Enough

I live in a world where I feel the need to prove myself. I constantly need to prove that I am enough in any of an unlimited number of categories of "enough", such as smart enough, strong enough, cool enough, righteous enough, or wealthy enough.

But to whom am I actually proving myself? It seems like I am trying to prove my worth to other people, and as a result, I am constantly waiting for evidence that I have been successful at proving my worth. I am constantly on edge with the fear that I may never be enough.

Can I ever give enough evidence to other people to change their minds if they don't want to change their minds? If other people don't actually want to change their minds they will always find a way to keep me from being in the "enough" bucket (For example, thinking to themselves "Yeah, but you're still a jerk!")

Then whom am I trying to prove myself to? Who is demanding the evidence that I am "enough?"

Oddly, the only person making the demand is me. I made the judgement that I am not enough and thus I am trying to collect evidence to counter that belief. It seems like other people are making the judgement that I am not enough, but really I must be making that judgement because I am the one trying to present counter evidence and the evidence is to counter my own judgement.

Why did I make the judgement about not being enough? Why do I need to meet some imagined "enough" bar?

I made the judgement about not being enough because I feel like I don't matter. And it seems like, in order to matter, I have to meet some sort of "superior" bar where I can demonstrate that I am better than another human being; Only then could I matter.

But again, I cannot prove to another person that I matter. And really, I make the judgement that I do not matter and I am the one trying to collect evidence that I matter.

And I am now stuck in a cycle where I cannot pinpoint why I do not feel like I matter. And this endless cycle is a form of hell.

Since I am in a reinforcing cycle where I am trying to resolve the feeling of not mattering after I feel like I don't matter, maybe I should try and tackle what causes the feeling of not mattering before the feeling appears.

How do feelings appear, anyway? (I'm talking about emotions and not tactile sensations.)

Don't feeling come from other people? Like my siblings because he or she "made me feel angry." Like my boss for making me feel unseen. And my spouse for any of the negative feelings I may have toward her?

From the book Crucial Conversations (the Third Edition is much better than the prior two), we learn that our Path to Action is as follows:

1. See & Hear
2. Tell a Story
3. Feel
4. Act

This process is what we follow for any actions we take.

Notice that the 3rd step is to feel something. We feel something as a direct result of the stories we tell ourselves.

What this means is that if I want different feelings then I need different stories. And if I need different stories then I need to see & hear differently.

What, then, is the story that I am telling myself right before I feel like I am not enough? Well, I might have seen someone do something impressive or unexpected. They might look powerful or cool or somehow superior and I might tell myself that I am not enough because I am not powerful enough or cool enough. At which point I then feel like I am not enough and I start to look for some evidence to counter (or escape from) that feeling.

So, if I don't want to feel like I am not enough, I need to stop telling myself that I am not enough. Seems super simple, and seems cyclic, but it's true.

And it works: When I am in a state of mind where I do not need to prove myself in any way then I never feel like I need to prove myself.

This lack of needing to prove myself cannot be derived from feeling superior to another person, otherwise I somehow have evidence that I am superior, which means that I am in that cycle of needing to prove myself.

Even if I see amazing things that other people do, I can appreciate that those actions are amazing without telling myself that I am not enough. It helps that I practice telling myself different stories so that my mind will present better story lines the next time such evidence appears. I tell myself that I do not need to prove anything and that if doing that thing is important enough to me, then I can learn how to do it. But just because I learn how to do it that won't change how much I matter.

What about changing how I see & hear? When we tell ourselves stories, we take the evidence we see and hear in that moment and use it to reinforce the story we tell ourselves. But we also take our background bodily sensations into account. This is why we often "trust our gut" and why judges will grant parole more frequently after lunch than before.

If I want to change what I see & hear, part of that is getting myself into a healthy baseline state; Better sleep, healthful food, exercise, etc. When I am in a better baseline state, then it's easier for me to feel physically good and thus easier for me to tell myself a positive story.

But if I change what I see & hear without changing the stories I tell, then I will eventually regress back to telling negative stories about myself. And if focus only on changing the stories, I will have to "white-knuckle" it through some situations because the negative story feels so much easier to tell and thus more likely to be true.

So, in short, if I want to feel like I matter, then I need to stop telling myself stories that I do not matter and I need to improve my baseline state so it's easier to abandon the "I do not matter" story.