Not Enough? I doubt it.

Media in general can be a wonderful outlet to convey information and get your work out to the world.  As a former student of corporate communications at Penn State University, I know this to be true.  But as most things are, especially anymore, there is definitely an abuse of power that is going on and most of us are at its mercy.  I'm going to walk you into a scenario:  You are sitting down watching a new episode of Law & Order: SVU and they go to commercial break.  You don't feel like getting up so you watch the commercials.  As you watch, you notice that a lot of the ads are for health-based issues and products.  Now, you consider yourself an average American....not bad-looking, a few extra pounds and okay self-esteem.  Suddenly, a commercial for Zoloft comes on.  You know that one....the cartoony ad that shows depressed people who look tired and look like they're ready to take a bridge because they are so depressed.  You begin to start an internal script with yourself: "Am I depressed?" "Could I be happier?" and this begins a nonsensical problem that is going to stress you out so much that at some point you'll wind up on Zoloft anyway.  Law & Order resumes but now you are considering things in your head more than watching the show.  Congratulations, you have just been brainwashed.  Don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying if you feel depressed, not to explore your options.  Mental health disorders are to be taken seriously and are statistically on the rise yearly.  There's an issues though when the media puts ideas into your brain of what you're supposed to look like, how to act and who you are supposed to be.  Who are they to tell us that we're not enough?

In today's modern, venti-mocha, smartphone world, it seems to me like we're all on the quest for something more.  This something usually is a fallacy but when we supposedly find it, we will be 100% happy and at peace.  It's a shame that 99.8% of us ever find this something but dammit, we sure do try!  Earlier this week I was talking a friend about another friend of ours who has fallen by the wayside, in a matter of speaking.  This person is married, has kids and owns a business.  This sounds pretty sweet to me but it always seems like this person is on the search for that something more.  Another thing they do is they constantly try and change their self to pacify the person that they're with.  There's a huge problem with being perfect....you're not.  Perfectionism is nothing more than a tool to protect ourselves from whatever it is we're running from.  It's actually more like a coat of armor than a useful tool most times.  Perfectionism tends to slow us down and hold us back from things we want to accomplish and who we want to become.  I think that's the case with our friend, always trying to please and perfect their life on the outside but on the inside, they're screaming.  There comes a point where one simply has to admit failure, as painful as that is.  But through failure there is always some type of growth that happens.  Like I have written about before, no one likes to admit failure or being wrong because it shows a major sign of weakness as well as being exclusively vulnerable.  The friend I've been talking about is male and by our birthright and social class structure, this is the one area we don't want to excel in.  What man wants to admit he's weak and vulnerable?  Here's what I think about this issue:  It takes a lot more balls to talk about your problems than to run from them because like any good fitness pro will tell you, eventually you're bound to run out of steam and those problems are going to catch up to you!

So, how do you deal with these types of 'not enough' type issues?  We all feel inadequate from time to time, it's just how we're wired, you've got to deal with it.  First, you need to stop numbing your emotions.  You can't selectively numb them either, so when you numb the negative emotions, you numb the positive ones as well and then nobody wins.  The second thing I think you need to do is have hope.  And that's the word I was waiting for!

AAAAAH Hope!  It's a groovy little word, isn't it?  What most of us know about hope is that it's a feeling that drives us to better ourselves, motivates us and lifts our spirits when things go sour.  That's about 5% of what hope actually is.  C.R. Snyder, a professor at the University of Kansas-Lawrence studied the concept of hope, what it is and how it works.  When we think of the word 'hope', it's usually this marshmallow-y, feel-good word that yields possibility but according to Snyder's hope theory, hope isn't a feeling at all, it's a cognitive thinking and learning strategy.  So, in a nutshell, it's not about how we feel, it's about how we think.  The great part about hope being a learning tool is that hope is 100% teachable. You can apply this theory and its concepts to a lot of things in our lives.  The way we think, the way we parent, even the way we treat ourselves can all be traced back to hope.  Each day we continually tell ourselves that things will work out in our favor...."I hope I get this job", "I hope I get well", "I hope....".  One big reason that hope is a teachable skill is that it can be measured in people.  Studies have been conducted where they've measured high hopeful and low hopeful feelings in people.  It turns out that the two pre-req's in high hopeful people are tenacity and perseverance.  Snyder also found out that the people with the highest levels of hope had the most experiences of failure and struggle.  Most of people's teaching moments with hope is learned by their parents when they were younger.

How do we get past this 'not enough' feeling?  I hate to break it to you but you really can't.  This is something that is so imbedded in us that we are constantly striving to always be the next big thing.  Now obviously there's nothing wrong with healthy striving but when somebody tells you something or something happens that makes you feel inferior to those around you.  I write a lot about this topic, mainly because of my personal history with struggle, bullying and acceptance.  I can be in the presence of people and feel like the weakest person in the room, even if I'm not.  These 'inferiority complexes' have plagued me  my entire life and only going on 32 years of age that may seem like a short while but for me at times, it has been sheer agony.  The way I compensate these feelings is by letting my authenticity and creative side show through.  When I'm at my most vulnerable, that's when my best work comes to fruition usually.  I think this is why I never stop learning also.  Not because I'm constantly vulnerable, but because I'm striving to not only help myself own my personal story, but I'm also trying to help others create and own their own.  By assuming my adult role as a teacher, counselor and hopefully a guidepost for people to reach out to, I feel like I'm doing a part of what I was put here for.  I've also found that in my vulnerabilities is when I've been most creative because like I've just said, being creative is inherently vulnerable.  If you're creating something, you are making something that has never existed before and there's nothing more vulnerable than that.  When I hit send on this blog and publish this entry, the reactions from people are totally out of my hands and it's a huge gamble on whether people like it, hate it or just don't care at all.

What does hope look like?  For me personally, it's a few words of encouragement, a pat on the back or just a hug.  Something that tells me, "I've been at that place you're at and I know how good it feels when you've accomplished something you've worked really hard to get."  If I'm going through something, the most important thing someone can do for me is just hold my hand without saying a word to let me know that everything is going to be okay.  And if they have to say something, the most powerful words would be "I'm hurting right along with you.  I may not know what you're going through at the moment but we're going to get through this together."  These last few lines are things I really haven't shared with a lot of people but part of working on yourself is opening up to others about what scares you and makes you YOU.

The next time somebody or even when you tell yourself that you're not enough, no matter what context it's in, keep in mind that the person projecting this bullshit storm is probably just projecting their own insecurities on you.  If it's yourself thinking these thoughts, that's just your ego trying to edge its way into your brain.  We all have those moments where we feel less than enough and it sucks that the hard part is believing that the ordinary parts of us are what makes us truly extraordinary.  Family, play and nature are just some things we're presented with daily but we miss them because we're so busy being afraid of what people think and how we're judged.  This culture of scarcity that we live in needs to be put out to pasture permanently because I think we as a society are getting tired of pacifying fake notions of who we are supposed to be.  And really all that we are supposed to be is the person that we are on the inside, because that is what makes us truly beautiful on the outside.