The Voice of Not Enough
I’ve been listening to the voices in my head
There’s a particular voice that shows up all the time. It’s not new. I’ve heard it before. This voice, my friends, is the voice called “NOT ENOUGH.”
Maybe you, too, are familiar with this voice. The voice that says you’re not a good enough mom or person, or you don’t have enough experience, enough training, enough time… whatever the “enough” is. Well, let me tell you, this Voice of Not ENOUGH (VONE, we’ll call it) is a soul sucker!
The thing about living from the VONE is, you’ll never win. You’ll never beat it. There will always be something that you’re not enough at.
Our brains are wired to want complete tasks. It's what gets us out of bed each day and eating and brushing our teeth. The thing is, the brain doesn't always differentiate between what is a real task and what is wasted time. Worrying is the brain's way of doing something. Even though most of us know worry is not constructive, our brain doesn’t know the difference. It’s just happy to have a task. VONE lives here. Our brain believes it is being constructive and helpful by worrying about how not good enough we are.
So, what do we do about the VONE? How do we get our brains to stop worrying about things that ultimately don’t matter?
Honestly, I don’t know that our brains will ever stop worrying, though I do believe we can slow the roll and lessen the amount of time we spend there.
The way is through action.
One example of action? Meditation. Once you become aware of your thoughts, you can choose to pause yourself and think about something different. You can choose to change the story.
I've been hearing the phase lately, both out of my own mouth and the mouths of other, "I haven't done enough of ___ to be able to that. " "I haven't assisted enough trainings to lead one on my own. I'm not strong enough to come to the gym and lift weights. I'm no flexible enough to come to yoga. I haven't done enough yoga to take a Teacher Training." There it is again, the VONE. You know it’s there. Do you see the irony in all of these statements? We go to the gym to get strong. We go to yoga to get flexible. Why do we expect ourselves to be proficient at something before we even begin?
And the real question: How do we take action and rewrite our not good enough stories?
When you decided to go to school to be an engineer, a teacher, a doctor, a therapist, or a (fill in your blank) “Did you say to yourself,
“I can’t go to school because I don’t have enough experience in that?”
Of COURSE not! You took the action of going to school so you could learn the things and get the experience to work in the career you chose to work in. Why should anything else in your life be any different? Why would signing up for a Yoga Teacher Training be any different? What if you took action and flipped the script that the VONE was trying to shove into your head? What if you said,
“I don’t know a lot about yoga, but I will learn what I need to know in Teacher Training.”
and let your brain repeat that phrase instead?
If I’d waited until I was an “experienced enough yoga” to go to Teacher Training or waited until I’d taught for “enough years” to LEAD a Teacher Training, I’d probably not have done either of those things and wouldn’t be where I am today. It took taking an action to move toward the thing I wanted to do to get me out of the entrapment of the VONE. It took signing up. Making the deposit. Booking my flight. Signing the contract. Yoga Teacher Training is like school… you go to learn to teach, and you get to practice in the process. You develop your skills just like you would in any other program so when you graduate, you are ready to go to work. *Bonus: We’ll spend a good chunk of training talking through how yoga can create new pathways in our brains and help us re-train our thinking and our patterns.*
Don’t let yourself get stuck in the VONE. Choose to take action instead, and give your brain something different to focus on.
Yoga Teacher Training with me begins Friday, April 23rd at The Barn Fitness Center. We’ll meet for six weekends (Friday- Sunday) and 5 online zoom sessions, for a total of 23 days. Whether it's Yoga Teacher Training with me, or some other thing you've been waiting to do until you're good enough... don't wait. Take action. Now is the time.
Sign up for Teacher Training here