00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 305, "When We Don't Feel 'Good Enough.'" 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. 

00:22 

Alright. Hello there, everyone. How are you doing? I'm so glad to have you here today. Thanks for showing up. I've got some good stuff for you today. I'm excited to share it. But before I do, I just want to let you know that I still have availability for the couple's work that I want to start doing. So I am going to work with two different couples. You will get a total of 18 coaching sessions for the price of what I currently charge for 12 sessions. So each person in the relationship will get six individual sessions with me and then we will do six sessions together as we work through how to have these conversations, how to talk about things, how to do things with both of you together when we start applying the tools. I'm super, super excited for this to start coming together. So if you and your significant other would be interested in taking advantage of this opportunity, go ahead and go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can go to the "free consultation" and you can sign up there. I would like both of you to show up at the time for the consultation. And obviously, that still is completely open for one-on-one coaching. I know many of you don't have spouses that are interested in this kind of work, but you are. So you can get on. We can talk about those 12 sessions and what they would look like for you and how to move you forward. 

01:51 

I'll tell you what, coaching has changed my life. And as I have the opportunity to work with my clients, I'm so touched to be such a part of the changes in their lives and in their relationships. I see marriages that are saved and moved into, not just saved, but moved into such a better place. I see a lot of women and men making tough decisions about marriage but feeling good about the decisions that they're making and working through the divorce process, and after the divorce process, in healthier ways. I just love the work that I get to do, so thanks for sharing your lives with me. And you may never hire me and that's okay. I feel honored that you're here and it's an honor to be part of your life and part of your journey, however that looks for you. 

02:41 

Drop me a line sometime and just say hi. I'd love that as well. And if you are not getting my "weekend win" email, come on, my friends. If you like this, you will love that. They're meant to be read in one or two minutes, just short little things to kind of go, "oh, I haven't thought about it that way," and just some good stuff there, too. I don't inundate you with emails. Usually you're just gonna get once a week and but it's good stuff. So I would like to invite you to go there. 

03:16 

Alright. We are going to jump into today's topic. Today's podcast is titled "When We Don't Feel 'Good Enough.'" And I kind of believe, from my experience with coaching and and working with so many people, that at the core of every human Is a little seed or sometimes a huge plant that says "I'm not good enough." Why this is exactly, I'm not sure, but I would bet that it has something to do with our primitive brain tribe mentality that, although we don't live the same kind of existence as cave people anymore, our brain still works the same way. It is not evolved past that. Basically our brain is always looking for danger and one danger it is very perceptive to is being part of the tribe, because back in the day if you weren't part of the tribe, you were doomed to death. People needed each other at a very physical level if they were to survive the harsh living conditions. 

04:08 

In our day, we are not as dependent on having a physical tribe around us a person can successfully live on their own, but I believe we are still in desperate need of emotional connections with other people. Needing this connection, our primitive brain is on the lookout for danger within our community, needing to fit in, to be part of a tribe emotionally, as well. So when our brain sees a deficiency or failure in us, it will start to freak out a bit, afraid that we won't be accepted into the tribe, that we are in danger Then we start to have thoughts about how we aren't doing it, right? Maybe we're not good enough, we start doubting our worth or value to the tribe, and when this happens a lot our brain creates a neural pathway where this thought "I'm not good enough" becomes our unconscious go-to, and we think it without even being aware that it is there. 

05:00 

I think there are a lot of reasons why we might start thinking this thought a lot. One scenario could be that we were raised in a home where whenever we made a decision we were questioned about it. Are you sure that's what you want? Are you sure that's the shirt you want to wear? Are you sure that that's what you want for dinner? Like a lot of being forced to question. And I've seen studies where girls get that a lot growing up. It could also come from a well-meaning parent just double checking, but it could have been interpreted by a young mind as someone telling us you don't make good decisions, rethink this one, or you're not smart enough, even though that may have never been the intention by the adult. It could have been being overlooked by a schoolteacher who we really admired, but we never seemed to be on the radar. Or maybe an older sibling always got stellar grades and you felt small and less than in comparison to them because yours weren't as high. Or you could have been the child who always got the great grades and were afraid that if you didn't you would lose your parents' acceptance. It's also possible that you were raised in an abusive home where you were constantly ridiculed and called derogatory names. Or you could have had traumatic physical or sexual assault that has caused you to question your worth. 

