When "Do Better" Turned Into "Never Enough"

You're doing fine. Not perfect, but fine.

Then one thing slips. You skip the thing. You eat the thing. You miss the thing, or say the thing you swore you weren't going to say.

And just like that, the whole day is shot. Might as well blow the rest of it too. Start over Monday, like Monday has some kind of magic reset button. Or next month. Or never, honestly, because what's the point.

Fuck it.

I know that voice really well. It's been running in my head for most of my life. And lately I've started noticing that it doesn't actually come from not caring. It comes from somewhere a lot deeper than that.

I grew up Christian, and I grew up an athlete. And the way my brain heard it, those two worlds said a lot of the same things.

Be better. Live up to Christ. Read your Bible. Pray. Show up at church. Do the things. Be a better Christian.

Practice more. Work harder. Get better. There was always another level.

I want to be clear about one thing and then I'm going to move on: this is about what MY brain did with those messages. Not what anybody did to me, and not what anyone else should believe. There was good in both of those worlds. Sports gave me drive. My faith looks a lot different now than it did when I was a kid, and I'm still figuring that part out. But this isn't a piece about religion, and it isn't a piece about sports.

It's about what happened in my head.

Because somewhere along the way, my brain took "keep growing" and quietly translated it into "you're not enough yet."

I thought the end game was becoming better. Somewhere along the way, my brain decided the end game was perfection.

And here's the problem with perfection as the end game.

It doesn't exist.

Which means there was never a finish line. There was never a day where I got to stop, look around, and say, "Okay. Now I'm enough." There was just always another level. Another thing to do better. Another way I was falling short.

And if you're already falling short anyway... why bother?

That's where "fuck it" comes from. At least for me.

It looks like quitting. It looks like not caring. But I think it's actually what happens when you care so much about doing it right that anything less can feel like failing. If I'm not doing it right, if I'm not doing enough, if I'm already behind, my brain gets there fast. Then I'm not doing any of it.

That same pattern eventually showed up with food, too. Food became good or bad. I was either being good, or I'd screwed it up. And once I'd screwed it up? Same voice. Same two words.

I wish I could tell you I fixed this.

I haven't.

I've been working on noticing these patterns for the last several years, and the thoughts still show up. They still give me shit. And sometimes I still listen to them, probably more than I'd like to admit.

The difference is that I'm starting to catch them. I'm starting to notice when "do better" quietly turns into "you're not enough," and I'm starting to ask whether I actually have to obey that. Part of that is learning to trust myself a little more, instead of constantly looking outside myself for proof that I'm doing it right.

Because I still believe in growing. I still think getting uncomfortable and pushing yourself matters. I just don't want "better" to need "not enough" as its starting point anymore.

So here's the question I keep coming back to:

What happens when "always do better" quietly becomes "what I do is never enough"?

I don't have a tidy answer. I'm still in it. But I think noticing it might be where it starts.

Always, be real. ♥