major theme in our lives – We are not enough. We aren’t smart enough, good looking enough, have enough money, we work too much, we aren’t balanced. Too fat vs too thin; to obsessed vs not driven enough. There’s always a reason to feel down on ourselves that we aren’t meeting some imaginary bar. As a mother, I think we can feel it the worst – because our parenting is judged so harshly. Today I want to focus on the very obvious, but quite difficult cultural myth – You Are Enough. Let’s dive in!
Scarcity Mindset If you follow any of my work you will see I bring this up quite a lot, and for good reason! It’s one of the most damaging mindsets we can have, and holds us back so much in our lives. It really can make us miserable! In “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, he talks about the Scarcity Mindset:
Why You Are Enough - Women Seeking Wisdom
Why You Are Enough Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very dif cult time sharing recognition and credit, power or pro t – even with those who help in the production. The also have a a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people.
A scarcity mindset is bred from fear. Fear of not being good enough, having enough and so forth. And it’s hard with a world so focused on the negatives and perfectionism. But before I get into how to break the scarcity mindset and weeding out that deep feeling of “being enough”, let’s look at some work by the wonderful Brene Brown.
Guilt Vs Shame I studied psychology for a time, and I was taught then that usually individualistic cultures (like ours in the west) were guilt cultures, vs the collectivist cultures (more eastern and tribal cultures) were shame cultures. This was to do with family shame as opposed to feeling guilty for not achieving. It really comes down to how you define shame. Brene Brown, who is a PhD from Texas studies Shame. She talks about Shame in her book “Daring Greatly” This is how she defines Shame: I de ne shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are awed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous. Why You Are Enough - Women Seeking Wisdom
Why You Are Enough Where as she defines Guilt more as being about our behaviour our outside of ourselves rather than who we are: I’m just going to say it: I’m pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.
So we are a culture of shame if you look at it from that perspective. We feel terrible shame and we beat ourselves up constantly. Who needs enemies when we have self talk!
A Culture Of Shame When we feel ashamed, we are less likely to talk about things. “I’m a bad person, I did something bad, there is nothing to talk about”. And shame is a massive topic that I won’t get into, but if you are interested, I highly recommend listening to Brene Brown talk in “The Power Of Vulnerability” which you can find by clicking here. We don’t feel like we are enough because of so many reasons, and they just aren’t true! And we know they aren’t true consciously, but sometimes when we identify the big ones, we do need to reflect on where they came from, and increase our self-awareness around our self-destructive triggers.
So How Do We Beat This? Me just telling you “well you are good enough so just deal with it and get over it” isn’t going to cut it. One of the hardest lessons I’ve learnt is no one can fix you but you, and that takes work.
Why You Are Enough - Women Seeking Wisdom
Why You Are Enough If your self-esteem is in the dirt then have a look at what you can do to improve that. Gratitude. So much comes back to this. It’s the knife to the heart of scarcity mindset. It is like drinking water – that’s how powerful and necessary to your happiness gratitude is. A Gratitude Diary is incredibly under rated. Use it. Bring creativity into your life! And creativity can be very broad. It doesn’t have to be painting. For me, it’s blogging – a creative expression of words. (I learnt how to blog creating an online business, if you are interested in blogging, my mentors can help you monetise your passion, click here to learn more) Be present. Meditation really helps with this, but be mindful of your present moment and look for happiness. I nd so much inspiration in the normal people I meet. Put your failures and mistakes outside of yourself. Just because you made a mistake does not make you a failure. It is not who you are. You are not stupid, don’t tell yourself that ever! This is the difference between guilt and shame. Be ready to make good habits and make change. Deciding to do things for one day won’t change your life. It’s the little things we do each and every day that build up and make us into who we are. Focus on your daily habits and self-talk. 'If you count all your assets, you always show a pro t.' Robert Quillen Click To Tweet
One Last Note About Goals So now I know you are possibly thinking what I was thinking when I learned about all of this. What about setting goals and being better? And it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around this, because it’s a paradox.
Why You Are Enough - Women Seeking Wisdom
Why You Are Enough You are perfect as you are right now, but you should always try to be better….. yeah that’s confusing. It’s about growing and becoming wiser. Loving to learn but accepting you will never know everything. Making small steps and goals. Giving your best each and every day. Working hard, but playing hard too – and never feeling shame for needing rest I can’t really explain this one to you, it’s just going to have to click for you I guess, but when it comes to goal setting, in order to achieve them, you have to believe you are good enough and forgive yourself when you fall short. Success is a journey, not a destination – you will never reach the end of it because you just keep making new goals.
Sooo…. So you are enough! We seem to be making movements to accepting people more and more. We seem to rock side to side, one minute shaming obese people for eating too much, the next shaming fit people for being obsessive. We shouldn’t be shaming anyone. This is your journey and unfortunately, you are responsible for yourself. I wish I could fix you, I do. But I can’t, I can only stand here with you in empathy and tell you I get it – because I do. I know how it feels to look in the mirror and just think “not good enough yet”. So just keep on loving yourself – we need more of that. And keep up your journey of Seeking Wisdom. Take Care, Why You Are Enough - Women Seeking Wisdom