00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living, episode number 137, "Not Enough? Not True." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Alright, hello there, my sweet friends. How are you doing? I'm so glad to have you here today. I just love doing these. I love preparing the content for you and I love coaching you. This is just so much fun for me and I find so much satisfaction in being able to prepare this content, share this with you, those of you who have been my clients. I love you and I love the time that I spend with you. I love the progress that we make. I love my coach and the progress that I make there. I just think this is just such a great, great gig. I love it so much and I'm just happy to be here with you. So thank you for taking your time out of your amazing busy lives to spend some time here and I pray that what I have to share with you is helpful and enlightening and helps you to see the world in a way that changes you for the better, in a way that helps you move into having more of the kind of experience that you want to have. 

01:23 

OK, so this today, I have been on one for about a week now, just like driving and I'm just going to get this out of my system because there are times that I feel so passionate about what I am doing here and how we are working together to create better lives and healthier lives and happier lives. And this is one of those days that I'm just like, "OK, we got to have this chat because I'm done." So today's topic is not enough, not true. OK, so this is a a little bit of a soapbox-y feminist kind of rant day. 

02:03 

But in case that just totally scared you, let me clarify, I am not a man-hating feminist. I do not think that women are better than men or that men are better than women. And I do not think that men need to go away. But I do believe that women have been underselling themselves to themselves and to society for far too long. And that society has created expectations and ideas about women that have not served us basically since the beginning of humanity on the earth. And I love that we are making some incredible strides in our society and we are moving forward. But too many of us women have bought into this idea and I want it to stop. I want us to move. 

02:46 

So ladies, far, far too many of us have bought into these ideas. And you know what, they're not serving us. They are not moving us into our greatest and our best selves. They are keeping us stuck in insignificance and insecurity, a place I truly believe that God does not want us to be. So let's start here. We were created to be great. I'm just talking to women here. This applies to men as well. But women, we were created to be great. Ultimately, we were created to be goddesses: amazing creators who have great power of influence for good and who bring life, create life, into the world as part of our first covenant with God. This is what we want to be aiming for. This is what we need to keep in our minds. This is where we are ultimately going. Why is it then that so many of us have bought into this, I'm going to say it, stupid idea that we are not enough? What exactly is that supposed to mean anyway? "I'm not enough." Enough of what? Enough for what? Enough for whom? Am I not enough of a human? 

04:06 

Well, I would say that God did a pretty darn good job of creating you exactly how He wanted you to be. Are we not enough in skill or in talent? Says who? Your primitive brain that wants to constantly compare you with every other person in the world and their dog as well? Are we not enough in Christ like compassion? Well, heaven forbid. A human sent down here to earth to learn how to be Christlike is not 100% Christlike...go figure. What in the world are we trying to say when we say that we're not enough? That we're not enough to handle the challenges and trials that come our way? Well, I can tell, my friend, if you are listening here, you have managed your share of trials and challenges and come out on the other side pretty darn well thus far, because you are here, and you are working to move forward. Are we not enough to go through struggles and trials of life, because if you were enough, you wouldn't need these struggles? That is the whole point of our human existence, the whole part of God's plan: go through challenges and trials to give us opportunities to see our weaknesses and our to be  more compassionate and loving. Do we think we're not enough because we don't always treat people exactly the way we wish we would have? Do you mean to tell me that you are human, just like God created you to be? Of course we don't always say the right thing, or do the right thing, or think the right thing. A huge part of God's plan is that we bit by bit increase our awareness about our thoughts and feelings and behaviors, and we learn to make adjustments that create more of the Christlike experience we want to have. Are we not enough because we're not perfect yet? Can we please get off the perfectionist train? And I am so talking to myself here. Wanting to be or thinking we should be perfect is one of the biggest factors for so many of us feeling stuck and beating ourselves down. 

06:22 

And let's talk, while we're on it, about another phrase that so many of us use that is ridiculous. "I'm not worthy. I'm not worth it. I don't have any self-worth." Okay, this phrase is not, when we use it that way, it's not usually meant in the way that means we literally are not worthy, like when we've committed a serious sin that has some pretty serious admission, it needs that, and we need some Christ intervention to help clean some things up. But even when or if that happens, our worth is always intact. Our worth as a human, as a child of God, is never and has never been in question. And again, I have to say, what does saying, "I don't have worth" even mean? What worth are we talking about here? And who gets to determine that worth? Do we really get to determine our worth? Because I'm not convinced that our brains can really even comprehend the amazing worth that God created when He made us. I have no doubt that when we return to God's presence and He shows us the grand scheme of things, that we will be completely and utterly amazed and awed at just how great our worth is and how little of it we comprehended while we were here on earth. 

