Society sends the message that we are not successful, smart, pretty or rich “enough”, and this message becomes embedded in our belief system from a young age. Expected to live up to an impossible standard, as portrayed by social media and ads, our feeling of unworthiness pushes us into an endless loop of trying to “fix” ourselves.
The belief of not being enough, in whatever way it shows up for us, is one of the most frequent common denominators of our negative thoughts. Whether we feel we aren’t a good enough parent, friend, partner or coworker, our belief of inadequacy becomes a heavy burden that we may easily carry with us for the rest of our lives if we don’t do something about it.
You may feel you aren’t successful enough. Or that your body isn’t attractive enough. Or that you aren’t clever enough. Whatever it is, it causes you to feel like you need to get more and be more.
But what is this feeling of lack actually craving for? Love. We want to be valued and loved by others, so we continuously adapt and adjust to fit what we “should” be or “should” have, according to society. It seems like we are running on a hamster wheel, striving to reach the feeling of “being enough” as we give our power away, one day at a time.
This constant pressure to be someone we are not makes us forget that at the deepest core level we are enough. Just as we are, we are enough. It is our birthright.
This at no means implies we shouldn’t work on growing and expanding in different areas of our life. The idea is to grow, change, and evolve without trying to prove ourselves. You don’t have to strive to become more worthy because you’re already worthy. All the self-improvement and growth that you go through simply helps you become more honest, open, authentic, confident, purposeful, and connected, as higher expressions of your worthy self. Simply put, growth that stems from adequate self-worth means that we are working towards becoming better versions of ourselves without implying that any previous “version” was unworthy or non-deserving.
On the other hand, trying to improve from a place of lack or unworthiness is extremely hard and discomforting because believing that at our core we are not enough makes us feel that we don’t deserve what we desire, so we unconsciously repel good things that might come our way. Also, when the intention and motivation behind the improvement is your lack of worthiness, you will never be satisfied because you will be striving for an unattainable outcome of perfection or excellence. In fact, the pursuit of enoughness flies in the face of the pursuit of perfection and places barriers on our ability to make adequate decisions, complete projects or be in a healthy relationship.
What helps shift our sense of inadequacy to a recognition of having, doing, and being enough is gratitude. As Wayne Dyer says, “the nature of gratitude helps dispel the idea that we do not have enough, that we will never have enough, and that we ourselves are not enough.” Feeling grateful every single day may help transform our “not enoughness” to a deeply rooted embodiment of inherent worthiness that opens a door of freedom to express ourselves as our truest most authentic Self.