It’s a disease that runs rampant in our human culture.
It’s a propaganda on our TV screens, newspapers, and radio stations.
I hear it from my friends, coworkers and family members.
I feel it deep within myself. Each day I wake up, I feel this disease gripping at my soul.
Most of the time I feel content with who I am, but every so often, this odd sensation of “I am not worthy“ creeps up on me.
The news media teases me that I don’t own enough, I don’t have enough. I would be more content if I upgraded my car. I would be happier if I ate at expensive restaurants. Life would be better if I travelled around the world and hung out with famous people.
It tells me that I am strange if I don’t like to go out to party. It says that, something is wrong with me if I don’t want to live in a mansion or flash my cash around.
Subconsciously it tells me I don’t have enough because someone else always has more.
If I am somehow able to ignore the noise coming from the news media, I have to deal with the people around me.
Just recently, I was one day into starting a new job. It should have been a celebratory day for me.
But during that day I was asked by a colleague, “What is next?”
My response was, “I don’t know…”
To which he said, “You should always have a five year plan.”
Right… In a roundabout way, he was telling me I wasn’t enough.
Each year I feel that I am expected to give more, do more, be more, in order to maintain status quo in my career.
If I don’t, I may not live up to the expectations others have of me. Or worse, I won’t be able to live up to the expectations I have of myself. When is enough, enough?
I am restless.
I want to achieve more, I want to do more, and I want to make sure my life doesn’t go wasted.
But this constant hunger for more, may be bringing me less.
Less content, less happiness, less joy.
Less fun, less passion, less me.
The irony is, I know that I don’t want to go through life looking for more…. Unless I understand that I have enough now. It’s a paradox, it’s a riddle that has to be solved.
After all these years of searching for an answer to the riddle. I may have stumbled upon it.
It’s so simple that it is hard to believe that it works.
I tried it.
Now it is your turn.
All you have to do is slowly repeat after me…
I am enough….
I am enough….
I …… am …… enough….
Stop chasing someone else’s dreams. Stop being someone you’re not. Stop listening to your family and friends who withhold their love for you until you satisfy their craving. Stop holding off your happiness today for something that does not yet exist in the future.
You are enough right now. You always have been and always will be.