A reader recently posted the following comment on my blog in response my article ‘The Tao of Perfection’:
I struggle with the concept, in order to feel ”not good enough” then I must have experienced the feelings of “good enough or worthy”. My experience has been the opposite. I have felt “not good enough” all of my life until I started to change my thoughts, feelings and behaviours and then I had experiences of feeling good enough. Now I think I know this paradox but I did not know this until I experienced the other. Does this make sense? Please help me understand….
As you’ll appreciate this is a very challenging subject to teach, so I greatly value any reader’s personal experiences and insight on the subject. I thought it would also be helpful and inspiring for you to share our exchange, hence this additional blog post on the subject.
I was sad to read the negative feelings this lady experienced as a child. Many childhood and adolescence experiences and subsequent emotional feelings can have such a profoundly negative effect on your future self-worth and authentic potential, restricting and limiting your personal capability and happiness.
The point of my original blog post on this subject was to remind you to:
- be mindful of the words you use when describing your emotional feelings, and
- take time to consider what I call the whole of the energy of the situation you are presented with, which triggers these feelings.
Both these steps are essential for good emotional health housekeeping!
The ‘self-talk’ test
The description of ‘not being good enough’ is a phrase I hear regularly from my clients in my work as a spiritual coach and therapist at Peak House Practice, and I call these types of phrases ‘personal misunderstandings’.
To hold a perception of ‘not being good enough’, which is an extremely powerful negative statement of self-worth, it follows that you firstly need to have an intellectual understanding or reasoning as to what the feeling, position, or what I call energy, of ‘being good enough’ is.
This should be absolutely personal to you. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding to only judge yourself negatively by comparing yourself with someone else or their personal standards (either real or imagined). At some time in your life you must have experienced what it is to be ‘good’ and the feelings associated with this, or else how can you now reasonably judge yourself to be in a different (more negative) position now?
So, once you have pinpointed what it is to ‘be good enough’ and where you’re in relation to that energy right now, it’s then also helpful as part of this review process to contemplate the other extreme of the energetic pendulum, i.e. what ‘being too good’ or ‘being perfect’ (or any other expression which feels right to you), is like.
This process of examining the three parts or whole of the energy is my Taoist teaching, which relates to the ‘Power of Three’ (you can read more about this teaching here).
It can take practice and a little time to get familiar with mapping out your personal energetic pendulum (not good enough <– > good enough <–> too good/perfect), and the range of different feelings you’ve encountered in your life. It is, however, an extremely powerful and worthwhile exercise for your emotional wellbeing.
Are you dealing with feelings or beliefs?
If you’re able to complete the three part review of the whole of the energy of the situation then this indicates that you’re dealing with feelings. Your negative self-talk simply represents an inaccurate description of the uncomfortable or unfamiliar emotional and physiological feelings you’re experiencing right now.
This broader perspective allows you to appreciate these feelings for what they are: a red warning light telling you’re facing an unfamiliar learning situation. This realisation can be a real ‘Ah-Ha’ moment for you! It’ll free up your thinking and creative resourcefulness and, more importantly, your self-worth remains intact. You’re now empowered to calmly, rationally and authentically deal with the situation or stimulus that has provoked the feelings and you’ll learn and grow as a result.
By contrast, if you struggle to complete the review task and can see no other parts of the energy beyond the negative self-talk of ‘not being good enough’, then this is a good indicator that you’re dealing with a more entrenched personal belief.
What was once an uncomfortable or unfamiliar feeling, left uncorrected over time, has now transformed into a corrupted belief based around a misunderstanding of your self-worth. When working with my clients I never underestimate the power and intensity of these untamed feelings, which I refer to as the ‘feelings of fear’, that have ability to corrupt an individual’s core sense of self and control their life.
By owning the personal misunderstanding of ‘I’m not good enough’ as a belief and not as an unfortunate/misguided description of your emotional/physiological feelings, you cannot begin to understand the whole of the energy. You wrongly identify your self-talk as a true and honest reflection of yourself, rather than merely an inadequate description of feelings triggered by the situation you’re confronting.
This negative belief can become the all-consuming focus of your attention, rather than the actual learning situation or stimuli. As a result you may never learn, grow and reach your authentic potential.
Let your mind not your emotions be your Master
My reader highlighted that this process of personal review didn’t happen in her situation. The view she had of ‘not being good enough’ was what she believed to be a true self-reflection rather than just an incorrect label of emotional feelings triggered by life situations and events.
Now that she’s shifted her thoughts, and in turn her feelings and behaviours, something changed and she feels good enough. So what happened?