06:21 

I think sometimes we can pinpoint where these thoughts have come from and guess what? Sometimes we can't. If there is trauma associated with your thoughts of not being good enough, getting some incredible trauma counseling is a great idea, if not even vital, for your emotional health. But if your intrusive, "not good enough" thoughts seem to be a result of humans just being humans in how we interact and also in how we interpret actions, this is where coaching can be a very helpful tool. In these types of situations, the most important thing is not understanding where the thoughts originated. It can be interesting, but it isn't necessary. The more important approach is first recognizing that we are having these thoughts, becoming aware of them, and second figuring out how to create different thoughts. 

07:15 

Very often when working with clients, we will dig into thoughts they are having every week getting a little bit deeper and deeper, and finally around week four on average out pops the thought that they don't feel they are good enough or valuable enough or worthy enough. I think we all swim in this pool. Some of us in the shallow end and some in the deep end, but this thought of not being good enough plagues most of us at some time in our lives. But the tricky part is, most of us have had these thoughts so frequently that our brain doesn't even register that they're going on, that they're happening. And yet, they are thoughts that are creating feelings, that are influencing behaviors, and generally wreaking havoc in our lives. And sometimes we are aware of this thought, but again, it can be so frequent that we actually really believe it. Beliefs are just thoughts that we've had so many times that we actually believe they're true, and we don't question them. 

08:10 

So first, recognizing that we have the thought that we're not good enough in some form or another. We're not a good enough wife or mother or friend. We're not a good enough daughter or sister or coworker. Let's look at why and how this thought is so harmful to us in having this good emotional health and good relationships. If we put it in a thought model, it can be really easy to see. This is one reason why the thought model is so helpful, is that it clarifies the bits and pieces of what can seem like a complicated mess. I like to think of it as a piece of yarn, and we take it and we we wrap it up and roll it between our hands and it just becomes this tangled mess and that's kind of our situations. We look and just go "oh, that's just such a mess," but we can't see it. But if we could take each end of that and stretch that yarn out, then we can see each of the individual pieces. And this is how I envision the thought model is being. I'm stretching out the yarn, and I can see the individual pieces rather than just seeing everything mushed up in a big knot. 

09:08 

So here we go. Let's say that the circumstance is that your mom says "I wish you would call me more often. I always thought we would have a closer relationship." Your thought is "I'm not a good enough daughter," and then you might feel guilty. You might feel aggravated or you might feel inadequate, just to name three. But let's take each one of those and what actions those would create if you feel guilt. You might reach out with "have tos," which would not be clean behavior. You would feel annoyance. You might start groveling. You might have a lot of "I'm sorry's," not be kind to yourself, you might take the blame. If the feeling that you had was aggravated, you might snap back. You might say something hurtful. You might shut  down emotionally. You might distance yourself physically and not contact or even more. You might feel some resentment. Or if you felt inadequate you might start beating yourself up. You might create a lot of shame. You might shut down emotionally. You might lose motivation. 

10:09 

And the end result of all of those is that you have depleted energy for the relationship. You don't show up the person that you want to be. You confirm that you're not good enough. It's just not a helpful thought to think that we're not good enough. There is nothing about thinking we're not good enough that moves us forward. I know many of us were somehow taught growing up that beating ourselves up is the most effective way to motivate us to change, to talk badly to ourselves. "Come on, you're such a loser, you can figure this out," right? But it actually does the opposite. Now, it may kick us in the butt for a moment and get us moving, but it is unsustainable coming from the energy of "not enough." And then when we don't sustain it, we start beating ourselves up even more because once again, we're not good enough to change, to do what we said we were going to do. We think that the willpower is gonna carry us through to just make it happen. And it just cannot do that. The only place that we can create movement in our lives is from a place of curiosity, kindness, and compassion for both ourselves and for others. 

