You’re Not Good Enough and Never Will Be: A Neurotic Approach to Daily Living

First of all, your brain is always right. All of those great things you’ve accomplished and all those times you never thought you’d make it but did anyway, they don’t matter. Every opportunity is a new opportunity to fail in a new and glorious way that you’d never even thought of before.

A long track record of always coming out all right in the end? Ignore it. It doesn’t matter. You’re not good enough and never will be. Always remember that.

Remember that time you were in a similar situation and you succeeded despite all those self-doubts? Don’t remember it. Let it go. Approach every situation as unique and fraught with its own scary failures waiting to happen.

Friends, family, and people that will support you no matter what? Even if you do happen to fail this time? Don’t think about them. Be alone with yourself and your own insecurities. That’s all that matters.

Ok, so you failed this time. So what, right? Wrong. This is a continued pattern of failure in your life and this failure is more proof that you’re not good enough and never will be. Just forget all those other times you failed and it turned out just fine. Those don’t matter. Thinking about your successes will only breed more failure because being riddled with self-doubt despite continual evidence to the contrary is the only way to protect yourself from thinking you’re good enough.

The best way to prevent being good enough is to always be worried that you’re not good enough. That’s the real lesson. Forget everything you know about having made it this far despite occasional shortcomings. Self-doubt and insecurity are the only security. It keeps expectations low to make sure that when failure comes, it doesn’t come as a surprise.

Remember, you’re not good enough and never will be. Let that sink in. All those successes? Accidents. Luck. Anything but you having the resiliency to make it through no matter what happens. Anything but a pattern of you always figuring it out and coming out ahead in the end no matter the result.

In conclusion, forget that you’ve been good enough every other time. Even if you did “fail,” forget that you survived and that it ended up working out. Don’t remember the good stuff. Focus only on the bad stuff. Your brain is only trying to help. Trust it always. Never second guess it. Don’t remember that you are wired to remember pain — that your brain still lives in the dangerous wild despite you living in your living room.

Do all these things and you’re well on your way to a neurotic approach to daily living. It’s the only safe way to live. Remember: low expectations, self-doubt, focusing only on the negative, and rationalizing away your successes are the keys to finding safety in the familiar and avoiding the risk of thinking you’re good enough.