Until we look back, often when it is to late and see just how enough we really were, we just never gave ourselves the chance to be our authentic selves and therefore the chance to be enough. And we didn’t do that because society, the media and role models, all showed us something else and persuaded us to aspire to that and although it was never quite within our reach, we tried anyway, as we believed this was the only way to belong, to be happy, to be seen, to be applauded, to be wanted and ultimately, to be loved.
But sadly, it was all an optical illusion, a mirage that never existed and the irony was that because we believed it did exist, we made it so in our minds and that meant it became so in our reality, resulting in the tragedy of feeding a beast that stole our soul and we didn’t even know we were doing it.
And what on earth, you may ask, am I talking about?
Us women, our self esteem, the way we think of and talk about ourselves: always too fat, too slim, too sensitive, too shy, too loud, too stupid, too old – always too much or too little, but never enough.
From the early school days where I’m sure we have all appointed some ridiculous role model, perhaps graced with long legs, an athletic ability, intellectual dominance, a great beauty, or a huge personality, you know the one, always being feted by the boys, adored by the teachers and with the power to change your standing in the world by merely being their associate and so you work tirelessly to become like them, to capture their attention, to be a chosen one, all the while completely oblivious to the cost of this superficial connection – that being your complete uniqueness, the imperfections that make you adore-able and the authenticity that gives others the courage to also be completely and utterly themselves.
And these compromises simply grow as we go through life, we move from playground role models, to work place role models, to media role models, to anyone other than ourselves who fits in, who gets the guy, the promotion, the house in Surrey, the 2.4 perfect children, the financial rewards, the ever graceful figure, the seemingly wrinkle free approach to ageing, the attention, the admiration, but most of all a place at the table, the table of life, where some people get to sit, some people get to serve and many people remain hidden, their toiling ignored and their needs unseen.
And because everyone always wants to be at that table, the criteria that gets you to that table remains unchallenged and unchanged – status, money, beauty, fame, intellectual prowess, entrepreneurial success.
And so we go through life generally aspiring to be anyone but ourselves, longing for a seat at a table that will not acknowledge us if we do not meet it’s criteria and so we remain ‘not quite enough’.
Well, here’s the truth of it:
- You will always be enough as soon as you stop trying to be what you think is enough and go and find out who the hell you actually are.
- You do have a place at a table but you need to know where and what that table is and you cannot find that out until you get to grips with the point one.
- The criteria for acceptance, connection and love is whatever we choose to make it based on being our authentic selves and that means we have to change the narrative in our head, which in turn changes our reality, which in turn changes the wider reality.
- Nothing changes if nothing changes and that means there is no point waiting for someone or something else to come along and do this work, it starts and ends with us, we get to choose whether to show up as our authentic selves and we get to choose how to interact with the rest of the world as our authentic selves and if we do that the current and very narrow entry criteria for a seat at the table becomes the minority, it will no longer be the place to be, it will be pretty empty in comparison to all of the other tables having now been created by authentic people, living authentic lives, because here’s the thing authenticity does not ask for or wait for a place at a table, it simply creates it’s own.
So, we all, myself included, have to stop the berating, the not enough, the chasing of a false reality and find out who we really are with love, curiosity and most of all joy, because there is nothing more intoxicating than an authentic, joyful woman with a very large smile on her face, because she is truly at home with herself.
With love
Nik x
