Feel Like You’re Not Enough?

What's going on? Cadre family here joining you today to talk about what is enough. My name is Eric. I'm a clinical mental health counselor. And one thing that often comes up in my counseling office, one way or than another, is I feel like things aren't enough. My life, my job, my house, who I am, this world, it's not enough. And on top of that, things maybe feel like they're going in the wrong direction. There's lots of hardship in this world. Struggle, difficulty, pain, things I'm witnessing and seeing and reading about.

And they all tend to weigh on our minds, and it's a hard balance. Do we just ignore the difficulties that exist in this world? Do we just ignore these feelings of things could be different, there could be more? This idea of enoughness is often at the root of a lot of things. We label in the mental health field as anxiety, depression. Even bits of what gets put into the ADHD category can be related to this idea of enoughness. Enough attention, enough stimulation, enoughness. The struggle with enoughness.

And I'm going to frame it in this way. The struggle with enoughness is the opposite of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the present acceptance of everything that is as it is here and now. Observing things as they are, not as they should be, or could be, or maybe we want them to be, but as they are. The struggle with enoughness says things could be different. Things could be more. You could be different, you could be more. Maybe it's from a past experience that we really hold closely on to a good feeling.

A time when people praised us very highly for who we are, or maybe the opposite. Maybe experiences of being torn down, told we're not good enough, and actions, our mistakes, becoming highlights in our mind of why that's true. These are all narratives, ideas, built up in our mind. And that's an important part that our mind creates, this narrative. Enoughness of enoughness. If you've seen my previous videos, I like to refer to our mind as a tool. It's a tool of survival. It's something that humans have used for many thousands of years to predict, remember, learn from, identify ways in which life could be different or better.

Unfortunately, it's not very effective for contentment, fulfillment, purposeful living. And so we gotta. We gotta figure out a way to notice when that place in time that our mind is good at identifying how solutions can be solved, and when it's time to take a step back and be okay with what is good and bad, mistakes and all, not just outwardly, but inwardly as well. When we stop avoiding the parts that are difficult and frustrating, cause friction, and we accept it as a part of who we are, part of the human condition.

And we let ourselves say, enoughness is existence. Enoughness is the breath I take every momentary second that I exist on this earth. That's the enoughness. And from there, we move forward, encountering problems and interests, not as a way of validating whether or not we're enough, but as a way of occupying the space and time with curiosity and motivation to explore and be curious about what humans are capable of letting go of these strings of judgment that we tie with this idea of what is and isn't enough.

So this week, if you're one who practices mindfulness, I want to encourage you to mindfully think about wherever you're at right now. Can I let this be enough? In fact, can I imagine a place where none of these things around me exist? My job, whatever it may be, imagine that as being enough. In fact, can I imagine everything except my breath and my existence here as being enough? And from that point, moving forward with your day, your week, whatever may come your way. It's good to see you. I hope you got something from this video.

If you did, leave a comment, if you didn't leave a comment, and if there's something you're curious about, a topic, an idea that you haven't seen addressed much on Cadre's app, drop a line. Something I like to dive into. Look forward to seeing you next time.