Navigating the Line Between Complacency and Knowing You Are Enough
I start to feel the same energy throughout my body around this time every year. Sure, there are lingering sombre notes as summer shenanigans depart further into the rearview, but I always find myself feeling… excited? Anticipatory, perhaps.
Let’s just say this is consistently the part of my calendar year where I feel the most optimistic and driven to go out and do things. To make things happen. To improve myself.
Now, it’ll come as no real shock to the system that I, the founder of an organization literally called “Growth Myndset”, am a little bit into growth projects; tweaking my outlook, and striving for better outcomes in my life. I don’t mean trying to change myself in order to achieve particular things, though at times I suppose this can be part of it, but rather I crave the experience of altering how I view and interact with the world in order to reign in more balance, meaning, and peace than I started out with. Super into that stuff!
The basic premise in my life, upon which this is based, is that I must always be striving for growth and evolution in as many areas of my life as I can.
In the public sphere, often corollary to this premise is the problematic assumption that improvement sought within oneself isn’t merely wanted, but is necessary because that person is broken, inferior, or in some way not enough. In other words, the sentiment “If I need to grow, doesn’t that mean I’m not yet big enough?” looms destructively large.
This isn’t something I hear thrown around a ton, but rather something I see modelled in the thinking and behaviour of people around me whose desire for growth seems borne out of the belief that they fundamentally don't measure up in some way or another. It’s vital to identify that this belief doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is the result of systems of classifying and oppressing people, often covertly, that create hegemonic scripts and subsequent inferiority complexes.
In other words, even though I think this commonly held belief that one isn’t enough is incredibly toxic and problematic, I need everyone who feels it to know that this isn’t at all your fault.
In any event, all of this has got me honing in on what I believe the ideal headspace looks like: two co-existing internal beliefs, working alongside one another, supporting and pushing us forwards:
We are entirely enough, exactly as we are, in this moment;
We can always find ways to improve and grow over time.
First, in order to break this down, I think there is a significant distinction that begs to be drawn between who we are (in flux, perhaps evolving, but always enough) and how we are (reflecting and recalibrating, moment to moment, in order to grow and improve how we live our lives). Sure, who we are will often be understood and assessed based on how we are, but parts of our humanity are inextricable and unchosen.
How we speak and act (with some serious exceptions, such as restrictions resulting from mental illness, disabilities, or even financial circumstances), on the other hand, are daily active choices.
Of course, there are the miraculously courageous, strong, and brave among us who are driven to break out of the agency-reductive shackles of our categorizing-obsessed society. To those people, I applaud you, but I believe these stories to be exceptions more than the rule.
In reality, I think that we as human beings often won’t have much control over most aspects of who, fundamentally, we are. Our sexuality, our race, our physical (dis)ability, the gendered scripts applied to us when we’re born; all are embedded into the fabric of our being on a fundamental level.
Sure, we can (and should) learn more about over time, but these aren’t usually things we can change by deciding to improve or adapt.
I didn’t actively decide to be a man; I discovered that I am a man, and my own performance of masculinity is the part of me that I feel I have control over.
These active parts of ourselves that we exercise daily control over are the keycards that gain us access to infinite growth that would otherwise be locked away.
I believe entirely that every interaction with another person is an opportunity to mobilize our values and give them shape or sound. If you value the happiness and well-being of people more than other things, as I do, then to see each part of your day as an opportunity to make this happen can unlock an untapped level of self-appreciation and purpose.
It would stand to reason, then, that to constantly be striving to be better at this, on an internal and external level, should be a part of the routine of your life. No matter how effectively you’re living out your values, you can always be growing into the next, better iteration of yourself. This is healthy. This is good.
If someone tells you that you consistently act in ways that make them feel unimportant, this is an area for necessary potential growth.
If you are told that you take up too much space and make it hard for other people to use their voice, this is something to listen to and adapt about yourself.
If you use a gender pronoun to address someone that they tell you isn’t correct, this is something to fix and change moving forward, both when speaking to that person and others.
On the other hand, if you are ever made to feel that who you are is incorrect, unworthy of love, or invalid, that’s an entirely different thing.
It’s not okay to be made to feel like you don’t look like you’re supposed to; that you don’t enjoy sex as much as you should; that your brain is capable of less than those of the people around you at work or in class who went to better schools; like the colour of your skin truly does mean you are worthy of less love and belonging than any other person.
Sure, each of these examples will almost always produce lived experiences of oppression whereby our world tries to categorize somebody in these various ways, making them out to be fundamentally viewed as less-than, but we must hold steady in our understanding that the remnant feelings of inferiority we are left with are the fault of a broken world. They don’t represent reality.
If someone tells you that the love you share with your partners isn’t valid, they are the one who needs to grow and develop perspective.
If someone tells you that being in a wheelchair makes their life difficult and frustrating, they are the one who needs to develop empathy and compassion.
If someone doesn’t understand your experience of gender, they are the one who requires more light and direction as they unlearn bigotry and learn to recognize the beauty and humanity in others.
You can simultaneously be in perpetual growth while resolutely holding steady in your most authentic, sufficient self. In fact, it’s important that you are.
Who you are is never not enough.
How you are should never stop striving for more.