In my search for my own emotional healing, I came across the question a lot of people ask themselves or maybe it is something I believe a lot of people ask themselves.
I have always had very high expectations of myself in everything I did and do and while we can all talk about this as being a positive thing, we all know that this can drag us down when it comes with a feeling of not being enough…
That constant inner voice saying to you: “you could have done better”….”you should have achieved more”…”you haven’t got enough”….
So I asked my psychologist where was that coming from…I read books about it…I listened to podcasts about it.
I needed to understand where exactly this was coming from so I could stop that inner voice.
Truth is, there are lots of reasons….and shutting down that inner voice is not that simple.
I came from a society where females had one path to follow: study, get a job, get married and have kids. A society where you can only count on yourself as our government is extremely corrupt so whatever you do, somebody else is doing 10 times more than you as people are scared not to have a job, not to have any meanings to create a life for themselves and their families.
In my wild being, I broke that cycle as I never felt I belonged there.
That meant I have always been trying to find where I belong and within that, I have seek people’s approvals, I have tried to stand out as being someone who accomplish things. I have taken into consideration people’s expectations of me.
In everything I read, I found a common thread…we need to feel enough inside ourselves as supposed to look for it outside of us.
By understanding the reasons, I got some clarity around it but that inner voice is still there….not always but sometimes…so now that I recognize that voice, I work on calming that voice down by telling that voice that I am enough when it gets louder.
This week I heard something which is something that has helped me the most. Kyle Kuzma, an atlete said he used to always seek external approval from others but he realized that he didn’t need to do that anymore as his expectations of himself were already high enough.
So for now, I am going to focus on that when that inner voice creeps in…and I am hoping you can use that as a tool too.
I am hoping you can practice to tell that inner voice you are enough when it gets louder.
It is not an overnight solution…it takes courage and it takes time…and I will keep working on it and I hope you will do it too.