Enough
Lately I find myself deeply disenchanted with social media as a whole, but I can’t seem to ever steer away from it as that is the only way I can connect with people (the plight of working from home and being in a completely new city/state)… but I often feel more disconnected than ever with the people on it because most of it lacks authenticity.
We still suffer as a society with only putting our best face on, and only highlighting what we want society to see… thus we create a world of illusions that just tortures and constantly undermines us. The girl with the perfect family, the person with the amazing physique, the guy with the expensive cars… we only see the good. What we don’t see is the turbulent marriage, the person who has no social life because they can’t eat anything outside of their strict diet, or the dude in crippling debt because his car payment is 40% of his monthly income.
This is nothing new or earth shattering that I’m telling you… this is something we ALL KNOW, and yet we continue to fall victim to it over and over again. The “never enough” narrative that we tell ourselves.
But it’s much more than hearing it from some basic chick with “I am enough” bracelets or sharing a post on your IG story or quoting Nikita Gill poems. We KNOW that social media is a plague on our self-esteem and self-worth… so how do we understand that we are enough? I mean you gotta fake it till ya make it to some degree, but while you fake it, wouldn’t you like to figure out the path to getting there?
Awe thanks… wait, but why am I already strong again?
Ahem, sorry… random Nikita Gill tangent… anyways…
My Personal Journey to Enough
I think that’s why my first blog touched so many people, because I was brutally honest about what a messy human being I can be and everyone got to follow along as I went through the thick of it. It wasn’t written in retrospect, with years of wisdom gained like most memoirs are… instead it was a live view of a person experiencing the five stages of grief, a journey to understanding, and climbing out of the gutter wiser.
The face was ugly, messy, cringy, angry, happy, peaceful, honest, candid, silly, etc. Basically, the spectrum of my emotional palette. It’s really uncomfortable at first. Believe me, there were times where I was like “Man, this is embarrassing as fuck to admit to people…” or “I sound like an absolute lunatic,” but these are things that we all feel at some point in time (some more than others but, hey, that’s ok).
If I’m being honest and authentic again, I STILL STRUGGLE DAILY to accept that I am enough just as I am. It’s not something you just wake up, put on your pants, brush your teeth, and say “you know what… I’m a bad bitch… and I am enough.” Hence the fake it WHILE you make it… the more you convince yourself that you are enough by practicing daily gratitude and looking at the facts that debunk your own thoughts of worthlessness, the easier it becomes.
When I played softball, I used to go up to bat every time humming “Rock you like a Hurricane” by Scorpion to myself while I tapped the dirt off my cleats with my bat. It was ritualistic, and it reminded me that I was going to smack the ever living shit out of this ball. Now, was I the best hitter in the whole world? No. Did I belt home runs over the fence? Also no, but I came close a few times! If you believe you’re going to strike out, you’re going to strike out. If you believe you’re going to hit the ball, you’re going to hit the ball. My batting average was good not because of talent, but because I didn’t let one or two strike outs convince me that I WASN’T good.
You have to not let one or two bad days not convince you that you aren’t enough. You have to not let the internet convince you that you aren’t enough.
You gotta look at your thoughts and challenge them. Is there any evidence showing that you aren’t enough? No. Is there a measuring stick for “enough”? Oh, also “no”… guess you just debunked your own theory of yourself.
Anything But Ordinary, Please
So what causes us to have this bullshit “enough” culture? Well it’s the same thing that causes us to become bullies, makes us spend ludicrous amounts of money on dumb things, and get angry with strangers on the internet. It’s all deep rooted in self-worth this stupid notion that we have to live an extraordinary life, which, guess what, IS ALSO peddled by social media.
“I wanna bone hot chicks and have tons of money like Dan Bilzerian.”
“I want Kim Kardashians butt and her house and her eyelashes…”
“I want a big ass house like that IG influencer who sells crypto.”
“I want people to look at my page and see that I am the hardest working, most specialist, perfect person with all their shit together!”
