Becoming Enough

How often do you feel enough? Slim enough, successful enough, loved enough, smart enough, worthy enough, accepted enough…just enough. I’m not talking about intellectually embracing the value of loving yourself unconditionally, but feeling I AM ENOUGH in every cell of your body? That’s right — if you are like many people, the notion that you are good enough is a platitude never to be reached. In fact, it’s the biggest complaint from my clients. I’d like to tell you why this untruth can feel true and what you can do to change your reality.

First, it is important to understand that though the feelings of insecurity might be commonplace, the reasons individuals hold this belief — I am not good enough — are as unique and different as your DNA because it is your individual experiences that tell you it is true. It’s like you’ve been unconsciously accumulating evidence to prove this mind-body fallacy all your life: dad criticized the way I painted the house, my parents divorced because of me, I didn’t get 100% on the math test, I was told my body wasn’t good enough — either through words or deed, I never won a spelling bee, or most unfortunate, someone told me so without any mincing of words.

The accumulation of evidence starts early in life — sometimes without the validity of testing the evidence with the rational mind — and by adulthood, the file cabinet entitled not enough is bulging at the seams.

In the same way we have a file cabinet, we also have a file clerk. The personal file clerk is charged with automatically going to the archives of past experiences in an effort to gain insight into what’s really transpiring in the present moment. When the boss at work declares, “I am disappointed with the outcome of the project”, the file clerk looks for a similar situation which transpired in the past. And, there...in the not good enough cabinet, the file clerk finds a file folder entitled not competent…and immediately informs you how to interpret and feel about today’s experience based on the content in that folder. Of course, the file clerk is also placing this new piece of evidence away for safe keeping.

This reality — that our experiences of today are processed by our internal file clerk — tells us why many well-intentioned and productive strategies don’t solve today’s experience of your not feeling good enough. Things like gratitude, positive affirmations, prayer, or even therapy are effective strategies if they allow you to make more empowering decisions. However, because you haven’t cleaned out the old file cabinets which hold the misguided evidence of your accumulated unworthiness or lack of perfection, the file clerk still has easy admittance to the files you no longer want to access.

Because these files are still available, one day you might make a conscious empowering decision, but the next day still find yourself reverting back to old unconscious behaviors or decisions that don't serve you. This pattern will continue to be your reality until a decision is made to spring clean the disempowering stuff accumulated in your old file cabinets.

Depending on one’s life experiences, the nature and depth of the file archives will obviously differ. But regardless, the process of clearing out old file cabinets is swift and easy compared to standard therapy timeframes. Even for a client who experienced trauma early in her life, the feeling that I AM ENOUGH and THERE IS ENOUGH returned after just two full-day sessions using my favorite healing modalities.

And yet, there are many paths to healing. So if you want to feel the sense of I AM ENOUGH at the cellular level, start the process of clearing old debris. There are all kinds of productive and instant healing strategies to expedite the process, all of which I’ve experienced: energy work, exploring past lives, emotional freedom technique, breath therapy, and of course, my personal favorites — belief desensitization therapy™, parts integration, and hypnosis. I promise you, living in a world of enough is worth the exploration.