We live in a thoroughly edited and completely Photoshopped world. Everything we see and hear leaves us comparing ourselves to a cinema production, complete with supermodels and a multi-million dollar budget — even our friends social media feeds look like well-financed production. This is not our life (or our budget) but we are made to believe it should be. No wonder our inner gremlins continually tell us we are not enough. Living in this overproduced world makes it difficult to recognize reality versus production.
In order to silence the message of “I’m not enough,” we have to start reality checking what we see and hear. Brene Brown in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, suggests asking yourself these questions:
Is what I’m seeing real? Do these images convey real life or fantasy?
Do these images reflect healthy living or do they turn my life, my body, my family and my relationships into objects and commodities?
Who benefits by my seeing these images and feeling bad about myself?
This are astounding questions. If we will stop and truly ask ourselves these questions the answers will be stunningly surprising. The result of grappling with these questions will be show-stopping.
This feeling of “I’m not enough” prompts us to turn our focus on ourselves — look at our flaws. When we do that, we feel alone. I’m the only one who doesn’t have . . . Isn’t . . . Can’t . . . We perpetuate the problem — feed the beast, if you will. When we intentionally look outward, we see a completely different picture. We begin to recognize others in the same struggle. You too? When we can shift our focus outward, we are able to reality-check the messages and expectations that say we are not enough.
When we become conditioned by what we see and hear to believe we are not enough, it takes us away from our own authentic design. It makes it impossible for us to show up truly ourselves. It’s hard to admit this is the world we live in, a world that expects a production, when the world we want to live in is full of perspective, meaning, and purpose. To get to a meaningful world, we will have to intentionally stop the production!