By changing her thoughts my reader didn’t suddenly transform herself from being an inadequate person into someone who is adequate or good enough. She was always good enough! She simply never realised it until she began to handle her emotions differently. This enabled her to calmly explore through her mind and thoughts the wider energy of her perceptions about herself and her life, which then had had a positive impact on her feelings and behaviour.
My message is this: if left unchecked your emotions have the ability to run riot over your perceptions of reality and self-worth. The process of ‘emotional housekeeping’ I’ve outlined above will help ensure that you don’t let your emotional feelings dictate your thoughts, beliefs and personal potential, no matter how strong, unsettling and overwhelming they may seem at the time.
Negative self-talk such as ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m unlovable’, ‘the world’s against me’, ‘nothing ever goes right for me’ etc., is far from a conscious, balanced or rational response to challenging or fearful situations you may find yourself in. This self-talk comes about when you let your emotions run wild. It’s the spontaneous, sub-conscious and irrational reaction the sheer intensity of the feelings you’re experiencing.
The key is to remember that your emotional feelings are perfectly natural and helpful. They tell you you’re encountering an unfamiliar learning situation. Every human being experiences them as part of their life journey or else how would anyone ever learn and grow?
Often when you say to yourself ‘I’m not good enough’ this can be your emotional child crying out for help and guidance on what seems to be an impenetrable emotional or practical situation.
Find your personal misunderstandings
So how do you unlock what may be many years of entrenched negative self-talk?
If after trying my self-talk exercise you find you’ve adopted ‘not being good enough’, or any other harmful self-talk phrase, as a personal belief, you’ll then need to play detective and locate the source of the original misunderstanding.
This means identifying the particular events, situations or circumstances that triggered the uncomfortable feelings, which you began to incorrectly identify as a negative statements about yourself (‘I’m not good enough’/’I’m unlovable’) or the world around you (‘the world’s against me’/’nothing ever goes right for me’).
You may have to dig deep here as this can often be related to something that you experienced at a very young age (often between the ages of 6 and 12 years old).
As a highly sensitive and creative child you may have used false, negative and harmful self-talk descriptions in response to unfamiliar and uncomfortable feelings. If you didn’t receive any emotional education or sympathetic understanding to address and neutralise these feelings, over time these misunderstandings slip into your personal belief system and become owned as ‘truth’ or ‘fact’. The result can be extremely detrimental to your self-worth and genuine potential.
Finding and unravelling the original misunderstanding connected to your self-talk can be a challenging to personally resolve. As a wonderfully sensitive and creative adult you’ll still experience powerful and sometimes overwhelming emotional feelings that can create a smokescreen of confusion and scream for your attention. Without effort, determination and self-discipline, this often means the original misunderstanding will lie unexplored for a lifetime. This is when it can be useful to find a trusted therapist to work with and support you on your journey.
Reconnect with your true Tao nature
I believe that, if left unchecked, negative self-talk phrases actually increase the intensity of the original feelings by creating a spiritual separation from your Tao nature and the Universe. In turn, this separation re-infects and maintains the uncomfortable emotional and physiological feelings, sometimes for years.
I’m so pleased that my reader corrected her misunderstanding and re-established the connection to her true Tao nature and oneness with the Universe, and I hope that this additional explanation deepens her understanding of the power of her emotions and her spiritual journey. You may have also struggled with the concept I presented in my original blog post on this subject and I hope this additional explanation has been useful.
In my therapy practice I have found Taoist teaching to be profoundly helpful in dealing with emotional wellbeing. In the case of negative self-talk it translates that if you cannot reflect upon and grasp the whole of the energy you are describing, and place your emotions within that energy, then this signals that inappropriate words are being used to describe emotional feelings.
With this understanding you then have the power and choice to make life-changing shifts in your thoughts and feelings, and free yourself from the shackles of inaccurate and limiting beliefs and perceptions.
So, use your emotions as an indicator, as you would your intuition or ‘gut feelings’. Allow them to tell you that your careful attention is required, but always let your rational mind be your master. This way you will remain harmonious, balanced, responsive, creative and authentic – what I refer to as living your life in your ‘Wu-Wei’ or ‘sweet spot’.
Remember:
Be mindful of your ‘self-talk’ as it’s a conversation with the Universe/Tao…
When you find yourself thinking unkind thoughts or criticising yourself, simply pause and ask yourself: “Would I say this to a child?” If the answer is ‘no’, and you authentically know it is harmful and untrue, then why would you say it to yourself?
Yi Tao Qi Tao.
David.
