The Dark Side Of Self-Acceptance

Why 'I am enough' will be your undoing.

One of the most popular self-confidence mantras out there is killing your progress.

“I am enough.” is paraded through the streets of personal development like the silver bullet of success. It is well-intended, but many use it as an excuse, silently letting themselves off the hook from doing anything challenging. You’re copping out and being ‘enough’ for other people, stranding yourself criminally short of your potential.

How might you redefine your ‘enough’ and hold yourself accountable to your full potential instead?

Your present self is the softest judge.

Letting the current version of yourself set the bar for your progress is a mistake. Anything can be framed as progress, like these mini-wins I have conjured for myself in the past few months:

• A walk around the block.

• Only eating two cookies rather than three.

• Thinking positive thoughts about taking future action.

Sure, every journey starts with a single step, but if you bask in the glory of the smallest ones, you set an incredibly low velocity for yourself.

Letting those around you set the bar isn’t much better.

Typically, other people will only cheer for your success if you’re behind them—even those who have helped you along the way. Watching you soar past forces them to question the choices they’ve made for themselves. They don’t often love the potential answers, and imagining them sits uncomfortably.

Once the student becomes the master, the student better get used to a much lonelier path.

Your highest potential future self is the best person to set the standards.

Just how amazing might your life be? What would happen if you shed the fear of failure and gave your dream your best shot? What if you remembered that all the people you’re worried about seeing you fail aren’t even watching at all?

Too often, fear of failure is the root cause.

As I have built my business over the last few months, this has been my most significant source of inaction. I’ve tried to dress it up in so many different ways. There’s always an external circumstance to blame. There’s always a way to justify a rest or ‘giving myself a break.’

The crumbs of comfort are easy to find if you look hard enough on the floor.

You need to recognize when it’s time to stand up on your feet and shoot for the stars. Realizing that the worst that could happen is a set of lessons and a redirection to a new path is where the magic happens.

If you embrace your unlimited potential and lose your fear of failure, you will become unstoppable.

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You’re striving for an easy life rather than progress.

What’s your dream life?

For most people, the answer is some form of ‘only doing the things I enjoy’. Let’s stop and think about that for a second, though.

• How long could you sit and watch Netflix? How many times could you tap through the ‘Are you still watching’ pop-up?

• A spa day is great, but could you do a whole spa week? A spa month?

• How much ice cream could you eat before you start throwing up?

I love playing golf, but every time I’ve attempted to play more than one round in a day, I've experienced malaise and blisters.

On top of all that, none of these things represent progress.

How about you consider difficult experiences instead:

• Learning a new skill is inevitably laced with frustration and failure when you’re not an instant expert.

• Hard workouts at the gym push your limits, leave you a sweaty mess, and doom you to a painful recovery day tomorrow.

• Telling yourself, ‘No, I can be better than this,’ comes with the pain of acknowledging that you’re not as good as you could be.

The most challenging roads I’ve walked have ended in the most enjoyment: changing my college degree, moving countries, and stopping drinking. Not one of them involved ‘only doing things I enjoy.’

Enjoyment is a state of mind that you can reframe to your advantage; success isn’t a view you get at the top of a mountain.

Success is the climb.

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You’re not as authentic as you think you are.

What is the authentic you?

Your authenticity is composed of your inner thoughts, intentions, and actions. However, its measure is not absolute; it’s relative. Only when all three of those line up perfectly do you feel entirely at peace.

Yet, you claim to be authentic and are still troubled - why is that?

The quick and easy answer is always to externalize it:

• Some circumstances have expectations that prevent you from acting according to your intentions.

• Some relationship dynamics are stopping you from living your truth.

• You rarely find yourself comfortable enough to be yourself.

If only it weren’t for the pesky world and its inhabitants, you’d be 100% authentic.

The more likely and more complicated answer lies in flipping the script:

• You want an easy life where everything is handed to you, and you’re never challenged.

• You intend a life of greatness for yourself but are too scared to push yourself to go for it.

• You commit to yourself, but you let yourself down.

How you act in private doesn’t match how you act in public.

Like challenge and progress, authenticity is incredibly hard to achieve. It involves complex internal dialogue; it consists of trying, failing, and trying again.

Most of all, it involves accepting that your inner dialogue and the actions you choose are the source of your inauthenticity, not the environment in which you’re trying to manifest it.

The door to self-improvement always swings inward.

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Are you enough?

Personal development can be a trap to help you settle for low self-esteem and free yourself from self-judgment because you're not the finished article.

How long is this cycle going to continue? When are you going to turn it into action? How many regrets are waiting for you on your deathbed? How much power to chart the course of your life will you give away to others?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with ‘I am enough’.

For the world’s most popular mantra to have the intended outcome, it must be treated as a nettle to be grasped, not a blanket to wrap around yourself.

Who are you going to be ‘enough’ for today?