One mental shift that solved most of my anxiety of “not being enough”.

We had our monthly gathering last Sunday. It is a group gathering with some friends that I knew from Church. We usually talk about life updates and some random topics during the gathering. I was hesitating to go this time because I got really busy recently and did not want to “waste my time”, though not even once, that was a waste of time. Fortunately, this time I still forced myself to go.

The one thing that I learned from our discussion could probably save me tons of hours that would have been wasted worrying about “me not being enough”. I felt like I really want to write down some details about it. So, here we go.

The subject we discussed is “expectation”. We usually have expectations for how things should end before we are done. But when the reality does not match our expectations, disappointment or even anger may make the heart bitter. For example, you’ve been working on a research project for a long time. You then submit the paper with the hope that it is accepted. If you are an addicted daydreamer like me, you would further expect to go to the conference, talk about your work and build connections with more professors, maybe someone with a big name really likes your work and offers to write you a recommendation letter for your job application! Yeah, you can go even further…with your imagination.

Unfortunately, all those fantasies may have a chance not to happen eventually. If everything goes in the opposite direction, meaning, you got harsh reviews and a big rejection, how would you feel and react? Generally, there are two extreme ways to react:

1. I am stupid and not enough.

2. The reviewers are stupid and that is not my fault.

I do not think either way of thinking is completely healthy or unhealthy. In our group, interestingly, we do usually react very differently varying from person to person. I am the kind of person who tends to think: Oh, no, I messed up. Then tremendous self-blame and disappointment would paralyze me for a long time.

There is a good side to self-reflection on your mistakes. We all know we usually learn the most when we reflect on our past mistakes and the bad. That is what one of the elders said to me when I say I think the “not being enough” thought really bothers me. He is a really wise man and a professor of physics. But I feel like the bothering does not stop there when I say to myself: “It’s okay to feel not good enough, which motives you to learn more”. My immediate thought comes after this is

“Ok, how enough is really enough? Where is the end? If there is always more I can do, how can I know I actually tried my best to get a good result?”

Then something the wise man said relieved me. He asked me “Okay, do you see what the fallacy is here? You have a fallacy in your argument.” I was confused and did not catch anything wrong in my thinking. He then said “The fallacy is you assume you have control of the result. The truth is, you don’t have control over it!”

Wow! bang! I got what I need to hear. Yes, we don’t have control over the result. You are just part of a story. You do your job, others do their jobs, God does his. The result? You only know when it actually comes out.

You certainly will have expectations, realistic or unrealistic ones. And you definitely need to set goals. But the more important thing is to always remember that you only have control over how you spend your time and the decisions you ought to make. You do not have control over the result. This mental shift defeated my anxiety of not being enough and helped me to refocus on my work. It is that obvious and true but I don’t remind myself of that too often, maybe because of my pride, self-centeredness, or self-sufficiency? I don’t really know. What I know is telling myself the real truth helps, helps a lot.