Not-enoughness
Posted on December 15, 2022 by Tegan Campia, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
Not-enoughness; from tool to weapon to shriveling Medusa. And, on refusing to be small.
The winter is blowing in entirely and whisking the last of the leaves off the trees, leaving them bare and allowing my eyes to examine the structure of what held the blooms and leaves in the warmer months.
This 30-mile-hour wind blows the door firmly closed and forces us to stay with the inner world we’ve made for ourselves.
What reveals itself to us during the long nights of winter?
Personally, when left alone, I am visited by the voice of ‘not enough.’ She is a familiar voice, fully a part of me by now in quiet moments, pushing me to work harder and longer. I see how she kept me safe. But, the problem with this seemingly benign mantra is that I started to believe her over decades of use.
Trying to make a home on ‘not enough’ is building on rickety, rusted scaffolding. I imagine they were held together with duct tape and bubble gum. Looking to external accomplishments for validation—my house was bound to come tumbling down. It did. When facing real hardship, the sturdiness was tested and crumpled with a thud.
I understand the thud, but the part that fascinates and horrifies me is trying to build anything from the rubble. I tried to create a life post-hardship with the same tools I had pre-hardship, and they suddenly were not tools. They were weapons. And I easily slipped more and more deeply into believing this voice which had transformed into self-loathing.
It’s been a significant effort working with my coach to (1) identify this voice as a voice and not a reality, (2) dislodge her from her throne and (3) create new mental habit patterns. She had a strong hold on me and my psyche.
Once the dominant narrative is disempowered and de-bunked, new needling narratives come in the form of new fears and new things to be ashamed of.
A Medusa.
But the good news is that she doesn’t get stronger with every decapitation. The narratives become less significant.
Somedays, they are louder than others. And some days, I’m defenseless to their influence. While I could hate myself for the years I’ve wasted listening to her—I see now that even that thought is another moment of self-loathing.
Finally, finally, finally, I refuse to become small for anything or anyone. Because small is no longer an option. Being small is the trapdoor to falling through my own self-loathing-looking glass.
A key truth we learn from studying neuroscience is that we cannot eliminate an old neural pathway (a thought habit pattern), but we can create new neural pathways. Meaning that we cannot eradicate ways of thinking, but we can start to think differently. To me this feels like walking a new and exciting trail after choosing not to go down a familiar, unpleasant one.
By working with a coach and adopting a consistent mindfulness practice, we can understand our mental-emotional patterns and cultivate relationships with beings that support us.
Doing this alone was not possible for me. Frankly, I tried, and it was ineffective and way too scary. I worked with therapists for a long time and did not feel the same self-authority and empowerment I have felt with coaching and mindfulness.
In the grand scheme of things, we might ask: Why does it matter?
It matters because we want to experience joy in our lives. It matters because we are motivated to do incredibly important things. And we can’t do it if we feel small, disempowered, and/or not enough.
