Refurbishing "I'm Not Good Enough"

We could all use a little more love. Prick yourself with it at least once a day.

How many times have you said "I'm not good enough" today?

How many times this week? This month? This year?

Has anyone ever told you "you're not good enough," either directly, through a bed of fluffy flour or through actions?

How many times has that happened?

Stop thinking.

Now. How many times have you believed any of that? Either of your own self-talk or the opinionated talk of others?

I'm going to step up and say I battle with it daily. My mind is a veritable ping-pong table with negative on one side and positive on the other. Bouncing back phrases left, right and center because all I have ever read, all I have ever heard, is, don't believe that "you are not good enough" don't tell yourself "you are not good enough," otherwise you will end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Then there are people like Tony Robbins.

I have nothing against the guy. He's brilliant. Inspiring. A tornado of optimism and extroversion.

Thing is, that is Tony Robbins. Should there be other Tony Robbins in the world? No. (Well, not unless he's somehow cloned an exact copy and even then the personality will differ, because that clone is a unique person with a unique perspective through a different set of eyes, no matter if they genetically match Tony Robbins).

That said, stop trying to be someone who you are not.

Now, that doesn't mean I am just rehashing another overused phrase. Nor am I telling you, if you want to be like Tony Robbins, you never will be. Hey, if he's a mentor, an inspiration, well, use him as one. It's how we grow. I've got plenty. Nor am I also saying, stop being jealous. We're human. It happens. Just, make sure you moniter the green guy before he Hulks out on you and you can't find "you" anymore.

What I do mean is create your Self. Do this by taking who you are and define it. Use labels to empower yourself, rather than the usual segregating and exclusion they cause.

Also, create things that only you can come up with. Sketch. Sing a favourite tune backwards, or off key. Put together a series of dance moves to the song. Organize a race among friends, or a marathon, if you're in that camp. Making a weekly hiking group. Catalogue your book collection and take note of the different themes they explore, or how many of them illustrate diversity. Make muffins and draw mosaic pictures with dried fruit on top.

By creating. Something. You are sharing a piece of yourself with the world. You are showing off the unique perspective you have on the world.

You might not "Be Good Enough" to be a famous singer, a top chef or an Olympian but you are good enough for you. Cover the phrase (or variations of) "I'm Not Good Enough" with your creations, and the pride you feel when you complete whatever you created. Cherish that feeling. Refurbish your phrase with pride. We all could use a little more.

After all, you shouldn't need Tony Robbins to tell you to be extroverted and outgoing in order to succeed because in order to succeed, just create for yourself. (Hint: It's called love).

If someone doesn't like it. There are a billion, trillion other things out there, throughout all of human history for that person to choose from.

Be You. That's Good Enough.

Currently being creative with job searches.
Moony.

An Avalanche of Detour Signs

Into the West we will all go.

"You are not seperate from the whole. You are one with the sun, the earth, the air. You don't have a life. You are life." Eckhart Tolle

I like to think I embody the pastel colours of the above photograph, taken on an equally pastel temperature sort of day, mid-February, three years past when some things where similar to now and other things were mostly different.

Taking the above quote into account (and herein excuse my intentional misuse of it), I assume I am mostly different, but not entirely, from three years ago because I am part of the whole. The whole of yesterday, yester-year, tomorrow and two years from now. In reality the quote means you and I are, in alchemic terms: One and All. All and One.

Frankly that gives as much comfort as the night I deluded myself into hoping the frog (brought into my bedroom by one of my cats) that hopped into and knocked over the beside lamp before disappearing under the bed wasn't going to do any more hoping until I woke up in the morning more prepared to return it to a habitat with more water than the glass on my desk.

I have to wonder, as I sit down from the high of yesterday's celebratory day of birth (and leftover homemade Greek food), if I am life, are the ups and downs of my life so far meant to mirror the dramatics of volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and tripping over the sunbathing cat sprawl of pine tree roots? Probably not. One, tripping, on the scale of a potato beetle to the Eiffel Tower, is about as important as the stink bug. Two, why does tripping matter when a billion people are suffering the aftermaths of an earthquake? How do you reply to that?

One, everybody trips. Even your cat, or your neighbours cat (if you don't have one), or your neighbour's neighbour's cat. Two, if everybody trips, then everybody is life and life is tripping. Therefore every time someone trips a domino falls and knocks the next one over.

(This is the point in time when we reach me explaining the title of this post and purpose of this blog because why else would you bother coming here? Okay, maybe you get perverse amusement laughing at my naivitie, rambling, hideous grammar, or something, because like tripping, there is complaining, always). This tripping will manifest itself as a life resembling an avalanche. An avalanche of detour signs. This blog is both a reflection on the detours I have made in my domino track of tripping and what sort of impact I have made because I may be a potato bug on the scale of important humans but I am a perfect little bug, rolly polly tripping along as I navigate my next set of detours toward, maybe, just maybe forming one of those brilliant domino picture constructions you can go look up on YouTube now. 

Okay, not now. Almost. See, I just have one more thing to say before I let you run off into the purple. I am a nearly mid-twenty-something Introvert, Geek, Bookworm, Pianist and numerous other labels. Mostly though I am, as much as I would prefer not to admit it (so cherish this moment), human. A human who is simply trying to trip her way brilliantly through a series of avalanches that make up her Coquihalla Highway of Life.

Now, run off, gorge yourself on brilliant domino displays and think about how your detours have made an avalanche somewhere, somewhen, somehow.

Always adventuring,
Moony.

What is your impact?