When You're Feeling "Not Good Enough"
Our beliefs about ourselves are formed the same way that our beliefs about the world are formed – through our experiences. The other critical step in understanding one’s own belief system is to look also to our relationship with our experiences.
When I was 13 I knew this amazing woman named Christina. She became my first spiritual teacher and was someone who taught me some very crucial life lessons that I wouldn’t fully comprehend until many years later. I remember when I was about 15 and I was in the hospital with depression I talked to her on the phone one day and she said “Matthew when you wake up in the morning and you feel joyful then say ‘Thank God I’m joyful!’ and when you wake up feeling depressed say ‘Thank God I’m depressed!’”. I remember telling her that that sounded crazy and she said “Both of these states of being are valid and important and they Just Are”. As I got older I realized what she was trying to get at. Through acceptance of what is we can change it, shift it, heal it or choose to stay in it. When we fight against anything whether they be good things or things that we see as un-beneficial we become imprisoned by them. It was in learning to let go that I became free to choose my path. This doesn’t mean that I was immediately healed of a chemical imbalance but what it meant, at least for me, is that I was able to slowly (and with some help) begin to shift my relationship with my chemical imbalance. We can be hard-wired for so many states of being and overtime those parts of us, even the difficult ones, can be gleaming with purpose.
I have often said that I was born with faith and belief in something greater than myself, the world and the universe. For all things there is most definitely a purpose but I can also say from first hand experience, like many of you, that knowing that everything happens for a reason only gets you so far and that eventually that phrase can become a cause of anger rather than a source of comfort. Trust in the universe is difficult when our internal environment is in a state of What The Fuck.
Our internal processing of emotions is not linear. Our dynamic nature as living, sentient beings, is why we’re able to process vast amounts of information per second (11 million bits of information per second – 40 bits are conscious to us). If you can imagine this as a non-linear capability you can begin to see how a little bit of stress, or under eating, or under sleeping, or negative self talk can really shatter our ability to have a healthy relationship with our experiences and ourselves. In my own healing journey I’ve had to learn to shift my thinking. I’ve had to re-define words – or rather my relationship with words. I’ve had to accept the things about my life that were limiting in order to rise above.
Anyone who has been around the spiritual community for about two seconds will have heard someone say something to the effect of honouring one’s truth. This isn’t just about expression of what one feels but it is also about the acceptance of one’s own being as body, mind, heart, spirit, soul, life path and community – none of which is permanent. This moment that you’re in right now is your truth, for this moment. We get overwhelmed when are in a state of imbalance because it has an essence of permanence. There’s an interesting quality to pain: When we touch something hot it burns and we move our hand away, when we sit in a way that hurts our back the pain continues until we shift the way we sit and when we are in emotional pain we feel the infiniteness of it until we shift it. The infinite appearance of pain is by design – we perceive that we are in a space of harm, if we thought it would pass then we wouldn’t move.
So, what to do with all of this?
Accept it. Accept who you are, where you are standing in this exact moment. Un-apologize for who you are and your state of being and do this retroactively. Understand pain and illness and difficulty from a whole-self perspective including (but not limited to) your relationship with what has happened in your life. Self-forgive and love yourself enough to reach out to others for help if you need it. There are amazing resources out there and you shouldn’t be ashamed of using any of them if they’re truly helpful.
In this exact second you are good enough as you are. The next second is up to you – whole heartedly.
With peace, love and kindness,
Matthew
When I was 13 I knew this amazing woman named Christina. She became my first spiritual teacher and was someone who taught me some very crucial life lessons that I wouldn’t fully comprehend until many years later. I remember when I was about 15 and I was in the hospital with depression I talked to her on the phone one day and she said “Matthew when you wake up in the morning and you feel joyful then say ‘Thank God I’m joyful!’ and when you wake up feeling depressed say ‘Thank God I’m depressed!’”. I remember telling her that that sounded crazy and she said “Both of these states of being are valid and important and they Just Are”. As I got older I realized what she was trying to get at. Through acceptance of what is we can change it, shift it, heal it or choose to stay in it. When we fight against anything whether they be good things or things that we see as un-beneficial we become imprisoned by them. It was in learning to let go that I became free to choose my path. This doesn’t mean that I was immediately healed of a chemical imbalance but what it meant, at least for me, is that I was able to slowly (and with some help) begin to shift my relationship with my chemical imbalance. We can be hard-wired for so many states of being and overtime those parts of us, even the difficult ones, can be gleaming with purpose.
I have often said that I was born with faith and belief in something greater than myself, the world and the universe. For all things there is most definitely a purpose but I can also say from first hand experience, like many of you, that knowing that everything happens for a reason only gets you so far and that eventually that phrase can become a cause of anger rather than a source of comfort. Trust in the universe is difficult when our internal environment is in a state of What The Fuck.
Our internal processing of emotions is not linear. Our dynamic nature as living, sentient beings, is why we’re able to process vast amounts of information per second (11 million bits of information per second – 40 bits are conscious to us). If you can imagine this as a non-linear capability you can begin to see how a little bit of stress, or under eating, or under sleeping, or negative self talk can really shatter our ability to have a healthy relationship with our experiences and ourselves. In my own healing journey I’ve had to learn to shift my thinking. I’ve had to re-define words – or rather my relationship with words. I’ve had to accept the things about my life that were limiting in order to rise above.
Anyone who has been around the spiritual community for about two seconds will have heard someone say something to the effect of honouring one’s truth. This isn’t just about expression of what one feels but it is also about the acceptance of one’s own being as body, mind, heart, spirit, soul, life path and community – none of which is permanent. This moment that you’re in right now is your truth, for this moment. We get overwhelmed when are in a state of imbalance because it has an essence of permanence. There’s an interesting quality to pain: When we touch something hot it burns and we move our hand away, when we sit in a way that hurts our back the pain continues until we shift the way we sit and when we are in emotional pain we feel the infiniteness of it until we shift it. The infinite appearance of pain is by design – we perceive that we are in a space of harm, if we thought it would pass then we wouldn’t move.
So, what to do with all of this?
Accept it. Accept who you are, where you are standing in this exact moment. Un-apologize for who you are and your state of being and do this retroactively. Understand pain and illness and difficulty from a whole-self perspective including (but not limited to) your relationship with what has happened in your life. Self-forgive and love yourself enough to reach out to others for help if you need it. There are amazing resources out there and you shouldn’t be ashamed of using any of them if they’re truly helpful.
In this exact second you are good enough as you are. The next second is up to you – whole heartedly.
With peace, love and kindness,
Matthew
