Not Good Enough
October 19th 2017
One of the most damaging beliefs we could have is thinking and feeling that we are “not good enough”. In this video we explore where that sits inside us and how to shift out of it.
This week I’m going to talk about one of the most deeply rooted, deeply painful thought pattern, seed, that exists in so many of us deep, deep down in our subconscious mind that wreaks havoc in our life on so many different levels, and it’s the seed of feeling not good enough. It is so damaging to our own individual sense of self, it’s damaging to our sense of belonging in the world, and it’s damaging to what we feel we can contribute to the world.
And if you’ve been listening to the videos and if you know about Three Cups Full I’ve just taken you through the three cups. Our sense of self is a cup full of love, our self-love for ourselves, belonging, our sense of belonging is our acceptance cup full, and knowing our contribution and contributing, doing it, comes from a cup full of self-respect.
When we have those three cups full there is really no room for “not good enough”. “Not good enough” sits inside the love cup. It sits inside the love cup because it is an attack on our sense of being and our sense of self, our innate value as a human being.
It goes far beyond skill because we’re fine with not being good enough with a skill, right? You don’t know how to drive, you’ve only been driving two months, you’re not good enough at driving, right? You’re not good at driving yet. But you know in time the more you practise the better you’ll get.
And so we’re okay with skills. So if you’re feeling not good enough about a skill that other people know more about it than you or can do it better than you, then conscious practice is the answer to that. That’s not usually a deep issue. It can stop us from trying new things. It can make us hold back before we dive in and try, trying to get better at it before we dive in to any kind of challenge. But when it comes to skills and not feeling good enough at a skill it doesn’t hit us in a place where we can be down on our knees and crying our eyes out and feeling completely worthless.
When you peel back the layers… and “not good enough” sits in the love cup because it attacks your feeling of deservability around love and worthiness. And it is so deeply damaging because if your sense of self is shaky and shattered, it’s not a good foundation for everything else to build from. And that’s why “not good enough” can affect so many different areas of our life. Often it will affect one particular area really badly.
I don’t know if you ever used to watch Bugs Bunny but there was a character called the Tasmanian Devil and that’s what I see when I think of “not good enough”. I just see the Tasmanian Devil coming through this house, ripping everything apart, literally bowling over this beautiful vase, these flowers, chair, got a water fountain here, cups and plates and couches, and just tearing everything apart and then just walking out the door. Just like creating a mess, dropping a bomb, and then just leaving, and that’s the image I get of “not good enough”. That’s what it does to us.
It can rip apart everything that’s here, that’s here in our life right now, and rip it all to shreds so that everything feels like it’s… like we’re at ground zero, that we have nothing because deep down we feel as though we are nothing. And when that foundation is not strong of our own internal sense of self, everything feels shaky from there. Really, everything feels shaky from there.
Even when seemingly you’re looking at someone else’s life and it feels put together, if there is a seed of “not good enough”, dive deeper into that person’s psyche and their feelings and their experience and you might find various aspects of “not good enough” running rampant throughout the house, throughout their life.
So what does “not good enough” look like? It can look like perfectionism. It can look like a striving to look like everything’s okay. Perfectionism can be on the outside, just making sure everything looks perfect and that it can be even deeper of everything needs to be perfect, everything needs to be ordered. And that sense of control over that outer space is really tugging at a sense of a lack of control that’s going on on the inside. And if our worth, our value, feels like it’s out of our hands and out of our control then something needs to be controlled on the outside to compensate for it.
Perfectionism can be in the way we keep our house and everything is really neat and organised. And in and of itself that’s not a bad thing. It’s a wonderful thing. You want great feng shui flowing through your house. But if it is something that takes most of your energy so that you don’t have energy for other things or other people or even yourself, it’s not in balance with your life.
It can be when it comes to our body and perfectionism that we want to control our body and it needs to look a certain way and be a certain way and hair and height and arms and weight and all this kind of stuff. Like we just put that pressure on our body to be perfect, because underlying deep, deep down in our love cup there is a seed of “not good enough” and that’s where that spreads from and sprouts from. And so if we have this image in our mind of what is good enough in terms of our body and how we need to look then we will force and push and prod and nip and tuck our body to try and strive towards that vision of perfection that we have for ourselves.
It can happen in our house, it can happen in our habits, it can happen in not completing things because it’s not perfect so we just procrastinate and wait and wait and wait and try and try and try. It’s not from lack of trying often. It’s from lack of completing and finishing it and handing it in and giving it to the world whether it’s a movie or a short film that you’re making with some friends or it’s a book that you’ve been writing away at for years or if it’s… whatever else you could create creatively. If you’re feeling like it’s not perfect, it has to be perfect because then when it’s perfect it will be accepted, right? Then that is an outer projection of what’s going on on the inside which is I need to be perfect in order to be accepted.
That “not good enough” comes from our internal lack of self, strong sense of self. And I’m not talking about ego. I’m not talking about the projection of our self onto the world which is the ego. I’m not talking about any stories about who you are. I’m talking about your inner being which is where the love cup resides. It’s the innermost circle of your existence. It is the space that exists beyond the layers of your character, your personality, and your behaviour. There is a place that exists beyond all those layers. It is in the space of you having been born.