11:20 

So let's take the previous example. Your mom says, "I wish you would call me more often. I always thought we would have a closer relationship." There's lots of thoughts we could think. One thought, "it is difficult to connect so often when I have so many other responsibilities," okay? That is going to create some compassion for us in our feeling line because we will recognize that we have many spaces to commit our time and attention to, and we can feel compassionate for the fact that we don't. You might think, "gosh, I love her. I would like a closer relationship as well." Or you might think, "it sounds like she needs some extra support right now." Either way, both of those create feelings of compassion for her. We've taken the focus off of our seeming weakness, our not being "good enough" isn't even part of the equation, right? And then from those types of feelings, the compassion for us and the compassion for her, our action line, we reach out with love. We express kindness to ourselves and to her. We reevaluate our engagement with her. And we do it from a place of love. Notice how much softer of a space this is and how much more energy comes when we engage compassionately with ourselves and with others. 

12:39 

And this is the place where real and lasting change can occur. It cannot and will not come from a place of derision, ridicule, and defeat. And believing the narrative that we aren't good enough has us failing before we even start. Because if we're not "good enough," there is no way to come out ahead and we will stand back, we will hold back, and not give enough effort to move forward. Let's just look at this phrase, "I'm not good enough." Anyway, it can be used pretty freely and without thought, but what does it really mean that we aren't "good enough?" First, "good enough" for what or "good enough" for whom? And who determines this? Who are the "good enough" police? Does it mean that we're not "good enough" for life? Does it mean that we're not "good enough" for other people? And if so, why is that? And who are the people we're not "good enough" for? Because are they better than us? And who determines that? Who decides what makes someone good or better than another person? And does that really matter and is it even a thing? Does it mean that we're not doing life right and is it even possible to not do life right? Because life is just a matter of figuring it out a day at a time and one mistake at a time. Does it mean that we're not meeting a certain standard? And who sets that standard? And who made them the setter of the standard? Do they even have the qualifications to set the standard? Because are they doing it right all the time? The questions for me just keep coming when I ask myself what it means to not be "good enough." 

14:19 

Honestly the only person who gets a say in that is God and I'm pretty sure He is fully on board with us being enough. He created us after all. That's not to say that we're perfect, but that we are a work in progress every day for our entire lives, as we were created to be. And God, of anyone, knows that. He created the whole "send you to earth" system, the entire Plan of Salvation. He knows we will make mistakes sometimes over and over and over and not get it right. He knows we will at times not see the whole picture and that our best will be pretty crappy. And he also knows that we were created for growth and progress and movement. He created a whole plan for our lives that revolves around a Savior and agency, around making mistakes and cleaning them up around what can seem like imperceptible growth sometimes. He knows that we will feel stuck and frustrated and confused. He knows that we will need to dig ourselves out of some pretty big messes sometimes. And He also knows that this is all part of the process. It is baked into the Plan of Salvation. It is the air that we breathe. 

15:36 

And I promise you, you are good enough to work the process. You are good enough to be here on earth making mistakes and figuring it out and applying the Atonement of Jesus Christ and progressing a little at a time and moving forward and having aha moments that rock your understanding and change your trajectory. You are good enough, I promise you. All of your mistakes, all of your weaknesses, all of your strengths, all of your missteps and misunderstandings, all of your movements both forward and seemingly backward are all part of the plan. They do not make you more or less valuable. They don't make you good or bad. They make you a human who is here on earth doing what you were created to do, and that is it. You are good enough to be a human working through God's plan for you. 

