Have you noticed how adults over 35 slowly start to wither? The dreams of their 20s seem further from their trajectory and the confidence slowly wanes. They begin to diminish themselves – almost unconsciously withdrawing themselves into a cocoon of their making. A cocoon that echoes a script of their shortcomings, failures, and misses in life. They’re high-functioning adults in the world, but in their heads feel like they’ve lost the game even before it’s over.
In my personal growth journey, I’ve seen how my self-doubt shows up, erasing the few marks etched by confidence cultivated, only to start again. In my most vulnerable moments, it’s my self-doubt that speaks and not me. My doubt has a way of crushing my spirit like nothing else. It stops me from putting myself out there, speaking my truth, and sharing what I know must be shared. All because somewhere sometime in the past I felt I was not good enough.
In the retreat last weekend I saw the same thing mirrored in so many stories the participants were living – their versions of ‘I am not good enough.’ The contexts may be different, and the narratives we construct are unique as we are, but the result is the same – it leaves us broken and diminished in some way.
How these narratives came to be is the same for most of us. Our younger selves encountered something unfavourable once that hurt us so much that we decided to shelve a part of ourselves in a dark corner of our mind in a bid to protect ourselves from further hurt.
The irony is that it hurt anyway. Because that wasn’t a part of us meant to live out in the dark crevices of the mind. That’s a part of us that makes us whole and every time we shun its expression we kill a part of ourselves.
So many of us so-called functioning adults walk the journey of life fragmented and end up getting crushed in the process of life despite our best coping mechanisms.
How can we live instead?
With acceptance, reassurance, and faith.
Think about it! Before we drop our well-cultivated defence mechanisms we must accept where we are today and come to terms with it. No what ifs, if only, or buts. Complete wholehearted acceptance without pretences, sugarcoating, or delusion.
We also need reassurance, to feel safe enough that we won’t be hurt or crushed as we were in the past.
Life won’t provide us with that guarantee of safety, so we need to learn to reassure ourselves “I’m old enough to take care of myself.” “I’m resourceful enough to address my needs.” “I’m assured enough in my self-worth to not be affected by other’s opinions or criticism.” “I can land on my feet even if I make a mistake.” With every such reassurance, we nurture confidence to shed a layer or two of our defences.
Then we can move forward, where no matter how many times we’ve been knocked down in life, we stand back up carrying only the lessons forward without the emotional baggage.
Faith helps us stay open to what life is yet to bring to us. Trust in God, the Universe, or a higher force helps us to keep going, show up, do our best, and not call it quits just yet.
In life, there are no easy answers, but one thing I know for sure is, that to stay ahead in the game of life we have to be resilient and not let it break us down. We might break, but we can’t afford to stay broken.
Think about it, experiment with it in your life, and let me know the results you see.
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