If I was not insufficient… I was beyond
“A little more sun – I was hot,
A little more blue – I was beyond.
To reach, I lacked a stroke of wing
If only I remained below“
Mário de Sá Carneiro
You fall short when you do not feel sufficiently loved in a relationship although everything seems to fit together, but deep down you feel that something is going wrong: perhaps you do not feel worthy because you lack a little more beauty, grace, intelligence, wealth, brilliance ….
You feel you are falling short when nothing is enough to make you feel happy even though you have the dream job, the life of your choice, impeccable health, a good financial situation or the perfect family.
There is always something missing….
There is always something missing and this expectation of lack makes you insecure, different, “broken, damaged, disconnected from your surroundings and deeply lonely, embarrassed by your doubts, uncertainties and insufficiencies.
Why do you feel this way?
Could it be that something happened when you didn’t yet know who you were and experienced the absence, neglect or mistreatment of those who were supposed to love you unconditionally? Did you inherit this legacy from your family in which many of them also always felt “poor”, inadequate?
Was it when you were bullied by your peers for not being pretty enough, thin enough or just because you were different? Or was it that teacher who once humiliated you in front of everyone by revealing your inadequacies or greatest fears?
Perhaps you feel inferior because you were beaten up monumentally for your “rebelliousness”; because you were constantly scolded without ever really knowing why; or simply ignored: your mother was permanently busy admiring herself, or eagerly required permanent attention and valuations; your father was absent in a job that she said was demanding and arduous, or between distractions that relieved him of the family tension and, when he was present, it was to teach you that life was difficult and that if you wanted to be someone you had to work hard or be irreproachable.
Nothing was ever enough…
She may have felt transparent because she had brothers and sisters who were more popular, or she had to follow inflexible rules because “tough love” makes you stronger, or she simply never knew if she was doing something right because nothing was ever enough: if she was a 19 she had to be a 20, if she was doing something right she had to learn more arts and crafts because nothing was ever enough.
You feel that “voices” resound in your head that confirm something you have always heard: “you are no good”, “you will never be anyone”, “your body is horrible”, “you are ugly”… In fact, you always knew you were the target of a terrible prophecy of unlove, indifference, distance, lack of care or luck.
Each person is unique
He has not learnt that it is not a gold coin that pleases everyone and that only what is comparable can be compared and that each person is unique and therefore incomparable however similar they may be.
The importance of knowing how to appreciate who you are
He has not learnt that the best is the enemy of the good, that the aspiration to perfection is a path and not a goal, and that his value as a person does not depend on what he does and how he does it, but on who he is. You haven’t realised that your only lack of value lies in not being able to appreciate who you are. After all, as I say in my book “STOP – 50 Strategies for Women without time“, if you don’t like yourself who will?
Go beyond and tell yourself that you are too complex to be judged on just one aspect, appreciate yourself unconditionally and talk to yourself as if you were comforting the person you love most in the world.
Stop comparing yourself to others as unhelpful comparisons only serve to exclude you and make you feel even more ‘behind’.
You may not have experienced a kind, accepting, unique and unconditional look from the other in your history of family relationships, love or authentic friendship, but if your devaluation was forged in lovelessness, it is always time to discover and experience that it is through love that one is born and reborn over and over again, that it is in being able to contribute so that others may feel loved, happy, better… that your poverty disappears, because you finally discover your mission in life, and even if you are humble, because you are made of earth, be noble because you are also made of stars. And in that moment, only in that instant, with one sweep of the wing, you reach the beyond.