16:38 

Now, when we start shifting our viewpoint, we will see the world differently. Let me give you an example. If I ask you to look around the room and find all the things that are blue, and then have you close your eyes and name all of the things that were red, you would struggle to do it. And why is that? Because you are focused on seeing things that were blue. What you look for is what you will see. So when you are always looking for evidence that you are not good enough, your brain will find it. At the exclusion of seeing all of the amazing things that you are doing. And the opposite is true as well. When you're looking for evidence that you are good enough, your brain will find it. Now, some of you may worry about becoming overly self-focused or possibly conceited or arrogant, but being confident in who you are is not the same as thinking you are better than other people, which is what "conceited" or "arrogant" refer to. When we are really confident in ourselves, we accept who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses both. Sometimes we think being confident means that we are good at everything, or we might even say that we think we are good enough. But true confidence comes in accepting and even embracing all parts of us, the strengths and the weaknesses, the sure steps and the missteps. Confidence is a true gift that we give ourselves when we accept our humanity as being part of our beautiful, amazing lives. 

18:24 

So why is it so easy to believe that we are not good enough? Why do we slip into this space of insecurity and doubt and self flagellation? I think part of it is because we have brains that like to compare, which goes back to needing to fit into the tribe. Our brain will always compare us with others, that's part of our self-preservation mode. Our brain wants to know that we are going to fit in with the tribe, that we will be accepted. So, we're never going to get away from comparing, okay? It's just how our brains were created. It's what we do with the comparing that makes it tricky. Many of us use our brain looking at how other people do things as a way to support our belief that we're not good enough, or that we are better than them, or to tell ourselves that we're less than other people, to prove that we're not up to par. We can compare that other people didn't get divorced like I did, or their kids are still active in their religion, or that we're not good enough or that their house is always clean and that they always look put together. We can gather all sorts of evidence this way to then use it against ourselves and prove what we're looking for, that we're not good enough. 

19:42 

But we can also use this comparison function of our brain to gather information of possibilities. "Huh, I haven't thought of doing it that way before. I wonder if that would work for me." Or maybe, "huh, she finished grad school in her fifties. I wonder if I could do that." Or maybe we use the comparison app in our brain to just notice amazing things about other people. "Wow, she's been going to the gym regularly for months now. That is amazing. She is so cool." Okay? "She just has such a great sense of style. Everything she wears looks so great on her." "I love how she thinks about things. It really causes me to be more reflective and aware." When we let the comparison app in our brain run rampant, it's going to look for ways that we are less than others, ways that we are not good enough. So, start training your brain's comparison app to turn that comparison, which it's going to do regardless, let's turn that comparison into something positive rather than into proof that you're not good enough. 

20:49 

Also, another way we start feeling as though we are not good enough is when we have this never-ending list of things we have to do or be in order to be good enough. I should be a savvy shopper. I should always look amazing. I should never say anything hurtful. My children should never be hurt by anything I do. I should always get everything on my to-do list done. I should never eat unhealthy. I should be able to figure out middle age without hiring a coach. I shouldn't spend so much time on social media. I shouldn't get sucked into those Korean dramas. I should be nicer to my husband, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera to ad nauseam, right? And we use all of these "shoulds" as proof that we're not good enough. And that's a bunch of hogwash. And I know I sound just like my dad when I say hogwash, but I'm going to say it anyway, because honestly, it's nonsense. These "shoulds," remember the podcast I did a couple of months ago, "Should and Shame?" "Should" always create shame. Nothing good comes from shame. 

21:58 

Are there things we would like to do and that could help our lives run more smoothly if we did them? Of course there are. But whether we do or don't do them doesn't mean anything about us or about whether we're good enough. It only means that we're human and we will never do all the things. That's the reality, my friends. When we can accept and even embrace that we are humans, things will go so much better for us. And not because we're avoiding looking at our stuff, but because we are creating a safe space within us to be human and to get curious about why we are or aren't doing the things. And we're compassionate with our humanity and the process of growth and progress. 

22:45 

When our children are freaking out about something, by the time we're our age, meaning middle age, like I'm 56, right? We understand, as we didn't in our 20s, that berating and yelling at them doesn't work very well to get them to stop freaking out. They have a very good reason for their freakout. And when we can approach them with compassion, it can be understood and possibly even addressed. When I taught middle school, I taught eighth graders for 12 years. Loved it, right? But I'll tell you, the first two years, I was a pretty tough, hard-nosed kind of teacher. When a kid would act out in my class, I'd pull them into the hall and I would get in their face and I would let them know that their behavior was inappropriate and would not be acceptable in my classroom. Right? I was pretty tough that way. Because honestly, I was afraid of losing control of the class. Right? It was all coming from fear. 

