EmotionalBuzz
the resource for meridian energy therapy
Enough not being enough!
Linda Anderson shows how to banish feelings of inadequacy and learn to truly accept ourselves as we are.
Does this sound familiar?
“If I’m 98% perfect in anything I do, it’s the 2% I’ve messed up I’ll dwell on afterwards.”
Or this?
“I’m not smart enough, pretty enough, not strong enough, not talented enough, not loving enough, not disciplined enough, not brave enough ...”
If you’re caught in the “not enough” trap, nothing about you ever seems quite good enough – to you. Successes are rarely enjoyed for you always feel as if you should be doing better. Perceived failures are magnified. Life becomes a quest for utter perfection – and like the carrot dangling in front of a horse, it’s chased but never truly experienced!
Perfectionism makes liberal use of comparisons. A playful way to experience the power of comparisons is this:
List all the achievements you’ve accomplished up to your current age. Be extra thorough. Now compare your list to that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who, at age 12, spoke 15 languages and had composed numerous major pieces of music, including an opera. Dwell on the differences.
If you’re perfectly miserable at this point, your job is to notice how negative comparisons affect your available energy and enthusiasm for work, family, relationships – and for yourself! How do they block the real you from showing up?
The problem starts when we allow others – family members, our spouse, friends, a boss, popular culture – to define who we are or are not. These roots of self-image often stretch far back into childhood, when negative messages we received from parents and others imprinted us with a feeling of being stupid, fat, lazy, weak or otherwise inadequate.
The good news is that as adults, and with a little help from EFT/Tapping, we can choose to truly accept ourselves – with all our strivings, quirks, faults and shortcomings – as being enough right now, absolutely perfect in our imperfection.
The more we do this, the less vulnerable we are to the opinions of others, and the more we’re able to step into our true power, reclaim all our possibilities and allow ourselves to shine.
Here’s an exercise to help you begin the recovery process:
- Say out loud “I am not enough” and rate on a scale of 0-10 how true that feels (in your gut, not in your head). This will give you a benchmark to return to as you go through the exercise
- Picture in your mind a recent occasion where that “I am not enough” feeling was triggered in you. Where do you feel that in your body? What does it feel like? Can you give it a colour, a shape, a size, a quality of some kind to help you tune in to the feeling?
- Sit quietly and allow the energy of those physical feelings to float you back to an early time when you had those feelings – what specific event do they take you back to? Reach back as early as you can but don’t go looking with your conscious mind – just wait patiently for a memory to float up
- Apply EFT to that memory and notice what meaning you assigned to it at the time from your child’s perspective
- Keep tapping as you look at that situation through your adult eyes until you’re able to see it from a more resourceful adult perspective
- Then reassess the truth of “I’m not enough” when you say it out loud. Chances are it feels a little less true now.
Even a shift of 1 or 2 points on a core belief can have a dramatic effect on the way we feel and act in the world.
There will doubtless be many more layers to clear, but you’ve made a great start! And you won’t need to revisit every single event you can find – choose the most significant ones and chances are within a short space of time you’ll be feeling much more compassionate and accepting of yourself.
Enough not being enough – we’re all a work in progress, and all perfect in our imperfection!
Linda Anderson is an EFT Success Coach and Trainer based in Cambridge, UK. She helps clients worldwide overcome self-doubt and lack of self-belief, so they can best they can be.
For further information visit Linda’s website