07:44 

But I ask again, what are we really even talking about when we reference not having worth? Worth to whom? Other people who don't even fully comprehend their own worth themselves, worth based on our lack of perfection, worth based on comparing our weaknesses and failures with other people's strengths and successes? Here's what I see with women all around me in every, every walk of life, every phase, every religion, every everything. We use phrases like, ""I'm not worthy and I'm not enough because they are a convenient, lazy way to downplay our own importance in this world. I don't think we're doing it on purpose, but I think that ultimately that is what we're creating. And I believe that phrases like that are Satan's tactics to keep us playing small, to keep us from growing into our potential and doing what we were actually created to do in this world, to keep us from doing the good and the amazing that we are capable of. They are meaningless expressions that we have often repeated so many times in our minds that we don't even notice them anymore. They are untrue beliefs that are keeping us stuck. They are keeping us from being and feeling fulfilled. They are keeping us from making beautiful, important decisions for ourselves, and they are keeping us in insecurity. And when we are stuck feeling dissatisfied, indecisive, and insecure, we are severely limiting the contribution we can make in this world. A contribution that will tap into our greatest potential and allow us to live a purposeful life of meaning and direction and confidence. A contribution that will build ourselves, others, and the kingdom of God. 

09:53 

Okay, so now that the biggest part of my rant is coming to an end, let's chat some specifics here. How do we move out of this victim mentality of not being enough or not having enough worth? And yes, I did just refer to it as a victim mentality and you're going to understand why in just a little bit. First, this is what we got to do. I want you to be honest, 100% honest with yourself about these or similar phrases in your life. Do you use them? A lot of times I notice that when I have used them, it is cloaked in something else. I will take a situation to my coach, we will start working through it, and ultimately it gets down to, at some level, I don't feel like I'm worthy of the blessings I've received. I don't feel like I'm worthy of something, right? Okay, so it takes some work to dig it out sometimes. But do I use them? Occasionally, yes. I'm sick of it. I don't want to do it anymore, right? But I need to start asking myself, do I use them? How often do I use them? When do I use them? Like, what situations do they come up most often? Sit down with some paper and some pencil and do some serious reflection. When do they show up for you? How does your brain think that these thoughts are even serving you? Because there's a reason your brain thinks that they're helping you. I want you to try and identify that, okay? 

11:28 

The next thing I want you to do is see if you can pinpoint exactly what you are thinking you are meaning when you use these phrases, okay? This process is going to start showing you more clearly where your individual work is. And don't kid yourself. We all have work. It just shows up differently for every one of us. And please be 100% honest with yourself here. 100% honesty is a must if we're going to move forward in this work that we talk about every single week. Being brave enough to take this apart is a huge step in your progression. I saw a quote on Facebook this morning that said, "the degree to which a  person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth she or he can accept about herself or himself without running away." I'm going to do that just with female phrases so that we can say it clearly. "The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth she can accept about herself without running away." Brilliant, right? Think about that. We do not grow until we look at the harsh truths about ourselves that are keeping us stuck. This is something about coaching that has been so amazing for me. 

12:54 

My coaches have been able to help me see truths about myself that I could not see all by myself. And then they've been able to help me face them with love instead of with fear and begin to move things in the direction that I want them to go. If we truly have the courage to own up to our truths, that just don't look good in the light and be willing to turn on the light anyway, then our whole world shifts into a space of growth. It's like so many of us want to walk into a messy dark room and not turn on the light. I don't want to see my crap, okay? Somehow our brain thinks that if we don't see the mess, it doesn't really exist and it doesn't impact our lives. But the exact opposite is true. The mess still exists even with the light off. And when we don't turn on the light, there is no way to navigate. through the mess without a lot more pain and struggle. But when we're willing to turn on the light, yes, we see a mess and it can be very uncomfortable and sometimes overwhelming and sometimes painful, but at least then we can see what needs to be taken care of and learn how to navigate through the mess so we don't hurt ourselves and break more things in the process, including ourselves. Is the mess still there? Absolutely, and every one of us has a mess in our lives. That's what this earthly experience is all about: having a mess but ignoring the mess doesn't make it go away and it doesn't make anything better and it doesn't position us to have a better experience. 

14:33 

So turn the light on these thoughts of not being enough and not being worthy and let's get curious about them instead. Ask yourself every question you can possibly think about them. Do this in writing form. I promise you that you will learn so much more when you write it down, rather than when you just sit there and think about it. Make this an exercise. Sit down, figure out when, where, why you use these phrases. "I'm not enough, I'm not worthy." And then ask yourself, why does your brain use those? What does your brain think that it's saving you from? Work through this process, do it on paper. I promise you the paper thing works miracles. 