23:48 

But then I learned an amazing lesson. They don't act that way because they're bad or because they don't like me or they're trying to make me mad. They have a very good reason for behaving the way they do. So when I would notice behavior that was out of the norm or not acceptable in a classroom setting, I would still ask them to join me out in the hall. But instead of getting in their face and on their case, I would step into love and compassion and let them know I was concerned about them. Because what was going on was not their normal. I would ask them if everything was okay. And more often than not, I would hear a tale that would bring me to tears. Tough stuff that they were dealing with and how they were hurting. They were working through things the best that their 13 or 14 year old brains could. And it just would show up in their behaviors. I learned that being compassionate to them, letting them know that I loved them, worked wonders in letting them feel safe in my class. 

25:08 

And here's the deal: we are no different than these 13 and 14 year old kids. We have very good reasons for not being the person we aspire to be yet. And it's not because we're not good enough or never will be. It's not because we're bad or rotten to the core or because we just can't get it together. It's because we are humans and we're all working on our stuff, past and present. When we can be compassionate, when we can be curious with ourselves and show forth a lot of kindness to ourselves, we will discover things we never knew. We will understand better why we get so frustrated with certain behaviors or why we're insecure and how it causes us to respond to people and situations. Instead of beating ourselves down by saying, "I'm not good enough, I'm a horrible person," we can learn to say, "this is a tough situation and I'm hurting or I'm confused." What's going on underneath this pain and this confusion? When we snap at our husband for giving us a driving suggestion, what if we were compassionate and asked ourselves questions like, "I wonder why that gets under my skin? What do I make it mean when he gives me a suggestion?" There is information in those questions and information is power. When we just berate and belittle and believe that we're not good enough, we strip ourselves of the power to learn, to grow, and to move forward. When we can learn to ask questions about our behavior that we may not love, when we can learn to find out what's underneath all of that, we get the information that we need to really know how to move forward. 

27:12 

But society has taught us to be mean to ourselves. And here's the deal: I absolutely consider you my friend and I ask you to please, please be nice to my friend. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Assume best intent because I promise you it's there. I care about you and I want you to love yourself and your life, even with all the flaws and mistakes and failures. In fact, I want you to love yourself and your life because of all of the flaws and mistakes and failures. They are all part of the grand and glorious plan for your life. They are some of the most beautiful parts of who you are. Sometimes what may seem to be our biggest flaws are actually the best parts of us. 

28:08 

For example, people could look at my divorce as a huge failure and something that has blemished my life and made me not good enough. In fact, someone told me once when I was considering divorce that no one would ever want to hire a divorce life coach. And yet I see my divorce as one of my biggest steps forward. It was the turning point for me in learning how to love better and accept other people. It has been a huge part of my growth these past eight and a half years and I would not be doing this. The podcast, the newsletter, the coaching, I would not be doing this without that, without the difficult years and the dysfunctional behaviors and the eventual divorce. I really believe that in order for me to be here serving you a big helping of coaching here on the podcast each week, to be helping my clients to clean up their thinking and behaviors, helping them to to make decisions that they're happy with, to be doing what I honestly feel God has called me to do, that I could not be doing this without the journey through the land of difficulty and divorce. My challenges, my strengths, my experiences, my failures, my successes, are what have made me good enough to be here doing this for you. My greatest difficulties have created my greatest strengths, so please don't think your weaknesses, your failures, your struggles make you not good enough. They are all part of making you more than enough. You are good enough, you are strong enough, you are capable enough, you are enough just as you are. You always have been and you always will be. You just get to learn how to believe it, and when you believe it you'll step into it and you'll live it. I love growing up. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Thanks for joining me on this journey. Have an amazing week, my friends, and I'll see you next time. Bye. 

30:48 

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.