Am I [insert valued quality] good/smart/attractive enough?
Do you often catch yourself measuring your ‘enoughness’?
Am I smart/attractive/interesting/good enough? Am I a good enough parent/friend/colleague/partner?
If you do, congratulations – you have an adaptively functioning human mind.
You see, we have inherited a mind that worked well enough to keep our ancestors alive long enough to reproduce. And central to survival, is our mind’s ability to keep us protected from both physical and social harm.
To stay alive, our minds need to be able to detect any threat to our physical safety with enough accuracy so that we can respond when in danger to move towards safety. If our minds do not perceive danger well or are ineffective at alerting us to the presence of danger, our chances of survival are reduced.
This explains why we have inherited a mind from our ancestors that is negatively biased, as a mind that is more negative is more likely to detect threat. This is why your mind will automatically take you over difficult events in the past (“Why did I say that!” ,“I wish that I’d done XYZ instead”) and predict negative situations occurring in the future (“What if the plane crashes?”, “What if I fail?”).
The other piece to our mind’s strategy – avoid social harm. One absolutely essential skill for survival in prehistoric times was belonging to the group. If the group kicked you out, you would not survive for long. Belonging to a group provided access to knowledge, resources, protection and divided roles to support a functional system that met the needs of its members.
So, how does your mind prevent you from being kicked out of the group? It compares you to every member of the tribe: “Am I fitting in? Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing it well enough? Am I doing anything that could get me thrown out?”
The mind that did that well and effectively was able to ensure the individual remained part of the group, and had optimised probability of survival as a result. This means our modern minds have also inherited this capability.
Although we remain a social species that thrives in connection with others, our social context has changed immeasurably. We are no longer part of a small group or tribe. Globalisation and technology have widened our sphere of connection, so that we can compare ourselves to everyone on the planet – the rich, famous, and beautiful, movie stars, top athletes, even fictitious superheroes.
And we don’t have to look far before we find someone who is “better” than us in some way – richer, taller, older, younger, more hair, better skin, more status, smarter clothes, bigger car, and so on.
As a result of all of this comparing, we’re all walking around with some version of the “I’m not good enough” story. For most of us, it starts in childhood; for a few people, it doesn’t start until the teenage years.
Which story sounds familiar to you? The “I’m too old/fat/stupid/boring/fake/unlikeable/lazy/incompetent, blah, blah, blah” or “I’m not smart enough/rich enough/slim enough and so on.”
The takeaway – if your mind compares you to others and finds yourself lacking in some way – you have a functional mind. There is no way to STOP these thoughts. Centuries of evolution has developed a fairly powerful system that is resistant to change.
Think about this process like a form of software that is now outdated. Pay as much attention to it as you would a spam email. I mean, sometimes it could be helpful – it may have some information that you can use in an adaptive way to help you achieve your goals or work towards wellbeing. However, most of the time – it is at best annoying static and at worst an intensely overwhelming and paralysing soundtrack to your days.
Therapy can help here – if you find these thoughts are having a lot of power and influence over your decisions, choices and actions. Unhooking skills help develop your capacity to gain distance from these unhelpful thoughts, so they have less power over you. This way, you have more space to choose how you’d like to show up in your life in a way that takes you towards becoming the person you’d like to be and the meaning and purpose you’d like to foster in your days.
