#2 Good Enough

Ep 2 Good Enough - Between the Ears podcast
Welcome, I'm Arnold Bekus and I enable you to have a better life between the ears. Why is that? Because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today's topic is good enough or as most people have the feeling of being not good enough.

I must say that in my life and in my work, I've not yet encountered a person who thinks that he or she is good enough. Unfortunately, we all have that feeling that some kind of level we are not good enough. Or there are even people who think there's nothing in their life which they think is good enough.

Those are the people who are very likely to be depressed. So where does this come from? Why do so many people have that feeling that they are not good enough? Well, I think the reason is that making you feel not good enough is one of the most used tools to enforce your conformity. It's a tool to enforce your conformity by telling you all the time you're not good enough.

And that is why people are using that tool because most people like other people to do what they want you to do. It already starts with your parents. Whether you're a baby or a child or even an adult, what does everybody want to feel? Well, a feeling which they get from their parents is they want to feel loved.

Everyone wants to feel loved and primarily from your parents. But then if your parents want you to obey and do something, maybe clean up your room or eat the cauliflower which you don't like, or finish your homework before you're going to play football, they say, hey, you gotta clean up your room. And then the implicit message is, if you don't do that, we don't love you.

We don't like you if you don't do what we tell you to do. And if you continuously refuse to clean up your room, we might even get angry. And then we don't love you.

So because everyone wants to feel loved, everyone, whether you're a baby or an elder, it doesn't matter. So you're going to do what your parents want you to do. Or replace parents by teachers, bosses, spouses, friends, everyone.

Everyone is using that. It's a kind of a blackmail. It's like if you don't do what we tell you to do, we won't like you and we won't love you.

So you better do what we want you to do. Everybody wants to have that feeling that you're loved. And I'm not even talking about that you need to love yourself, which is a whole other topic.

And people make that love conditional upon some things which they want you to do. And because they want to enforce that behavior, they always make their case, they make their love conditional. So they use it again as a tool to make you do what they want you to do.

And then if you do something or you don't do it appropriately or not in the way that they said, it's like, no, it's not good enough. It's not good enough. You should do better.

You should work harder. You should learn more. That's what teachers do all the time.

The teachers say, and it doesn't matter whether the teacher is at school, primary school, high school, university, your vocational training. The focus is, where's the focus? What is not good enough in what you do at school? They look at the number of faults, the number of mistakes. And it depends on which part of the world you are, whether you get a rating, an A, B, C, D, E, or a rating of a number between 1 and 10.

They always focus on the things which are not correct. They never focus on what you did right. They never focused on what you understood very well.

You make three mistakes, so you get the C. You got to do better. If you want to go to university, you have to get to the level of an A. So at the moment, you're not good enough. Then you start to work.

Exactly the same story. It doesn't matter which type of work, whether you work in a bakery or in a restaurant or you work in a factory or you work for a large corporation. They always say this was not good enough.

Where's the focus? If you get a performance review, that's what they do in a lot of companies. The performance review, 90% of the time, they tell you about something which they didn't like what you did. So why are they saying that? Because you should improve.

You should improve on all kinds of things. It can be writing text or cleaning the assembly line or your administration duties were not good enough. And as nobody likes to get laid off, or even the opposite, you want to make a promotion, you're like, I'm not good enough.

I should improve. I should work harder. I should do more.

So the bosses want you to improve your productivity. So productivity is a nice word that they want you to do more work for less cost. It's all about productivity.

It's a game in business. But we also use it in relationships, whether it's with friends, spouses, or any kind of relationship. People always try to change something in you, to change something in your behavior.

If they don't like certain behavior of you, it's like, I'm not really want to be your friend anymore if you don't change your behavior. For instance, at one point in time, I stopped drinking alcohol. That's what we used to do with my hockey team.

After the match, we would drink a beer. And then I stopped drinking and I said, no, I don't want a beer. Please give me some water.

They looked at me like I was for Mars, like I was totally crazy. And they didn't like my behavior. So they were pressuring me.

