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Mar 4, 20203 min read

Am I enough?

When I first began The Significance Project, my Mom directed my attention to the yogic concept of Santosha, which is often referred to as the practice of contentment (Bullock, n.d.). At its core, Santosha is about internalizing the phrase "I am enough." Mom suggested that this might be a good place to start. I thought to myself, "I know I'm enough, but I don't know what I'm enough of." I think I might have missed the point.

I have always walked through life with what others perceive as a high degree of self-confidence. And it's true - with respect to stuff that I know I'm good at, I feel like a total rock star. Give me a list of concepts to memorize, an essay to edit, or a public presentation to do and I'm your gal; in these circumstances I ooze poise, assurance, and tenacity. Not surprisingly, I have adopted the areas in which I have the most self-efficacy as the core of my personal and professional identity. This is not to say that my path so far has been without challenge. But, it has definitely been built on what I perceive as my innate strengths rather than activities that fill my bucket and blow my hair back. I am realizing that a significant life is not necessarily built solely with the things we are good at.


Following from this, I have a problem I need to solve. You see, I'm not very kind to myself about the things that I'm not immediately good at, or with respect to the areas of my life that I perceive as lacking. For example, I feel my vulnerability very keenly when it comes to motherhood, creative pursuits, and body image. Only those who are the closest to me ever see this, and often not even then. My husband is still routinely surprised when my irrational but deep-seated body image issues come out to play, and when he witnesses all the negative self-messaging that goes with them.

Or, there's my distorted perceptions about productivity. My anxiety ramps up like crazy when I think I'm being unproductive. Yesterday I caught myself errand running, baking, and doing laundry in a frenzy; it took me some time to realize that I woke up feeling unproductive and telling myself to get it together, so I made myself super busy with stuff I didn't really need to do. And then, again, I berated myself for being ridiculous.

I wouldn't talk to anyone else like that, so why am I so cruel to myself? How can I let go of my perfectionism when it's my intent to explore and figure things out? I'm pretty sure that this is where learning about self-compassion comes into play. But, I'm gonna be honest. I always thought that self-compassion guides were for emotionally stunted people with low self esteem. A couple of years ago Kristin Neff, a self-compassion researcher, spoke at our university and I was interested enough to order her Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook (2018). As I flipped through it, I immediately judged it harshly as something I would never need and passed it along to Danny. Don't take this as an indictment against my husband - he'd be the first to admit that he's emotionally stunted! But, I certainly under-estimated my need to do this kind of work as well.


I'm working on the idea of self-compassion in my meditation practice, and I will re-visit Kristin Neff's workbook, despite my first impression. Do any of you struggle with the negative self talk? What strategies do you use to cut it out? I'll take all the help I can get! I'd like to get to the point where the phrase "I am enough" rings true to me all the time, rather than just while I'm doing the things I'm good at.





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