You ARE good enough.
Look to your values, be patient, and honor them!
Being alone or feeling like you are in the in-between, like you are in limbo, can be uncomfortable, and we can find ourselves feeling inferior to others, like we are not good enough. To compensate, our egos look for or create proof to the contrary to show us that we do measure up.
The evidence can come in a variety of ways, shopping for things to keep up with the Joneses or setting out to accomplish a goal are two conventional approaches to prove that we are good enough. In addition to the proof, we will gain, doing these things keeps us busy, so we don’t have time to think or feel. It seems like a brilliant approach, but in the end, we wind up back where we started.
There are two times during the year that I find particularly painful in this respect — August (the month in which both of my parents died) and during the winter holidays. In December, it seems like I’m all alone feeling all alone. Commercials, TV shows, Facebook posts overwhelming show the loving togetherness that this time of year engenders. The idea that everyone else is happy and feeling connected is how it appears to me, though I know this is not the case. It can be isolating.
My solution: go go go, do do do, and settle for less than I deserve.
Fall and winter are periods in which nature slows down, sheds, and begins to hibernate before it comes to life again in the Spring. Though the days are shorter and darker, I find myself pushing to have the same energy and productivity that I do in the summer. I can feel a bit lazy, which adds fuel to the “not good enough messages” from my inner critic.
Like many, I have been groomed to believe that not doing, not producing, not taking active steps forward is wasteful and that there is no value in simply being. So slowing down, meditating, and allowing for my next intuitive steps to come to me feels very uncomfortable. I feel the urge to get into action and to do instead of be. When I do allow myself to be that’s when thoughts like I should be doing x or y or maybe I should settle for something or someone that only partially fits the bill come to mind.
But one thing that helps me take the high road and slow down, despite this discomfort, is to outline my non-negotiables, those three to five values that must be present for me to feel satisfied with how a situation is playing out.
For example, in dating, I made a list of five things my ideal partner must have. I’ve been able to avoid dating men who don’t meet my criteria, or at the very least, I’m able to end a relationship earlier, when I discover a non-negotiable is missing. But during the holidays, my pesky inner critic bubbles up, with a vengeance, and it makes me feel that I should be in a relationship. It pipes up, saying, “You don’t want to spend Christmas alone again, do you?” and this can send me spirally away from my standards. It can cause me to forget about my values and more seriously consider someone who doesn’t meet my criteria, and in all honesty, doesn’t feel like the right person for me on an intuitive level, list aside.
It is in these times that I must remind myself of my broader aim and revisit my list of green flags. And when they are missing, they are my red ones.
When we are in a hurry to get the result we want, and we don’t want to feel the discomfort that hearing our inner critic brings, we can overlook those things that we need to honor for us to be satisfied with our actions and results. We can start to settle to have the situation we are going for and to avoid feeling deprived. But if we allow ourselves to cave to our ego and do something that in our hearts we know isn’t going to make us happy long term, we can wind up with a water-downed version of what we said we wanted. We will miss out on the joy and satisfaction that could have been ours if we were patient and honored our values, if we allowed ourselves to be instead of do until the right things lined up for us, and we could then took action from a higher spiritual level.
In a recent podcast episode, I spoke about Courage Concept #16: “You have the right to act when you know, and the right not to act UNTIL you know.” This idea: “You ARE good enough. Look to your values, be patient, and honor them.” is a close relative.
When you honor your values over appearances and immediate gratification, you win the race every time.