15:22 

The next thing, once you've pulled out these thoughts, once you've examined them pretty thoroughly, and once you've written down all these thoughts, I want you to start questioning them. And question them ad nauseam. So let's say you think, "I'm not good enough because my sister cooks so much better than I do." Here's the process. Ask yourself, is that true? Because our brains feed us a bunch of lies, a bunch of crap that's not true. Our brains just do that. If we believe everything going on in our brain, we're gonna be miserable. We're gonna have a crazy life because our brains do not tell us the truth. So first of all, ask yourself, whatever you think, is that true? In this particular example, remember that cooking tastes are subjective and everyone will have a different opinion. Remember that comparing these subjective tastes is practically impossible. And in the event that you decide, yes, that statement is true, then follow it up. Why does that matter? What do you make that mean? Why do you make it mean that? What would God think about that? Just ask every open-ended question you can think of, really explore it. 

16:40 

Okay, this is gonna take you some time, my friend. But I promise, if you will invest the time in you, in doing this process, you will never regret it because you will learn things about yourself that will change your life. How you view yourself and how you interact with yourself will change forever for the better. Don't allow yourself to get caught in the trap of not thinking you don't have enough time to do this. How can you afford not to do this? If you're not doing this, you're just bumbling around in that dark room forever. Turn on the light, my friend. Let's get to work here, right? I find this trap of thinking you don't have enough time to do this or enough energy or enough money to do this. 

17:32 

I find this mentality with some of the people that I do consults with. They're interested in coaching but ultimately they don't want to invest the time, the energy, the effort, and the money to do it. But what they are often walking away from is a completely different way for them to engage with the world, a healthier way, a more enlightened way, tools to help them move through this process more easily on their own. They're walking away from their next 20, 30, or 40 years, living in a healthier space of mind management and emotional health. Real growth requires an investment of some sort. Many of you  may be able to do this work on your own. Awesome! Do it! That's why I share these tools with you here on the podcast. But many of you will struggle and procrastinate and never get around to it, and you will continue to bumble around in your black, messy life when you don't have to. 

18:31 

I had someone, actually this week, sign up for a consult. Well, actually it was last week. She signed up for a consult, and in the comments section it says something like, "What would you like me to know in preparation for our meeting?" She wrote that she was 85 and had never been able to let go of some things that had happened in her past. And my heart broke for her. If whatever event she was talking about happened, let's say when she was 30, that would mean that she's been carrying this around for 55 years. 55 years of stumbling in a dark, messy room when she didn't have to. 55 years of pain and frustration and resentment that she didn't have to feel. And then I was just so grateful to think that I was going to get a chance to talk with her, and then my heart broke a second time when I received a notification that she had cancelled. I was so excited for her to be here so we could turn on the light, and she could live her last several years in peace and satisfaction. letting go of any of the more difficult emotions that apparently had been dragging her down for so long. Now obviously she gets to choose how she wants to live her life, and there's no judgment from me. I have no idea what her circumstances are, or what opposition she's living with, but when I know so clearly that this work can clean up so much of the mess, and that we can live with a different experience and not have to be burdened down and stuck in something from our past, then I just wanted to reach out and help her invest in herself. 

20:21 

So do the work, my friends. Do the work. If you can manage by yourself, great. If you need some help, great. Just be willing to invest in yourself enough to turn on the light and start working your way through it. I promise you it will be worth it. We think it will be painful, and it will be. But it's also painful not doing the work This is a time when we get to choose our pain: the pain of doing the work or the pain of staying stuck. Okay, so I just went off on another little rant. Sorry. I digress. 

20:57 

Alright, we were on the idea of asking all sorts of questions about your thoughts. The purpose of this is really to start to discover what is going on behind the "not enough" concept? Is there insecurity, comparison, anxiety, dissatisfaction? Figure it out and then start doing the work to clean it up, start exploring and discovering and please please please do so very compassionately. Resist the urge to be frustrated or angry with yourself or impatient or mean. Reach out to yourself with compassion. What would compassion say to that person? Reach out with love and with understanding that you have always been doing the best you knew how with the tools you had at the time. Beating yourself down closes up the space for discovery and understanding. We don't want to close up the space compassion opens up the space for growth and progression. 

22:03 

Another piece I really want you to understand here is that when we move into a space of "not worthy" or "not enough," those ideas are coming from a place of fear and not love. Fear that we are not enough, that we are not lovable, that we will not be accepted, that we will not fit in. The opposite of those thoughts: "I am of great worth. I am always more than enough." Those come from a place of love. They come from a place of Christlike compassion that opens us up to a vulnerability that creates room for growth. Yes, believing that we are of worth, believing that we are more than enough always, is a vulnerable space. I think that this is one of the reasons why so many of our brains have adopted thoughts such as, "I'm not enough." Because remember, our primitive brain wants to avoid pain, it wants to seek pleasure, and it wants to conserve energy. And thoughts that were not enough do all three of those things for us in the short term. And remember, our primitive brain only works to do these things for us in the short term. 

