You Are Enough

On January 1st, 2020, I deleted my personal Instagram permanently.

I’d had it for 5 years.

I was closing in on 300,000 wonderful followers. 

Mama, I’d made it! 

Yet for every new follower I got, I grew more disillusioned.

Instagram is a lot like MTV Cribs. Everything is cleaned up before the camera crews arrive. The friends all come over. You’ve got your best outfit on and you’re ready to show off.

But once you've got the shot the cameras turn off, your friends go home, you put your pajamas back on, get some ice cream out, leave the dishes in the sink and go back to being a human who has doubts, fears, insecurities and just wants to connect and love. 

Your real life is rarely shown. In fact, everyone's real life is rarely shown.

But you end up comparing your real life to their MTV Cribs.

Which then makes you fall into the most human of traps...believing you're not enough. 

The status quo thrives on you believing you're not enough.

If you believe that you’re not enough, you’ll do absolutely anything to fit in.

You’ll buy anything, be friends with anybody, work at a job you hate, say whatever people want to hear. Anything to be accepted. 

Yet, when you get all those things...the wealth, the popularity, the 'success'…all those things you were promised would make you feel like enough...you realize this inevitable and oft-repeated truth...

You’re being lied to.

You’re being lied to because you’ve been sold something you possessed all along…

Your enoughness.

(Side note: That’s actually a word.)

So the key is to realize your own enoughness as soon as possible. (I still can’t believe enoughness is a word).

Once you understand that your own worth is based solely on the fact that you exist, then your question will shift from, ‘What will make others love me?” to “What do I love?” 

That one question. That one shift. Changes everything. 

You’ll stop trying to become something you’re not. Instead you’ll work on living your own truth. The one you covered up for far too long.

But like any significant change, it takes a looonnnggg time. It’s like a cruise ship turning 180 degrees. Your old habits of wanting to please others will stop you at every turn. 

Not to be preachy and toot the Yes Theory horn, but that’s real discomfort. 

Real discomfort is gradually altering the constructs that have built up over time in your head. It's time consuming and requires excruciating patience. It’s incremental. Day to day. 

We all want the eureka moment. We all want the change now. We all want to be enough already.

But just like it takes time to get your body in great shape, the same goes for your mind.

If your whole life has been based on decisions of wanting to make mom proud or finally get your crush to pay attention to you or proving your bullies wrong, then it’s going to take time to transition out of that.

You'll know it's working when you’re making decisions based on what sets your soul on fire rather than how many likes it'll get.

Ok so here’s a challenge I want to leave you with...

At least once a day try to ask yourself this question:

Am I doing this:

1. Out of a need to feel accepted.
2. Out of genuine love.

Let's go for #2 as much as we can.

Love,

Matt