Never good enough.

Have you ever felt the pressure that you weren't 'doing enough' or 'delivering enough' or 'being active enough, achieving enough, going fast enough, performing brilliantly enough, loving enough, working enough, sleeping enough, socialising enough, and paying enough attention to other people'?

It's exhausting, isn't it?

We live in a very strange society where personal accomplishment is both celebrated and dismissed - at the same time. It’s a society of more.

It's ironic, really. We are so fortunate, in so many ways.

We have so many opportunities: to work, to live, to buy. But that brings its own kind of pressure. The Lily Allen song lyrics say "I am a weapon of massive consumption. It's not fault, it's how I'm programmed to function." If we follow the logic of the song and assume, as it implies, that there’s always more to consume - then, on the other side, it follows that there's always more to do to earn the money to consume. It's a vicious cycle. So how can we tell when what we have, or what we have achieved, or, fundamentally, what we are, is 'enough'?

It's not a coincidence that the song is called "The Fear".

We should be afraid. Or, at the very least, we should be aware of the risks. Because the flip side of living in a world with so many opportunities, so many choices and so much stuff is that it's really, really hard to know when we're making the right choices, or the doing the right stuff. And the consequences of being wrong, the risks associated with being wrong are that we end up putting more and more pressure on ourselves to deliver against ever-increasing targets. And that is scary.

Why?

Because endless over-consumption and over-delivery brings a real risk of misery.

Sooner or later, unless we start finding limits somewhere, there’s an increasing chance that we’ll end up putting our own mental health at risk. In fact, it’s already happening. And it's scary. Did you know that suicide is now the single biggest cause of death in men aged 20 – 49 in England and Wales? I didn't, until a helpful poster by CALM - the Campaign Against Living Miserably - re-defined 'man down' in a whole new way for me.

But here's a news flash. It's not okay to be miserable!

It's not okay to accept the concept that we have a responsibility to do and achieve and be everything to everyone all the time. It's not enough to never be good enough.

Recently I came across a quote by the poet, Oscar Wilde. It said "Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." It reminded me that the standards by which we measure ourselves are entirely arbitrary. When we choose to define ourselves as good, better or best, whose yardstick are we using?

The happiest people are those who are able to compare themselves against themselves alone but, and this is important, as the author of The Chimp Complex reminds us: we can only compare ourselves against the best we can do.

It sounds trite. Cliche even. It sounds like all the other mumbo-jumbo motivational clap-trap that's out there. And it is. But the funny thing is that it's also based on science: neuroscience to be specific. Changing our attitude changes our behaviour. Changing our internal mental model changes our thoughts which, in turn, affect the way we perceive the world which, in turn, affect the way we react to the world.

But it is possible to change our 'gremlins' (preconceived notions built on experience that force us to react in a way that we don't like, but haven't yet been able to change). It's a concept that the author of The Chimp Complex encourages people to do. It takes time. But it's possible.

So there is good news.

It's possible to change your emotional reactions while they're taking place. And it's possible to re-train your brain to get out of the habit of self-deprecation. Because even the strongest-willed, most competent, capable person in the universe will have moments of doubt.

So when that niggling little nae-sayer causes gremlins, even inside the most balanced mind, we have two choices about the way we deal with doubt, or respond to it. We can:

1. feel the fear and do it anyway (or, as my best friend says "Say f**k it!")
2. wither and die inside.

There are many, many ways to change your perception about the way you see yourself - and, hence, your place in the world.

But only YOU can make that change.

You can choose to STOP.

• STOP waiting for permission from the rest of the world and give it to yourself.
• STOP being afraid of scratching your itch (by which I mean, doing the thing that makes you come alive, that you would be 'itchy' about if you couldn't make it part of your life).
• STOP blindly reacting to emotions and situations if you can take control of them and change them instead.
• STOP believing that you're not good enough if you're doing the best you can.

Because you don't need to be good enough for every single person in the world. And, quite frankly, you never will be. But you CAN be good enough for yourself. Only you can make that choice.

Image source: Penywise: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/218302