The theme of my summer was "Not Good Enough." I'm not good enough at work (despite telling me that I've improved greatly in the past few months, my manager gave me a majority of "needs improvement" ratings on my annual review - marking me as one of the worst employees we have). I'm not good enough at being there for my friends (two friends moved this summer, and I didn't help; another wrote me a letter about how she regrets how we've grown apart). I'm not good enough at spending time with my family (Mom wishes I lived closer). I'm not good enough at keeping house (cooking and cleaning are impossibly hard). I'm not good enough at writing for my English course - or reading for it, for that matter (after getting a lower-than-expected mark on my paper, it took me over two months to make it through Vanity Fair).
Even when the results are fine, I still receive criticism. At work, the store manager told us that next time they'll get more people keying inventory because we were too slow - but it seemed to me that we were so caught up that we were often waiting for more numbers to come in. Still not good enough. My correspondence course tutor told me that my 2092 word paper was too short, when the required length was 2000 words and I had to cut it down to get it there, afraid of running too long. Still not good enough. If even meeting or exceeding expectations is unsatisfactory, what does it take to be sufficient? It seems impossible.
This feeling becomes exponential: once the idea is planted, I am more likely to interpret new circumstances in a way that reinforces it. And it's really hard to kick. But I've been trying. I counter "I'm not good enough" with memories of Justin telling me "Good job, Michelle!" or a coworker saying "I think you do a bang-up job." But I'm still living under the shadow of insufficiency.
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I know that the feeling of being enough, of being capable, comes from inside but it's so hard when all the circumstances around you seem to prove the opposite. I struggle with this too.
ReplyDeleteI think this issue can be resolved in one of two ways - if you really care about what your doing you can dig your heels in and
prove them wrong or if a particular entity
(re. Costco) is making you feel this way you can realize they're wrong and that you're amazing and tell them so on your way out the door. It's possible that in some cases it has nothing to do with you.
Oh and I think you're an awesome friend!
Amanda
On the other hand I know how disheartening it is to want desperately to be, have, do enough and only hear the "still not enough". People seem to forget that whatever you did do wouldn't have been done if you didn't do it and so it should be good enough no matter how good it is. But thats just my backwards way of thinking :-)
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