“I want to be TikTok famous!” Trust me guys, from my random viral success during 2020 I can tell you that getting internet famous is HORRIFYING. It’s ironic that one video of me being completely authentic in my goofiness would bring about so much stress and drive me into erasing my authentic self just to try and keep the hype alive. I can write an entire book on how that was a bad idea, and I will on a separate blog (sorry, side tangent again).
And we always fall short of that idea we have of ourselves. And our self-esteem suffers. And our shame increases. And we take that discomfort and put it onto others to they too can feel not enough. The cycle repeats. We become less and less of our authentic selves in order to protect our egos… in order to feel relevant.
Think about it, if we aren’t relevant, we aren’t remembered… and not being remembered is a threat to our existence. Being "ordinary” is an existential crisis in and of itself.
“Oh no, if I show vulnerability and weakness, people will realize that I am not enough or worse… that I’m ordinary… and I will lose relevance!”
The above mentioned quote used to freak me out all the time. The fear of dying is still a very big thing for me, but not for the reasons above anymore. Once you accept the fact that you are just a mere grain of sand on the beach compared to the THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other, the idea of being relevant is kind of garbage. It has no control over you anymore, for the most part.
The Sad Reality of it All
So besides having garbage self-esteem and peddling shame, what’s so bad with chasing relevance? Let me just start with the absolute worst of it and work our way back up to the least horrifying.
In my day job, I’m instructor for a course called “CRASE” which stands for Citizen Response to Active Shooter Events. As an emergency manager and safety professional, I spend a lot of time reading case studies for active attackers, fires, natural disasters, terrorists events, etc. I’ve always been interested in the psychology behind disaster response or crime. What motivates people has always fascinated me.
I know, I know… you’re like “Jesus, Linnie… we were talking about Kim Kardashian just a second ago and now you’re getting real dark here…” but hear me out for a second. I think taking the cover off a really dark topic here is a great way to illustrate the EXTREME of my point (not that I think your social media or misguided career drive will cause you to go down this road).
Reading the FBI statistics, we know there is no cookie cutter image of active shooters. I know right? You’d think they’d all be white males, but the statistics are clear that the only thing they really have in common is a sense of lack of power, depression, a desire to end their life, and a deep sense of injustice that’s they perceive has happened to them. There are risk factors that statistics show (mental health, drug use, broken homes, exposure to violence, etc.) but it’s that mentality that is the common denominator.
Think about it, all of these mass shooters really have one thing in common: they feel like they aren’t enough. They feel powerless and suicidal… and irrelevant. Because dying a monster is better than dying a nobody in their eyes… Dying irrelevant is worse than committing an atrocity against humankind in their very ill minds.
Kind of fucked up to think about right?
Of course, why people commit these atrocities is extremely complex… but our societal need for relevance has fanned the flames of these lost souls.
We have talking heads on cable news saying whatever the hell they want just to get their name out there… pitting us against each other.
We boast on our page of all the money and expensive purses/shoes/jewelry we have, fake our wealth, then kill each other just to take these things. Because these things somehow make us relevant. Because we think being rich makes is extraordinary.
And yet there are less insidious things we do in the name of not being ordinary. We back stab our co-workers to climb the corporate ladder. We gossip about other people to bring them down and us up in the social ladder. We put our kids in videos to get likes (look up “Baby Gronk” and see how that poor kid will never live a normal life)… eat tide pods to join the group… spend our money on everything the internet or Joe Rogan tells you to buy.
At the end of the day we are social creatures, and not falling in line means you aren’t the societal norm… which we think makes us irrelevant… which means you’ll disappear… means all of it is a threat to our own existence. We will never be “enough.”
Look, fear of being irrelevant isn’t a gate way drug to committing mass murder… but it’s a motivating force for a lot of pain we inflict on others and ourselves.
We have to flip the script. We have to find the joy in the ordinary, strive for goals because we love them not because we want to be deemed worth by others, and we have got to find what our “enough” is. We have to let society and others stop dictating what that measurement is and look within ourselves for that answer.
We also have to start being a hell of a lot more nicer to people… but that’s an entire book I can write on that topic… for now we’ll take some wins with just accepting ourselves then kind of fix the rest of the worlds problems another day.
