Ep #176: I’m Not Good Enough

Welcome to The Life Coach School podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Hello my friends, how are you? Please say amazing. When someone asks how you are, don't say, "Fine." All the words that you can pick in the whole wide world, fine? Come one, you can do better than that. Amazing. Fantastic. People will be like, "Why?"

"How are you today?" "Fantastic." "Well, why? What is your reason?" Clean drinking water my friends, clean drinking water. That is a miracle, that's a reason to feel fantastic, let's use it. Let's use whatever we can.

Alright, today we're going to talk about, "I'm not good enough." This is the problem that I would say most of my clients and students present with. I don't understand why. I think it's curious to me how many of us have this thought in general about ourselves. We're just not good enough.

It's not as if we apply it to like a specific skill set, which would make sense. But we've just decided we're not good enough as human beings, right? It's not like, "I'm not good enough at chess" or "I'm not good enough at basketball" or "I'm not good enough at mowing the lawn." It's like, "No, I just am covering the gamut, I just, in general, am not good enough."

So many of us believe that. "I'm not a good enough human being, other human beings are better." Now, I want you guys to really think about this. Do you believe this? Do you believe that other human beings are better than you? Do you believe that other human beings are worse than you?

Here's my theory. This is what I think is true. Are you ready? I don't think any human being is better than another human being. I know you're like, now you've lost me. What about fill in the blank? What about serial killers? What about rapists? What about Mother Theresa? Mother Theresa was certainly a better human being than a serial killer, right? That's what you're thinking, right?

You're thinking what about all those human beings that do really bad things, and what about all those humans that do really good things? We could certainly put them in order of better to worse, right? Think about this, you guys. If human beings are better than other human beings and there's some judge or jury that will decide who's the best human being and who's the worst human being, it's easy to think about that when we're thinking about the Mother Theresa's of the world, or we're thinking about the serial killers of the world.

But where do we draw the line with us? Where do we fit in that spectrum? If that's how we're viewing the world, we have to line up and if we put a line right in the middle, where do we fall? Do we fall on the part of being good enough? Being better than the other human beings? Or do we fall on the line of being more on the serial killer side?

You can't escape that if you are approaching life that there are better human beings than others, right? And most of us judge ourselves so fiercely we would end up putting ourselves on the less better side of things. Now, that's one way of looking at the world. But again, the problem is that you're always trying to figure out where you go in the ladder of betterness. For some reason, we seem to put ourselves at the bottom of the ladder most of the time.

And the rub is the worse we think of ourselves, the less better we show up. Follow me? Okay. So let's explore my theory that all humans are 100% worthy and 100% loveable. Check out episode 164 for Love 2.0 if you want to know more about my theory.

Every human being is 100% worthy and 100% loveable because loveability is determined by the lover, not the loved. And I believe human beings are 100% worthy, and there's nothing they can do in this world to change that. Imagine a new born baby. Now I know, you're like, "Come on, what about the rapists? What about someone who kills people? What about the corporate CEOs that take advantage of people? What about them? They're not as good as me. I pay my taxes and I'm kind to people, do the right thing."

Now, this is where it gets a bit dicey. This is where my explanation might change your life or where I might actually lose you. So just do this, try on this theory. Consider it. Alright, back to the new born… Let's say a little boy is born and then continuously abused sexually his entire life by a parent. And imagine he's abused emotionally. Okay, now I really want you to picture this. This is a little brand new, worthy, innocent, perfect human, and he's constantly abused sexually and emotionally.

And imagine he's not given proper care and he starts believing all sorts of things that include bodies are not to be respected – you can do whatever you want with someone's body. Violence is a normal, everyday occurrence. Now, this model and these belief systems lead him to raping someone later in his life. One belief system, feelings, actions, and results.

Now, most of us would label him a not-so-good human, a less than better human, right? He's a rapist. Now, does knowing his story change anything? Does it make it – because there's a lot of people that are sexually abused and hurt and violence that don't end up hurting other people – so are they better? Does it depend on the reason why? What if the reason why they don't hurt other people is because they hate themselves so much? Does that make them better than someone that does it that can't control their anger?

Where do we draw the line? Do we sit around and go, "Well, I would put him four on better and him five on better. He could have done better." But how could he have done better? How could he have done better? Nobody ever taught him how to do better. Didn't know how to manage his mind, constantly exposed to abuse his whole life. So I always go to the most intense story because that's what my clients ask me about. "What about horrible, horrible things?"

But let's say we might have a similar but not so intense story. Let's say we're told we're fat and useless our whole life. Our pleasure in childhood comes from hiding in the closet with donuts. We learn to believe that pleasure comes from eating. And so we feel bad and eat food as a way of life. Our obesity is visible and our shame is debilitating. Or maybe it's booze and we become alcoholic and drink away our days. We must be less worthy than the Stanford grad who is a better human, right?

Here's what I believe. We are humans who create lives based on what we think. Most of us don't know how to choose those thoughts consciously. So most of us are living the effects of misguided thinking. Think about it. At our cores, at our soul level, at our humanness, we are the same.

Sometimes humans act rude, inappropriate and violent. These are things we do at the effect of our thinking. This is not who we are. We are humans who are 100% worthy and there's nothing we can do to change that. You are worthy if you are born rich, and you are equally worthy if you are born poor.

You have the same worthiness if your parents were unspeakably abusive and if your parents loved you every second of your life. There is nothing you can do to become more worthy. There is nothing you can do to become more worthy, and there's nothing you have ever done that has made you less worthy.

Your worthiness is already at capacity, and nothing you have done or will do will make you less worthy of a human. Lose all your money and become homeless, worthy. Cheat on your husband, worthy. Yell at your children, worthy.

So if you're still with me and willing to explore this idea that we are all worthy, why even bother doing good and better things? Why not just give in to all of the crazy violent, horrible things? Great question. Because it makes your experience of being alive better. Not because it makes you better.

If you spend your life raping people, you are coming from a horrible place of pain and your life will be excruciatingly painful. If you spend your life loving people, and I mean loving people, even people who rape people, you are going to spend your life in love.

So if we are already good enough humans and nothing we have ever done has made us less or more good enough, how does this affect our lives? We have permission to live from abundance, confidence, and self-love. We are good enough simply because we were born on the planet. Your worthiness has already been decided, and there is nothing you can do about it.

No matter what your parents told you, no matter what the school kids told you, no matter what the teacher told you, no matter what your boss told you, no matter what your first, second or third wife told you, you are and always have been 100% worthy.

Prettier can't increase it. Skinner can't, richer can't, smarter can't, more giving can't, more kind can't, more generous cannot increase your worthiness. Changing what you do will never make you more good enough than you already are. You are already good enough and there is nothing you can do about it.

Any thought you have to the contrary is a lie. I'll talk to you guys next week.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.