Are You Enough?

Why is it that what leaders most desire in their professional life can seem so elusive?

As I work with gifted leaders around the country I have noticed a reoccurring theme. Leaders want to flourish in both their professional and personal lives.  For some that means make a lasting difference as they align with their gifts and lead out of their passion. For others it is creating high functioning teams, mentoring other leaders or getting that next promotion. At the same time, they long to have a life-giving balance between their work and private lives. They want to come home energized to engage in family life with the capacity to relax and enjoy life’s simple pleasures without bringing the stress of their work home.

As we dig deeper into their source of frustration around not being able to achieve this, we end up uncovering a set of beliefs that keep them over-functioning, out of balance and teetering on burnout.  To the outsider they may appear to be at the top of their game, but in reality they are suffering silently.

Looking at our underlying beliefs

The internal messages that keep them on this burnout cycle coalesce around these beliefs.

• “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done to my standards.”
• “As long as I excel in my work load, I will be looked upon as being a successful leader.”
• “If I don’t do what is expected of me, I will be ostracized.”
• “If I take a risk and fail, I will be perceived as a failure.”
• “As long as I am successful I will belong.”

Sit with that sinking feeling of constantly having to prove your worth by what you produce.

It may be difficult for some of us to locate that pain since we have done a damn good job of performing our way into the rush of adrenaline success.  But if you are waking up in the middle of the night with a constant to-do list or if you find it difficult to relax without self-medicating on food, booze or Netflix then you may want to take a deep breath and follow your curiosity to something deeper than performance adrenaline.

Can you recall a time when you acted out of a belief that if you didn’t succeed at (fill in the blank) you will be exposed as unworthy and looked upon as lacking? Can you remember a time when you over-functioned in your job, catering to the perceived needs of others while losing sight of your own needs?

Making Connections

Locate where you feel that tension in your body. It could be a tightening of the chest or a heavy feeling in your stomach. Some have described it as a flutter of anxiety in the belly.

This is the embodied feeling of shame – that sense of dread that wakes us up in the middle of the night. Brene Brown, in her research on shame, says that as humans all of us struggle with these feelings. Shame believes that there is something inherently wrong with us. It keeps us focused on constantly proving our worthiness by what we do. Shame whispers, “You are not enough. You don’t belong.”  Shame is such an uncomfortable feeling that we will do anything to get rid of it.

Hence, we simply double down on what provides us a little bit of relief – more doing, performing, over-functioning etc.  We return to the same behaviors that keep us teetering on the brink of burnout. Instead of focusing on what deeply matters to us we end up frenetically doing what we think is expected of us. More often than not, we settle into counting the years until we can retire.

However, flourishing is not a fantasy. Each one of us is capable of living our lives to the fullest. But it takes a willingness to sit in our discomfort and reflect upon our ways of being in the world.

The Counter Intuitive Move

My clients have discovered their own unique ways to step off the hamster wheel of unworthiness. And it is always begins with a counterintuitive move. Instead of focusing outward on winning the esteem of others by doing more, they begin to focus inward resting on the truth of who they are. They begin to look with compassion upon themselves and honor their sacred worth. They discover that those messages of not being enough come from the voice of their false self – a construct of their personalities that no longer serves how they want to show up in the world.

The truth is that we are enough and we do belong.  Can you imagine living out of this truth? How would we show up at work and at home if we embodied the truth of our worthiness? I have a hunch that if we listened to our innate wisdom we could lead with courage, even in the midst of chaos and drama,  and trust that we have all that we need and it is more than enough.