The Joy of the Ordinary
Stop treating your life like it’s ordinary when you being alive is statistically extraordinary to begin with…
I can tell ya from that quote that the journey I had the past two years to find myself, I found joy in very ordinary moments and I gave up the idea that I had to jump out of planes and swim with sharks and do all these other things in order to find relevance. Hanging out with the homies in Baja, meeting my girlfriend Megan for the first time under a tree in Memorial Park, walking around in the snow in Kentucky to get coffee in my parents new home, sitting with my grandma in her condo as she met Megan, sitting with my ex’s son late at night talking about Russia, having dinner with my jiu jitsu buddies, spending an entire Christmas in my pajamas in Canada, riding my dirt bike out of my drive way in Califonia, and so much more. All of these are seemingly “ordinary” moments but they are the ones that brought me the most joy.
Remember the post I made in my old blog titled “Junior Mints and Idle Chit Chat”? Thinking about that post and this talk of ordinary life reminds me of a conversation I had with my exes son after we were talking about getting better grades in school. I had become frustrated with him since his grades would drop because he was goofing off (because he was 11 and doing pandemic school… so let’s be real… no kids were doing work lol):
”You’re smart and creative, and if you set your mind to it you can be an engineer putting men on the moon one day… or creating a cure for cancer… or making rockets or other cool things!”
“I don’t know if I want that though. I kind of want to live a simple life… just a good job and a simple house and fun.”
At the time I myself was busy trying to chase the extraordinary with a ticket to Army Aviation. I had just spent the better part of my 20’s and early 30’s working my way up the corporate ladder… with “commercial space” and a pilots license and other laudable achievements to my resume. I couldn’t understand why anybody would want a “simple life” after living one full of travel and fancy things and celebrities and other “extraordinary” things.
I still think about that conversation over two years later… so I guess it really struck me as important to remember. An ordinary life doesn’t sound so bad at all.
“Wait, Linnie, so you’re telling me to not have goals and passions? That is absolutely NOT what David Goggins and Jocko Willink told me.”
Absolutely not (and also, re-read both of their books and you’ll see that we’re telling you similar things wrapped in different packages… theirs being multi-cam colored). Having goals and passions in life helps the time go by and makes the world go round. A little bit of manageable stress helps you grow. These can be ordinary things though. Sure, putting a man on the moon can seem like it’s chasing the extraordinary, but it could only be viewed that way to an outsider. Maybe your passion for the love of exploration is what drives you to put a man on the moon. Just don’t put a man on the moon because you feel like your life would have no meaning if you weren’t in a history book or have your own wikipedia page one day…. otherwise you’ll forever chase your tail trying to be enough. See my previous post about intrinsic vs extrinsic values and you’d understand my position on goals…
Do you smell what I’m steppin’ in? Our goals and ambitions don’t have to be extraordinary. Do them because you love to do them, not because of external praise. All of the greats have chased their goals for the love of what they do, not because they wanted praise from society. Do this and your life will be much happier… I promise… because you’ll definitely know that you’re enough because it’s for you, no one else. Takes out the guess work on what qualifies as “enough.”
If your passion leads you down roads that others deem “extraordinary,” then cool… it’s all subjective anyways. Just don’t chase the roads simply because they may lead you to the extraordinary life, because you’ll miss so many great things staring too far into the distance chasing the end of the rainbow. They disappear with time anyways…
So if you’re reading this, then let me remind you:
You’re enough even if you feel like you didn’t produce as much work as you did yesterday.
You’re enough even if you didn’t win that game.
You’re enough with or without the next jiu jitsu belt or stripe or medal.
You’re enough even if you’re gaining weight or losing weight.
You’re enough even if your dad doesn’t give a shit.
You’re enough when no one is watching… and if they are watching.
And if you feel so inclined that you MUST live a life that is extraordinary, just remember that you statistically shouldn’t even exist… there is a 1 in 400 trillion chance of you being born… and that’s pretty damn extraordinary in itself.
Now don’t waste it chasing others definitions… live it for you and have fun doing it.
