When Your Brain Uses “Enough” Against You
Most people don’t realise that their brain has a quiet way of keeping them emotionally vulnerable...
D’you recognise the thoughts below as so ‘normal’ you don’t even notice them:
“I’m not good enough.”
“I’m not doing enough.”
“I’m not achieving enough.”
“I’m not coping well enough.”
“I’m not successful enough.”
Internal thoughts that include the word “enough.”
Not necessarily thoughts that are loud and dramatic, but subtle and frequent.
My brain used to produce all these sorts of ‘enough’ thoughts on repeat. The most disempowering part?
You NEVER reach the point where our brain says the opposite.
Your brain never spontaneously offers:
“Hooray! You’ve done enough!”
“You are enough.”
“You’re coping so well!”
“Well done! You’re successful!”
Instead, ‘enough’ thoughts keep you chasing, pushing and trying.
You’re chasing ‘enoughness’ and never getting there.
Millions of people spend their whole lives with this brain pattern, without ever being given the clarity or understanding they need to influence what their brain is doing.
Let’s explore why you’re prone to ‘enough’ thinking and why it’s so empowering to finally understand the brain science.
Why It’s Normal to Not Feel “Enough”
Your brain is designed to keep you safe and to ensure your survival. One of the ways it does this is by keeping you alert to potential gaps, risks or shortcomings.
When left to its own devices, your brain is on the constant look out for ways in which you might be able to improve.
If your brain suggests that you’re not doing enough, being enough, achieving enough or coping well enough, it keeps you striving to ensure your social connections and status thrive.
Your brain’s default is to see threats to social connection and status as potential survival concerns.
If you’d been born 50,000 years ago, your brain would have been pretty identical to today, but poor social connections and status could have meant the difference between life or death.
That’s why ‘enough’ thoughts feel so significant.
Your brain avoids giving you the confirmation you crave to promote your survival.
Very clever, but not useful for the calm and confidence you want to enjoy.
Hopefully it’s such a relief to know that ‘enough’ thoughts don’t represent any true failing in you.
It’s simply how your brain is naturally wired and wonderfully, you can absolutely change this!
Why ‘Enough’ Thoughts Leave You Perpetually Disempowered
When your brain is in the habit of producing thoughts that undermine your abilities, value or worth, you never get the chance to experience the feelings you deserve.
The calm and confidence of:
Completion
Adequacy
Sufficiency
Capability
Security
Instead, you live in a constant state of emotional almost.
Almost there.
Almost enough.
Almost confident.
Almost calm.
Almost settled.
Never getting to the emotional experience of the calm and confidence you so deserve.
You navigate emotional fatigue, frustration, pressure, worry and overwhelm because your brain has never been rewired.
Next Steps…
The science behind your emotional experience is where all your empowering opportunity lies.
Please be kind to yourself!
Learning to see ‘enough’ thoughts with compassionate perspective can provide helpful relief from frustration and fatigue.
Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain is perfectly capable of rewiring these ‘enough’ patterns.
You don’t have to spend your life striving for “enough.”
You can teach your brain to produce calm and confidence instead.
Pay conscious attention to ‘enough’ thoughts over the next week.
Writing them out can provide helpful perspective. Each time you catch your brain offering such a thought, consider this empowering nudge:
“Everyone’s vulnerable to ‘enough’ thinking, such thoughts don’t show I truly lack worth or capability.”
This step, once compounded daily, provides a wonderfully empowering step forwards.
You get to enjoy the emotional benefits of self-support, self-respect and self-compassion that are otherwise absent.
You Deserve to Feel ‘Enough’
You’re amazing, just by being you.
You deserve to understand your own brain.
To have the opportunity to teach it to rewire the frustration and emotional fatigue it produces.
My online coaching makes this possible.
You can give your brain an ‘enough’ destination it can finally reach.
Curious to find out more?
Book a free Discovery Call below:
