When did you decide you weren't 'good enough'?!

Through working with a lot of people and doing and absolute shed load of work on myself there's an interesting theme that seems to pop up time and time again...The theme of 'self worth'

It masquerades itself in many shapes and forms but the amount of times (usually after a fair amount of probing) it rears it's head is uncanny...

One of my favourite NLP researchers Robert Dilts says that, no matter what your problem or issue is, it will eventually boil down to one of three things:

1. Problems of Helplessness -Believing a goal can be achieved by some people just not you.
2. Problems of Hopelessness - Believing that a goal cannot be achieved at all.
3. Problems of Worthiness - Believing that you are not worthy, not good enough or do not deserve the goal.

For me the last of the three seems to pop up time and time again...The amount of times i've had a client eventually say 'Well I just don't think i'm good enough!" or some kind of derivative is pretty staggering.

Now here's the thing...In my opinion deep down everyone has some kind of 'worthiness issue'. It may be buried deep, hidden beneath layer upon layer of story and only appear in situations that are outside our comfort zone but it's there...and the thing is, knowing this, is actually very good news...because as you start to resolve your worthiness issues you start to tap into an immense amount of self love, confidence and energy...

Now I don't mean, by the way, that deep down everyone believes they are worthless human beings, a waste of space and don't deserve to breathe the Oxygen in the room! 

Humans, as I'm sure you're aware, are a little bit more complex than that. 

It's more a case that we have a part of us that has somehow decided we don't or won't measure up. Logically we know it's not true and there will be lots of other parts of us that contradict it but there's still a little 'something' gnawing away in the background telling us we're not. Then, in times of crisis, adversity and challenge it pops it's head up and says: "See I told you so!" 

Also, there's a difference between 'not having the required knowledge and skill' to achieve something and believing you are 'inherently not good enough' to achieve it. 

This first is something you can work on physically, the second is a strange limiting concept you've bought into about yourself.

So where do these worthiness issues come from?

Well, they usually (but not always) start in early childhood (it's okay I'm not going all Sigmund Freud on you).

When you gaze back on the collage of memories that is your past you'll come across a time when you decided, for whatever reason that you weren't good enough or in some way weren't worthy. Most of us jump to these inaccurate, incomplete conclusions when we are very young, with very little world experience and then do a kind of 'peter pan syndrome' thing on them. 

We freeze them in time and, even though we grow up, the problem remains faithful to that early experience and decision. That's why we often know logically that a problem shouldn't exist but we act as if it does.

Well, i'm here to tell you that you've been living that lie for too long...

It's time to go through one of the most important re-evaluation processes you'll ever go through...It's literally time to grow up!...to grow up that old decision you made about whether you were good enough or not. 

So stop for a minute and reflect on the following questions...The key is to not necessarily answer them logically, just allow your mind to go to the place the questions naturally take you. Also revisit them from time to time. As a massage therapist once told me "you can massage the same place during several different sessions but each time you'll go that little bit deeper than you did before":

Re-evaluating Self Worth - (think of some challenge that, if you were to attempt it would scare the wits out of you. That's usually a good way to start bringing your worthiness/being good enough issues to the forefront)

1. As you gaze back in your past, when did you decide that you weren't good enough?
2. What age were you?
3. Who did you learn it from and when?
4. What lie or incomplete conclusion is this decision based on?
5. When you look back now, through older & wiser eyes, how does this now change things?
6. As you look back what were you really meant to learn?
7. How does making these re-evaluations change things for you right now! and into the future?

Happy exploring

Steve

Training NLP in Scotland

The Scottish Centre of NLP

info@scottishcentreofnlp.com