Gail cringed as she escaped into the kitchen when she gave a wrong answer during a trivia game she and her husband were playing with another couple one Saturday night.
She felt stupid, always coming in last during these games and she thought she was generally not smart enough in their company.
Although she knew her husband loved her, every now and then she heard him throw a few sarcastic remarks in her direction which make it even worse.
Although she knew she really wasn’t stupid, she also felt like she wasn’t “good enough” to be with her husband and these friends.
When Gail noticed that she was feeling distant from her husband and was scared that he would leave her for someone more intelligent…
She asked to have a coaching conversation with us.
Here are a few insights Gail had during our time together that helped her see something new around not being enough…
1. Become aware of your “mantras”
What we repeatedly tell ourselves that we believe(our mantras) form the way we look out onto the world.
When Gail saw that constantly telling herself that she was stupid and not smart enough for her husband to stay with her…
It was creating a mindset she didn’t want to live in.
Even though she had a lot of “evidence” that she wasn’t as knowledgeable as her husband and others in certain areas…
There were other areas that she knew she excelled. She was a great cook and loved nothing better than to capture nature with her camera during walks in the woods.
When she saw this, her belief in her stupidity became a bit fuzzy and eased.
2. Allow what’s underneath your belief to surface
When you start to look at the “real” issue your belief is keeping you from seeing…
You’ll get ideas about what action to take toward what you want.
No, we’re not talking about digging into whether your belief came from a comment your dad or a teacher made and you’ve believed when you were young.
We’re talking about what your belief is hiding from you.
As we talked, Gail saw that her mantra of not being enough had been putting up walls between herself and others, especially her husband.
It kept her from having connections she really wanted.
When she looked beneath all the noise of not being enough, she saw that she and her husband had lost their spark together and she wanted that back.
She could see that this would not happen when her defenses were up and she was pushing him away.
3. Realize being enough is your default
We all come into this world “being enough” and many of us allow others and circumstances to chip away at this until we believe we aren’t.
When you realize that love and being enough is inside us all along, you don’t buy into what you think the outside world says.
Notice we said “think the outside world says” because the truth is that we don’t really know what others think.
Our perceptions are a result of what we “think” is true and not really truth.
As Gail settled into a calm feeling, she saw that she could access that calm anytime.
And from this calmness could come ideas that could take her closer to what she wanted.
The truth is that even though you may have held onto a belief that you’re not enough in certain areas of your life…
You don’t have to beat yourself up about it by constantly putting yourself down.
In fact, in doing that you’re holding yourself back from loving and being loved.
Maybe Gail will never be good at trivia games but what she is now willing to embrace is loving herself more by opening to being love in action instead of fear.