I meet so many clients (and people) who have lived so long with a story about themselves that guides their life, their love, their decisions, their habits. I can sum it up in a few words; "I'm not enough". It is a story I use to believe about myself as well.
When I hear this story running in the background of my clients struggles with their weight, their love life or their careers I remember how that story made me feel, what it made me believe I needed to do to be enough. Let’s just say it was lots of things, lots of things that weren't helping me feel like I was enough. It felt like a hamster wheel.
When we are caught in a "not enough" story, however it gets started, we often turn our solutions for feeling better towards our body or appearance(s). I think most people know good pictures on social media do not equal a good life. If inside of us a story is saying, "You are not good" then we tend to look for ways to improve and what we see externally is an easy place to focus. However easy solutions are not usually best and there is a cost to focusing on the external; we neglect or stay blind to the internal messaging that is the problem.
There are so many predatory products out there which validate the idea we are not enough, i.e. the entire diet industry, reality t.v., or just our entire consumer-driven society. We are all chasing our tails to some extent in this society. Even college is a product we purchase hoping it will make us enough.
So, how do we change the internal message? I find so much joy in helping people in their personal therapy to step out of the hamster wheel, get their feet on the ground and uncover the roots and branches of this story. Sometimes we all need help developing a new story, taking the old wounds or scars that we all have and letting them help us heal and grow rather than wither.
Recently I discovered and rediscovered some free resources (I've included on my Resources page) for flipping the "not enough" script and building a new story about ourselves that is about finding self-trust, intuitive wisdom and peace within ourselves. For a real game-changer mindset, if you are ready to start loving yourself and connecting with yourself check out the podcast Dieiticans Unplugged. I've been catching up with episodes, starting from the beginning. I'm so happy to see non-diet, intuitive eating approaches to our relationship with food actually trending in the media. This gives me hope we will begin to change that nasty old habit we have in our media/society of fueling the "not enough" story. When we change our story, when we start believing differently, then no one else can tell us we need to be anything else but who we truly are; beautiful, imperfect and whole.