23:22 

So for now, today, the thought, "I'm not enough," shields us from the pain. It creates pleasure, and it conserves energy. Because of that thought, "I'm not enough," it keeps us from stepping into courage. It keeps us from taking on responsibilities that will help us grow and progress. Because if we're taking on responsibilities, right, sometimes that's painful, it's not always pleasurable, and it does not always conserve energy, right? It takes energy to step into responsibility, okay? But if we're not stepping into the right responsibility, that thought "I'm not enough," it keeps us stuck and stagnant. And eventually stuck and stagnant starts to stink. It's so important that if we want to grow and progress, that we really embrace the belief that we are enough. This is a thought that we have to think on purpose. By engaging our prefrontal cortex, we have to choose to think it. 

24:29 

And this does the opposite of what the primitive brain wants to do in this situation, okay? In this space of thinking "I am enough" on purpose, we are working for long-term solutions. Because stepping into the thought "I am enough" means that we are taking on the responsibility for growth. We are going to be doing things that require courage and strength we may not yet know that we have. Everything our primitive brain tries to do for us, to avoid pain, create pleasure and conserve energy. It doesn't happen when we believe we're enough, at least short term. We work through those things up front when we believe we are enough, but long-term, we avoid long-term pain. We create long-term pleasure, and we create long-term conserving of energy. 

25:23 

Think of it this way. When we go into the messy dark room, we can keep it dark, but we would fumble around for years and years, constantly tripping and hitting our head or stubbing our toe and constantly feeling frustration and irritation and pain. Short-term, when we choose not to turn on that light we don't have to see the mess. We don't have to acknowledge it. We don't have to clean it up, and that feels pretty darn good. But getting around in the room is always a difficult challenge. Long-term, we're never feeling good in there. When we choose to believe we are enough we will turn on the light, become aware of the mess, probably need to go through some short-term discomfort in engaging with the mess, but long term we can be comfortable in this room, We can navigate it with so much more ease and then we can even start a new, engaging, creative projec,t because guess what? Our time, our energy, our money is not tied up in navigating the dark room and paying for medical expenses. Let me ask you this: when has the thought "I am NOT enough" ever served you long term? I would offer to you that it never has. It has never moved you into a better space. It has never created the life experience you really want to have. It has kept you stuck and stagnant. 

26:56 

Okay, here's the last piece of information that can help you move forward here. I want you to realize that beliefs, these beliefs like "I'm never enough," are only thoughts that we have repeated over and over and over in our lives. And we have chosen every belief that we have chosen because we've chosen to repeat these thoughts over and over. If you want to create the belief that you are enough, it starts with the thoughts that you are, and then repeating that thought over and over and over again until your brain turns it into a belief. Sometimes we're not going to believe that thought that I am enough right away. And that's when we start using what we call ladder thoughts. So if you think consistently "I'm not enough", going to "I'm always been more than enough" is going to be a huge jump and your brain's going to resist that. So ladder thought is going to be a thought like "I know that God created me to be enough." Maybe that's a thought that you can believe. You want to find a thought that moves you toward the belief that "I am enough," that moves you forward, but is still a thought that you believe. 

28:14 

I can help you with this process if you're struggling. This is what I do as a life coach. I help you. I help you move into a better space by helping you learn to manage your thoughts and your emotions so you can create what you want to in your life. There is absolutely no reason we have to stay stuck in our lives with thoughts like "I am not enough." Not when there's a way to to move past it and create something different. Please do not spend the next 20, 30, or 40 years of your life living in a space of dissatisfaction and insecurity and indecision with yourself and your life. Growing up means that we take responsibility for our life, for every aspect of it, and we turn it into our own beautiful work of art. Growing up doesn't have to be horrible. In fact, it can be one of the most amazing, beautiful processes of your life. And I can help you do it. I know I can. You are enough, my friend. You are worth every bit of investment that you make in yourself. Please don't forget that. 

29:36 

Okay, if you need help with this process, go to my website tanyahale.com. There is a "contact me" button on there. You can set up a free consult and we will talk about how coaching can help move you into this better space. We do not have to live with frustration and anxiety and insecurity. We don't have to live there. We can live in the space where we believe, and really believe, that we are enough, that we are worthy. This is what I do. This is how I help you. Okay, that being said, thank you for being here today. This is the most important work I think that we can do in our lives, because when we're in a good place we can contribute to the world in the way that God would love us to be able to contribute and in a way that we would love to help God contribute. This is what we get to do. 

30:40 

Okay, share this podcast. If you haven't left a review please go ahead and do that. Okay, let's make the world a better place  by helping other people find these concepts that are going to help them, by helping you move into these beliefs that will make your world and your life better. I love you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this work for yourself. This is what I want to help you do. Okay, thank you and have an awesome week and I will see you next time. Bye! 

31:19 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!