Will I ever be enough?
“Look within, for the roadmap to finding the answers in life has never been to seek them outside of ourselves.”
By SQ Ong • 8.5 minute read
In the days leading up to a presentation at work, I found myself being taken on a roller-coaster ride of emotions - dreading the day to come and worrying about all the possible ways in which my presentation could go wrong.
What if my presentation flopped? It will ruin people’s impression of me and they will think that I am a phony all this while! And for those who are seeing me for the first time, it will leave them with a very bad first impression of me. As we all know, first impressions can be sticky!
At the same time, this worry was further convoluted by another thought that something was wrong with me. Like, hello dear self, this is not the first time that I am making a presentation - why am I still experiencing such anxiety?
There was an urgent need within myself to get to the root of the problem: Why exactly do I feel so unworthy and unconfident, even at this age?
An online post that I came across did a beautiful job in answering my question, on why I, as with most people, never feel good enough. The writer’s experience echoed mine - like her, since my school days, I had set myself on an achievement track, acing exams one after another, and my belief that this was the only formula to a successful life ahead had always been strong and steadfast.
I will not go into detail on the disillusionment I experienced at work, which was not quite what I had envisioned or the picture that others had painted to me of a successful life ahead. Nevertheless, beset with endless problems, I came to the conclusion that work life is certainly more challenging than school life, and so to be successful, I just needed to do more, achieve more and be more - a belief that I clung to, as this was proven time and again by how my academic success had always been the result of my diligence. By applying the same formula in the workplace, certainly career success would not be too far away from me too. With this, I willed myself to put my best effort into whichever work assigned to me, no matter how small, with perfectionism constantly in the driver’s seat, fuelling that desire to perform, to shine in the workplace, to ultimately embrace success once more.
The need to not make even the slightest discernible error was of paramount importance to me.
That night, as I read the post, a flurry of indescribable emotions surged within me. The writer had hit the nail right on the head by getting to the root cause (at least it rings true for my own experience) of why I am so adamant on achieving success. Deep down, the belief driving my behaviour is that by being successful, I will then be able to prove that my existence is worthy, and it is only then that I can be worthy of love and acceptance. In other words, my very existence, with no strings attached, is not enough for me to be loved and accepted by others, or even by myself.
Love and acceptance have to be earned. Beneath the determined, perfectionistic and achievement-seeking exterior is actually a tender and vulnerable desire to feel accepted and loved - built upon the mistaken belief that success is the means, and probably the only one, to validate that my existence in this world is not a mistake. And what further muddies the waters is that the positive attention I received from others in each of my encounters with success creates a powerful illusion that success promises love, security and acceptance.
However, the issue is - what is success? When will I ever consider myself to be successful?
From my own experience in my growing up years, academic success had always been so fleeting - acing one assessment and coming up as the top of the cohort lasted only as long as that particular assessment. As soon as the next round of assessment loomed, it was yet another effortful race towards emerging as the top again, in order to continue to be successful. The bar just kept raising where as soon as one goal was attained, another came my way, and yet another one.
It is almost like success is this slippery fish which I can never quite keep a good hold of in my hands.
In work life, who is considered to be successful? There is always someone out there with more authority, more knowledge and more experience - we may consider the CEO of our company as successful, but when he/she is pitted against the CEOs of bigger companies, can they still be considered successful? Scale this up to a comparison on an international level, and the notion of success becomes more and more elusive. Not forgetting that a person successful in his/her career may not be equally successful in other domains of his/her life, and for an unhappy ‘successful’ person, will we still be envious of his/her ‘successful’ life?
This begs the question - so how do we even define success?
And for a notion as elusive and subjective, certainly the biggest joke is that I have dedicated my whole life to pursuing something that I cannot even put a finger on?
The Buddha’s words on how all phenomena is illusional hit me hard - not having a mind of my own, I have been blindsided by societal constructs all this while, and something as unreal and fuzzy has ironically been calling the shots for the decisions I make in my life, sending me on a fool’s errand all this while.
If the notion of success (external achievements/possessions) is so iffy, certainly the belief that our worth is predicated on success is therefore invalid, for how can our worth be built upon something that we cannot even define? It is therefore reasonable to say that our worth is something inherent within us - since it cannot be found externally, it must be found internally. That is to say, right now, wherever and whoever we are, we are already enough and worthy. We do not need to prove our worth by launching ourselves on a relentless drive for external pursuits.
If we observe nature, flowers are beautiful in their own ways - a rose is not more beautiful than a tulip, nor attempt to outshine and be more beautiful. Both flowers are beautiful and worthy of admiration in their own ways. From the Buddhist perspective, each one of us is inherently a Buddha, and by dusting off our afflictions, the gem within is revealed -- as it is, as we are. The truth is that our worth has always been present within each and every one of us -- it is not something requiring to be painstakingly earned via external validation, achievements or possessions.
I am already enough, just as I am right now.
As soon as I came to this realisation, I felt a part of myself being liberated - I no longer have to beat myself up for every single mistake that I make at work, as my mistakes or work performance do not define my worth as a person.
This also means that I no longer have to twist and turn myself into a pretzel to pander to people’s expectations of me, most of which may well have been false assumptions made by myself anyway. It is through the removal of what does not serve me (afflictions), rather than the accumulation of achievements/possessions, that will serve my highest purpose.
As an analogy, this is like we already have tonnes of treasure chests at home (we are already extremely wealthy!), by dusting off the cobwebs and cleaning off the gunk and goo, voila -- we will be able to open the chests and access the treasures within. Any effort thereafter invested in any activity will therefore operate from the joyful motivation of unlocking our inherent worth or potential within, rather than a painful venture to seek worth outside of ourselves.
Looking at things from another perspective, ironically too, if all that I am seeking for is love and acceptance beneath the quest for success, don’t I already have them now? Love and acceptance from the Buddha, my Gurus, family members and friends - people who accept me for who I am, flaws and all, with no strings attached! What more or who else out there do I need to prove my worth to? And what do I hope to achieve from this?
Granted that we need to prove our capability in the workplace to secure our job and income, but this has to be taken as independent of our intrinsic worth as a person - to not fall into the trap of allowing mistakes at work (which can happen due to various factor, sometimes beyond our control) define us as an inherently unworthy or useless person, for the very reason that the negative connotation underlying mistakes is also subjective - there are people who see mistakes as necessary for growth, while there are those who insist that mistakes are unpardonable. For that, we do not need to be servile to their judgement, if we know very well that we have put in our best effort and are willing to learn from the mistakes.
In the domain of friendships/relationships, if there is someone who refuses to see our worth only until when we have achieved more in life, does this person truly have our best interests at heart? Are we sure that we can always maintain this deceptive “I-have-it-all-put-together” facade to gain his/her validation? Does life really have to be this exhausting?
This is just one of several insights in my life that never fail to point me in the same direction - look within, for the roadmap to finding the answers in life has never been to seek them outside of ourselves.
Of course, with many years (lifetimes, even!) of social conditioning, this silent truth is so easily drowned out and sidelined, but whenever we need it, tune into ourselves, and we will find that it is always there, and will always be there.
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