If you were to ask a mother why do you love your child, there is no answer for that. She loves her child because they exist. She loves her child because they are here. They’re born. They don’t have to do anything in order to earn her love. They don’t have to be anything to earn her love. They are loved unconditionally by their mother in that space.
We can bring that unconditional love beyond any conditions into that space of our sense of self, I love myself for no other reason than I exist, then “not good enough” doesn’t make sense. That “not good enough” idea, it does not make sense of I need to be something… “good enough” compared to what? I need to be something in comparison to something else to feel valued. What’s got a greater value than you? What soul has more value than you? There is no other soul that has more value than your own individual soul.
When you pare it back down and you strip it away and you’re just looking at your sense of self that is beyond your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your behaviour, your personality, your character, and all the different things that make you you in terms of an egoic identity and you strip all that away and you go back into your core where you’re just breathing, you exist and therefore you are loved.
You are love. And when your value is safe in your own hands so that you don’t have to do anything or be anything in order for you to love yourself, you can just love yourself because you’re here and you exist, “not good enough” does not make sense because in that space there is no comparison. There’s nothing to compare from or with because it’s only when those layers of conditions come in that we have content to compare to other people, and that’s where we think “not good enough” is and so we try to perfect it and we try to change it, but “not good enough” lies in feeling as though our worth is in jeopardy, our worth as a person is in jeopardy. That’s where that seed is. It’s deeper than any kind of conditions. It sits in the love cup.
The love cup is full when you love yourself unconditionally. You don’t need to look a certain way, you don’t need to act a certain way, you don’t need to speak a certain way, you don’t need to be anything in order to be deserving of love. You love yourself simply because you exist.
When we feel as though we have to be deserving of love it’s a lot of work because every single person will have a different set of criteria of what you need to be in order to be deserving of love. But when you strip away all those conditions and you get back to the core of who you are, that soul that’s eternal, your inner voice comes from that space, that dimension of your soul, “not good enough” doesn’t make sense. Not good enough compared to what? It doesn’t make sense. It breathes, it exists, it moves.
That part of you when you embrace that and you realise that all those other things, all those other conditions change with time, your personality changes, your character changes, your thoughts change, your feelings change, your body changes, your behaviour changes, everything changes, that’s not where you need to put your sense of self. You need to put it into something deeper that is solid, that doesn’t change, and that is your life, your breath, your soul, your inner space, your inner world beyond conditions that separate you from other people.
When you are in union with that inner space and that inner self… oh gosh, I’ve been split in half by the light… then you feel a sense of value return where you can just breathe and you actually let yourself off the hook. I don’t have to do anything to feel loved. I don’t have to be anything to feel loved by myself. How safe do you feel?
Just imagine if your mother had certain conditions for you to meet in order to give you love. That is so damaging. That is so damaging. A mother who loves her child unconditionally simply because they exist is the purest kind of love because that child can just be whatever they are and feel free to be whatever they are because love is not on the table. It’s not negotiable. And so the flower grows with the water and the sun and everything it needs. It’s got everything. It’s nurtured, it’s nourished. It doesn’t have to be anything in order to receive that support.
“Not good enough” is a really deep-seeded, horrible, horribly damaging thought process, and it’s linked to so many feelings of guilt and shame and unworthiness, and the way around it is to recognise that there’s “not good enough” when it comes to skills which is fine to deal with. Skill yourself up, read a book, take a course, get a mentor, learn. But when it comes to the deeper place of where that deep-seeded “not good enough” stems from, it is when you’ve placed your sense of self into other people’s hands and into the game of comparison based on your traits and your personality, and that is not where it needs to be.
Think of your sense of self, think of that inner space, the love cup, as a diamond that sits inside you. It’s a diamond that sits inside you that is your true self, your eternal being, your great spirit. You can call the diamond names. You can call it coal, you can call it dirt, you can call it garbage, you can call it whatever it is. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a diamond. It is a diamond.
When you forget about all the stuff around it and go back to the diamond inside, that multifaceted, beautiful, luminous thing that is everything at once, and if you can tune in to that and get a sense of that inside you, that is where your value is. You are a diamond. That is what your sense of self is that is beyond any conditions around it.
When you tune in to that frequency, “not good enough” doesn’t make sense anymore because “not good enough” can only exist when you are comparing it to something else. And when that’s stripped away there’s no comparison. You can’t compare one soul to another soul. It doesn’t exist. They’re timeless, they’re pure, they’re perfect. That is where your sense of self should rest. That is where you can tune in to that internal sense of being and always feel safe and always feel at home and always feel grounded and settled, and that is where your feet should be.
Your sense of worth does not belong in the minds of other people and it doesn’t even belong in your own mind. It belongs in your heart, in your inner being and that space that exists beyond your mind and your body and all perceptions of who you think you are. It is so much deeper than that. And when you tune in to that, it’s an experience, you’ve just got to trust me on it. When you tune in to that “not good enough” is absurd. It makes no sense. It makes no sense at that level, and that’s where you go to weed it out.
I hope that was helpful. It’s a discussion that can go on for hours and there’s always questions. So if you do have questions write them down. It’s a very long video but it’s a really important thing to talk about because so many of us suffer from it. I remember when I was suffering with it I was just like where’s the answer, how do I get out of this, and that was the answer that came through for me.
Sharanya
xx