Reply To: Question about "I’m not good enough"

Hi plus1g,

Yes, these would be perfect to “prime the pump”, as it were. I can't emphasise how important it is to logically counter the beliefs, rather than rationalising or trying to gee yourself up. So, “I'm not good enough” could not be logically countered with “I'm good enough, because I can do…x,y or z” 

“Good enough” is a sense, rather than something to justify. Once the belief is eliminated, you'll experience yourself as good enough without any need to prove it to others. You're good enough because you are.

Also, if you go back and figure out when you would have formed the beliefs (usually in early childhood and usually based on interactions with parents/caregivers), this can be very effective. Things happened, words were said and you may have gotten the sense of “I'm not good enough” and the other limiting beliefs.

Beliefs like this are usually formed due to criticism from parents – being compared to siblings, others etc. To a child, this would usually be experienced as not being good enough, even if our parents meant well or maybe didn't communicate feedback as well as they could have.

After forming a belief like this, we would tend to navigate life feeling afraid to make mistakes, or dreading the judgement of others. But let's be clear: it's the negative judgement that's really being feared and avoided. Most of us don't fear being positively judged or earnestly praised.

So how do we avoid this? Well, we come up with survival strategies. It might be a compulsion to “succeed”, to get the approval of others or doing things “perfectly.”

When we do this, we get the approval we were seeking and feel better, if only for a while. Therefore, we also have survival stretegy beliefs such as “what makes me good enough is getting approval from others” or “…doing things perfectly”  or “achieving lots” or “being rich.” There are lots of them.

So, the survival strategy beliefs are an extra component (rarely discussed) that would benefit from being exposed to PSTEC Negative. They are off-shoots of the core beliefs.

Another way to brainstorm this is by asking them question: “if I'm not important/good enough etc..what makes someone ( any of these things)?”

If your honest answer (e.g. acclaim, acceptance) is anything other than “you don't need anything to be these things”, that will help you identify the survival strategy belief you may be holding.