The Great Lie: "I'm not enough" and Breaking Free

If you’re human, there’s probably a part of you that believes entirely some version of I am not enough.

Too many of us walk around asleep in our lives, forgetting WHO we are. And why wouldn’t we? Our experience and conditioning often run counter to the truth of our Being.

We are the energy that creates worlds. We aren’t separate from God. We’re expressions and extensions of the Divine.

You may have heard it before: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

But are we aware of that? Do we understand? And do we live like we KNOW it in every fiber of our being? Are we experiencing the fullness of life, or are we just passing time until “something better” happens? PHEW! I know the answer to that…For most of us, it’s the latter even though we tell ourselves and/or wish for the former.

After years of experiencing traumatic conditions inside of relationships that were supposed to be loving, many of us conclude that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us. Living with a sense of impending doom, we dare not venture into the creative space, lest we fail (once more). We dare not share who we are with others, lest they see how messed up we are. We dare not reach out, lest we experience waves of rejection and shame for simply wanting or needing something.

As we live a shriveled existence, our frustrated energy comes out as anger, shame, guilt that drive us to behaviors that are often not aligned with our desires, and we reinforce our patterns of lack. Believing we aren’t enough costs us peace, opportunities, relationships, and joy. We cycle in patterns of feast or famine, and we suffer in ways that add more “not having” to our already wanting and empty lives.

That’s what living with trauma is like. Here’s what it’s like to break free…

At some level, we remain in touch with our souls. We are aware that life CAN be better, even if we’re not sure it’s ours to claim. We commit to ourselves that we’ll make our healing a priority and we embark on a journey that’s unfamiliar and filled with obstacles. We rise. We fall. We rise again. We do this repeatedly as we open ourselves up to learning.

Healing, we come to see, isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about remembering who we are, what matters to us, and how to access our brilliance. Healing brings us home: to our natural rhythms, to our soul agendas, to our authentic self-expression.

We realize that we are, in fact, more than enough.

We see that all of the experiences we had were valuable—not because of the suffering but because those experiences gave us a chance to reclaim our power and our voices. Sure, we would prefer to have done it in a more graceful way, but that wasn’t the hand we were dealt.

We accept ourselves completely. We own our shadows, we are clear about our shortcomings, and those things don’t cause us to hate ourselves. Rather, we understand that they’re what make us human and we are OK with living the full catastrophe of the human experience. We may not like all of life’s parts, but we’re in acceptance that ups and downs are natural. Our magical thinking is replaced with rooted realism AND boundless optimism. Our brains work for us, not the other way around.

We authentically express who we are and how we can be of service to others. The beautiful thing about healing is the power of knowing who you are. No longer looking to outside channels for validation, we are comfortable saying what we think and feel and what we can do. We’re not trying to fit into someone else’s idea of us. We’re free to be who we are. And that frees up energy we can use in ways that feel good to us.

OH!! And . . . One of the greatest products or side effects of healing is …

We reconnect with our passion and desires, and we cultivate the circumstances in our lives to have them. We experience joy, creativity, love, and peace in ways that leave us feeling deeply fulfilled and satisfied.

When these things happen, our lives change dramatically. We start living from the inside out, aligned with our purpose, gifts, and desires. Even though we didn’t think we were good enough, we listen to the still, small voice that said, “Go after what you want anyway,” and we discover the treasure that was within us all along.