Believing you’re enough is easier said than done in a world that’s constantly measuring up
So how can we help ourselves and our kids see through judgement and comparison?
Believing we’re equal and that we’re enough, regardless of appearance, wealth, career, culture, class, background and number of friends, sounds straight forward, doesn’t it? Until you think of how many of us have experienced:
- The dreaded imposter syndrome…one of my faves
- Backing off, quitting, holding back from FEAR…another one of my faves
- Separateness…why I’m all over building ‘be real’ connection and community
- Comparing and despairing…urgh!
Whether we find ourselves feeling unworthy or inadequate or we’re thinking ‘I’m better than that, I could do better than that’ about someone else, we’re making a judgement. We’re looking up to someone or we’re looking down. And let’s face it, we all do it. It might feel deeply uncomfortable to admit it, but we do judge — ourselves and other people.
But, would we really do this if we totally and utterly believed we were good enough as we are?
Of course, at a primal level we need to make judgements to survive (we need to assess whether something or someone is a threat) but we’re also judging the other stuff too. Equality may sound straight-forward but can you honestly say you always feel it? Can you honestly say you never measure yourself against others?
You’re approaching Buddha level if you’ve mastered that one.
Being non-judgemental
Even if you believe it, value it and strive for it, being non-judgemental is tough when measuring up is so ingrained in our society and culture. You’ve only got to look in the media and the world of celebrity to realise that one. Whether a front-page flaunts the perfect beach body or shares unflattering cellulite shots the whole industry is banking on our need to judge and compare.
No wonder fear of judgement is so paralysing and is such a big issue.
And left unchecked and unchallenged, all this stuff can fuel limiting beliefs, fuel the inner critic, create a sense of separateness and suck the joy out of life.
So how can we help ourselves and our kids move beyond all this?
I know my ego loves an opportunity to big itself up and my inner critic loves comparing and despairing. Both fuel fear and the “I’m not enough’ demon. But rather than bashing ourselves up for this stuff, for being perfectly human, we can begin to notice when we’re judging (unhelpfully) and challenge it.
Further ahead not further up
Yes, there are times where someone is ahead of you when it comes to a skill, what they do or where they’re at. They’re further ahead on their journey. But, they’re not better than you as a person. They do not have more innate magic than you.
You’re still their equal.
This is something we can talk about to our kids. If we hold back until we ‘measure up’ we’re not going to get anywhere very fast. I refer back to the celebrity magazines…there will always be someone with tighter buttocks than you.
Know you look down as well as up
We may look up to others from time to time but it’s even harder to admit that if we look up chances are there are times when we look down at people too. We’re judging.
We all make judgements about other people and ourselves based on our beliefs, experiences, upbringing and hang-ups. It’s a really human thing. However, becoming aware of this stuff allows us to question and dispute them. Ask yourself, is this what you really think? Is this really true? What’s going on in your inner world that’s triggering this judgement? Awareness means we can get back to maintaining level eyes with the rest of the world.
And it also means we can dial back into what we want from life rather than looking outside of ourselves for definitions of success and trying to live up to them.
Mindset
To be unlimited we need a growth mindset where we believe that intelligence, skill and ability are in our power to develop. If we’re looking up or down at others, we've likely fallen foul of the fixed mindset — we’re believing you either have it or you don’t or they’re innately better or worse than us.
We all get triggered from time to time, but we can get better at recognising when we do. When it comes to our kids, talking about how we make judgements and how this impacts how we show up in the world can help them develop their own awareness.
Judgement is inevitable
It’s part of life and culture but we can see it for what it is — subjective opinion and not fact or truth. It can also be valuable. We need to judge our performance to learn and improve and we cannot give and receive constructive feedback without it.
I believe giving this thing some focus and working on our ability to handle judgement (helping our ego to handle it!) can help us all create freer, more authentic happier lives — whatever age we’re at.
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