It’s the most toxic thought of all.
It underlies much unhappiness, self-sabotage, violence, anger, deceit, and so many other of the world’s ills.
It’s a thought none of us are born with, but most of us learn.
It takes many forms, but at foundation it’s simple this:
‘I’m not good enough.’
Sometimes it appears as: ‘I’ll never be able to …’ or ‘I can never manage to….’ or “I’m no good at….’
Sometimes it’s: ‘I’ll just have to pretend…’ or ‘I’ll keep my head down…’ or ‘if I talk fast and loud and confident, no one will notice I don’t know what I’m talking about’.
That person who hides their talent? They feel inadequate.
That person who always tries to dominate the room? They feel inadequate.
That person on Social Media who demands (humbly of course) you notice how BRILLIANT their life is? They feel inadequate.
Maybe they know it, maybe not.
Sometimes the toxic thought is buried so deep the thinker doesn’t even know they’re being driven by it.
Inside every monster — a scared child who feels inadequate.
Inside every person who denies their skill, power and passion — a scared child who feels inadequate.
I know that child.
I’ve spent my life grappling with feeling I’m not — nor ever will be — good enough.
I can trace some of its origins. My mother grew up in struggle. I inherited that. My father achieved a middle class job that he was afraid he didn’t belong in. He always told me: ‘keep your head down’, ‘don’t get too big for your boots’. He thought he wasn’t good enough. He taught me I wasn’t good enough.
I was a scholarship boy at a toxic, ‘christian’, sport-focused boarding school where my dad was a teacher. I was bullied through most of my time there. It taught me I wasn’t good enough, I was n’t loveable, I didn’t fit in. It taught me to bully myself just so I could fit in with the bullies.
The bullies? They felt inadequate too.
There are other things in my past too — some I know, others, I’m sure, are hidden to me.
Knowing (some of) the origins of the toxic thought helps me see it , but doesn’t stop me thinking it.
Deciding I should stop thinking it doesn’t stop me thinking it.
Trying to think something else, something positive like ‘I am good enough’, doesn’t stop me thinking it.
They all help, but they don’t, on their own, stop me thinking the toxic thought.
What does?
My experience, both as a trainer of artists and as a coach, tell me that real change comes from a deep level. What you think, consciously, is only the surface level.
To make deep level change needs time, discipline and space. It needs you to notice, understand, dismantle and reformulate your deepest beliefs about who you are.
That’s not often fun. But it can be joyful.
If that sounds like a paradox, it is. Life is a paradox made up of many paradoxes.
To go deep you need time, space, gentleness and a framework of thinking. The framework of thinking needs to give you tools actively to undo the damage done by the ways we’ve learnedto think about ourselves and the world.
To use an over-used word, deep work is transformational..
My framework of thinking is Self-With-Others.
It’s the framework I use when I’m working on my own ‘stuff’. It’s what I teach to people who work on other people’s ‘stuff’. It’s how I create space and insight for people when I’m helping them, through coaching, work on their own ‘stuff’.
Self-With-Others has a number of foundations — one of them is my ‘8 Principles of Presence’.
The first of those principles is this:
‘Right here, right now, you’re good enough.’
When I first introduce it, people think I’m trying to be nice and make them feel more confident.
That’s not the point.
It’s a head-on assault on the most toxic thought of all.
You have a right to exist.
You have everything you need to take your next step.
Whatever is beyond your next step is unknown.
But right here, right now, you’re good enough.
I reached 60 this year. I’m still working, fragment by fragment, on dismantling the legacy of learned inadequacy. Part of that legacy is a lifelong reluctance to ask for help because I thought people would see how ‘not good enough’ I really was.
Without collaboration we underachieve. We underachieve because we think we’re not good enough to achieve.
The toxic thought reinforces itself by proving, eternally, that it’s right.
If you recognise this thought lurking somewhere inside you, be bold. Confront it. Question it. Do not believe it. Be gently uncompromising in reminding yourself that what it tells you simply is not true.
Reach out for help — we grow better together than alone. Reach out to friends, collaborators or professionals who can guide and stimulate a healthier and truer thinking.
Avoid people who tell you they have quick and easy answers. They don’t.
Remembering the principle; ‘right here, right now, you’re good enough’ will not stop the toxic thought. But it’s a start on the journey of stopping.
To live feeling inadequate or incapable is a terrible waste of the miracle of your life. I know bitterly from personal experience. I’ve hidden from success and become boastful when it came my way. Both responses spring from that toxic thought that I’m simply not good enough.
Working with Self-With-Others, and perhaps the passage of years, has brought me to a more peaceful and balanced place. Mostly. When my physical or mental health wobble, so does my sense of adequacy. But years of working with Self-With-Others make it easier to realign.
If nothing else, I’ve become supersensitive to hearing the whispering of the toxic thought and, smiling gently, to remind myself ‘right here, right now, I’m good enough’.
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