Good Enough

We can work to keep the “good enough” and “not good enough” messages out of the story we tell our children. We also can tend to the Child Self who is still living in that story line and as a result is blocked from knowing and following their true needs and desires. 

In our culture, as in many cultures, the concept of being “good enough” or “not good enough” is pervasive. The story we are often told as children is that being good enough means pleasing others and meeting societal expectations. When we feel we haven’t measured up (and most of us find ourselves lacking at times), the consequent injuries are also pervasive. As I mentioned in my Back Story, I internalized messages that I wasn’t good enough and those messages entangled me as a child, a teen, a young adult, and even as an elder. I’ve told myself: “I don’t have the right degree, the right piece of paper, the authority, etc., to want what I want and do what I am (already) doing.” 

How is it possible to unthread the entanglement, find the sources of these messages, and cut them from the psyche? 

It’s simple, but not necessarily easy: we have to abandon the notion that “good enough” and “not good enough” even matter. However, even practitioners and teachers to whom we look for guidance and wisdom struggle to sever their relationships from the “emperor,” the one who judges, the one we must be good enough for. 

So, what can we do? We can work to keep the “good enough” and “not good enough” messages out of the story we tell our children. We also can tend to the Child Self who is still living in that story line and as a result is blocked from knowing and following their true needs and desires. 

As a child, a dear friend of mine loved to dance and danced all the time. At age 5, she began taking dance classes. At a class recital, the children were required to move their hands in an ordered and sequenced manner. In telling me the story, my friend said that these moves were not how her mind works. To make matters worse, the audience, especially her father, laughed at her. And in her family, her father was the one who passed judgment on what was and was not “good enough.” She felt that she was a failure and stopped dancing until she was an adult. Perhaps she would have continued dancing if her parents had understood the problem and taken her to another type of dance class. 

Was there anything in the moment that someone could have said to my friend that would have made a difference for her self-esteem? Being enfolded in the arms of her mother, sister, or father would have been a beginning. 

And it would have helped if someone had said to her: 

“You danced, just like you always wanted to, now you have danced with other dancers, how amazing” or “Little one, yes, you may have not done it the perfect way, and that feels hard. But in my eyes I saw my little one doing what she always wanted to do. And you will dance again, how exciting.” 

Mirroring and expressing empathy and reassurance are powerful tools. 

There’s no need for deliberate falsehoods, the goal is to beat down and eliminate the beast of judgment, the “not good enough.” And if her father, a product and representation of a patriarchal family structure, could have stopped and said: “My laughter, was because my heart was happy, and you were trying so hard. Sometimes grownups do that, if it hurt you, I am sorry, I can’t wait to see you dance again.” But, of course, no one was able to do any of this. 

Not feeling “good enough” is also generationally contagious. It can become the source of family jealousy, sibling rivalry, and even cruelty. 

A client of mine was working on her complex family relationships. Her mother was famous for encouraging her aunts and uncles to do more, be better. As each accomplished something, she would “encourage” them to try for the next pinnacle. For her aunts and uncles, this was translated to “You are not good enough as you are, be like me, be better,” and it caused a lot of pain. The jealousy this bred spilled over to her cousins who were jealous of her nuclear family and consequently, of her and her siblings. But theirs was not true jealousy; rather, it arose because their parents unconsciously conveyed this message to them: “I am not good enough so therefore neither are you.” 

If the voice of encouragement had been the one that said, “This is not about being good enough in anyone’s eyes”, if her aunts and uncles had been able to be that voice for their own Child Selves, the generational injury would have diminished.