Good Enough Person for Living

Recently, I heard someone say something so simple yet so profound: “When you hear something and then repeat it internally, you’re accepting it. Worse still, when you hear something and silently sit and don’t refute it, you are accepting it.”

It threw me at first. But then I remembered countless times wherein my silence meant a degree of acceptance.

In the third grade, I came home crying because a boy on the playground told me that my dream of becoming the first woman president would never happen because “Girls can’t be president.” While my 8-year-old brain clearly took in and deemed his faulty logic to be skewed, it still hurt. And I still knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that what he said was getting to me. Shaking my confidence. Telling me that I wasn’t good enough.

We truly are our own worst critics and enemies, aren’t we?

The strangest part of it all is that we own our feelings. They are irrational and frequently changing, but they are ours. We determine what we listen to and what we don’t, so why wouldn’t it make sense to take it a step further and rationalize that we then embrace some of it subconsciously?

I have a secret.

Despite the voices and the continual nay-saying that we all hear from time-to-time, I am learning to put them on the back-burner. This isn’t to say that I am totally CONFIDENT in an “I’m Every Woman” Whitney Houston throwback kind of way. It just means that I’ve learned to do things afraid, even amidst the sea of “No’s” and “But you cant’s.”

I really don’t feel good enough just because my ‘dream school’ put me on a Waiting List and therefore has yet to accept me.

In no way do I ever want to sound whiny. I am incredibly grateful and thankful for those four acceptances. After living and volunteering in a third world country a few years ago, I all too early came to terms with the fact that what we consider ‘problems’ are merely inconveniences that are not worth the spit we use to utter our words of discontent. I am happy. I am positive.

But I still silently accept the words that I have created in my own mind, “You’re just not good enough for them .”

Been though I don’t really know who “them” encompasses, I let it get to me. What else are you supposed to do when you have a dream that you want to become reality and it’s taking longer than you thought? What should you do and how should you react when you’ve spent ten years working and learning and volunteering and overextending yourself and slowly watching your 20’s slip away? You had a PLAN.

I just want to know that what I’m doing is enough. I always feel like it’s not enough. THAT is my personal utterance that becomes my silent truth. And the second I’ve said it, I’ve spoken it into existence.

No more.

No more will I attribute failures to my flaws; they make me who I am. No more will I cry out to heaven in angry tears when I have so much to be grateful for.

I HAVE TOO MUCH TO DO than have that stuff get in the way of my plans and pursuing my life’s purpose. Life is too short to worry about being good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or any other adjective you want to put before “enough.”

And the moment I honestly accept that I will be placed exactly where I’m supposed to go is the moment it all will make sense. I’m getting there. I just hope I’ve not wasted too much time worrying about being enough.