They said, Arnold, just one, take one thing. You usually like it. Whatever.

I said, no, I don't like. So in the end, that was like, I quit playing hockey because I'm not playing hockey for drinking the beer and playing hockey for the sports itself. But it's always conditional.

Arnold, you should drink beer. Otherwise, we don't like you in the team anymore. It is to enforce conformity.

Because people don't like mavericks. People don't like outcasts. People don't like what they call weird people.

Even here. I'm currently in Paraguay. When they say, I don't eat meat.

I don't drink alcohol. They look at me like, what? What is wrong with you? Well, nothing. I just try to be healthy.

But that feeling, that nagging feeling inside of us that we're not good enough, that is what we all experience inside. Because again, it's a tool that most people are using. It's a tool which is used most of your life.

It's a terrible tool. Because that feeling that you are not good enough is a lousy, terrible feeling. Because it makes you feel insufficient.

Incomplete. Imperfect. It makes you feel lousy.

It's not a nice feeling to have that every day. Day in, day out, that feeling. Oh, I'm still not good enough.

I should improve. I should do better. What I ask you to do is to turn it around.

Understand that this is just a tool to enforce your conformity. So don't go with that tool anymore and say, throw that tool away and say, okay, that's your tool. But actually, I am already good enough.

I am already perfect. I am already a beautiful, nice, kind, compassionate human being who's got so many talents and even more unused talents. And I'm good enough as I am right now.

Please remember, everyone is already good enough. And that feeling of being not good enough is preventing you from a lot of things. And mainly it prevents you from being in the present moment.

Because most of what you know and understand that life is lived only now. And we can discuss whether there's a past or a future or time is actually an entity in itself or not. Doesn't matter.

You're living now. And there's only one now, and that's now. But if you have that feeling that you're not good enough, you cannot be present.

Because you're always thinking about things in the past, which you didn't do right, which were not good enough. Or you're worried about things in the future where you say, if I don't do that correctly, I won't be good enough. If I don't pass that exam, I won't get a job.

So that feeling of not being good enough prevents you from being in the present. And being in the present is the most important moment in your life right now. So really, really accept that you are good enough right now.

And that you are good enough the rest of your life. For every day to come. That nicely ties into the next topic where we discuss everyday beauty.

We conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty. Because beauty and especially moral beauty like kindness, courage and compassion have a very positive influence on your inner state. And like I said in the beginning, it's your inner state that creates your outer reality.

So focus on beauty. Focus on moral beauty. Let me share two examples with you.

Very recently, I was in my new apartment where I was just living for a few weeks. The electricity went out. Well, that is where you realize there's hardly anything now you can do anymore if there's no electricity.

So I was looking in the rest of the building. I saw some light and some stuff and I was like, I don't know. Let's check with my neighbors.

And I went to my neighbors and said, you have electricity? Yeah, we have no problem at all. I said, in my case, it's gone. So what they did is they immediately dropped everything and they came into my apartment.

And they showed me the electricity cabinet, which you could never see because it's behind sliding doors. So anyway, they helped me. And by just pressing a couple of buttons in that electricity cabinet, my electricity was back.

So that is so nice because I'm not used to that neighbors are really helpful. And they helped me immediately and supported me. So I love that.

There are still nice and kind and helpful people in this world, you know, and they're closer than you think. That is really great. Another example is an example of an animal therapy program in a psychiatric hospital in France.

Where that hospital was providing a program for helping people with donkeys. And the animal therapy is provided by donkeys and they help people with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and other ailments. And each week, the patients, they do all kinds of activities with the donkeys.

And it's having a huge, huge, really, really great impact. So it's this connection with the donkeys, which are donkeys don't have a good press, I would say, because they're stubborn or whatever. But it's not true.

Donkeys are very wise animals. And they're extremely helpful for these psychiatric disorders. So donkeys are helping psychiatric patients feeling better.

That's amazing. So that's it for today. Please remember, we need your uniqueness.

Be a better maker for yourself, for others, the world.