The Personal Growth Paradox
We all want to feel like we’re good enough. In fact, we don’t just want to feel good enough. We want to be good enough. Believing that we’re good enough is a big part of our emotional health, and our emotional health is strongly related to the results we’re able to get in our lives, both personal and professional.
Our emotional health, in turn, is very closely related to our sense of worthiness, and as such, it’s also very closely related to our sense of shame. Shame isn’t good for us. Let’s be clear about what shame is, and what it’s not. Shame is not guilt. Guilt is about your actions. Guilt, believe it or not, is actually good for us. It tells us when we’ve done something that doesn’t line up with our values and is focused on our behavior and its impact on other people. Guilt motivates us to repair relationships when we’ve done damage and to act in a way that is consistent with our values. Shame, on the other hand, is about who you are as a person. Instead of “I did something bad,” shame tells you that “You are bad” or “You’re not good enough.”
When we don’t feel like we’re good enough, our mental health and emotional well-being suffer. We are at our best when we feel good about ourselves, and dare I suggest, when we actually like ourselves. And that’s the biggest problem with most approaches to personal growth. They don’t address the paradox that comes with trying to be better in the first place.
The paradox is this: If I need to be better, then how can I be good enough? And if I’m good enough, then why do I need to be better?
In our quest for to be constantly growing, have we made our individual, imperfect existence feel like less? What if many of us are clamoring through life, always striving to be better (whatever that means), to the point that we feel ashamed that we’re not better already?
When I say “good enough” I don’t mean “not great but adequate”. I just mean being enough. There is no such thing as being “more enough than you were yesterday”. Enough means just that. Enough. What if you don’t have to improve yourself to be accepted by others? What if you don’t have to be better to be proud of yourself, and to see yourself as worthwhile and valuable? What if you are enough for the people in your life? What if you didn’t need to do or be more to be accepted by others, and to be healthy in your relationships with those around you?
I’m not saying we can’t grow or improve, or even that we shouldn’t. But maybe we live in that space a little too much. Maybe humans would do well, for our ourselves and each other, to put aside the urge for “better”. Maybe it would do us a lot of good to simply practice being, as we are, enough. And if we did, the irony is that we’d probably grow a lot more.