My Gift from Last Year

Reflections

Jan 12

Last year has been a good one for me. I committed to starting a bookkeeping business full-time, and ended the year being as busy as I wanted to be. It’s not a sexy or fun profession, but since every business needs it, and few people want to do it or understand how, it’s kind of an easy sell. Which is good, because I’m not a salesperson and didn’t even know how to talk to clients in the beginning.

When I had my first client meeting, I had panic-level anxiety until a friend of mine offered to role-play and talk me through the meeting. I went from that, to pretty much winging my client meetings in the span of a year, but those first few months were so hard. Starting a business, even with one person, is a process of constantly making new choices about how you want to run your business. It can be overwhelming, but after those early stages, I had enough of a system down that the choices felt freeing rather than overwhelming.

Even with all these successes, I value one success from last year more than anything else -- my newfound sense of self-acceptance.

Many, if not most of us, grow up being taught that we’re not good enough. Babies come out of the womb as perfection itself, but pretty quickly they’re expected to understand and follow rules that make no sense to them. Sit at a table when you eat. Hold still while the teacher talks. Don’t cry when you don’t get that toy and your world is about to end.

Parents do the best they can, but as children, we often end up learning that who we are is not okay. That we are only acceptable if we comply with their standards, and if we don’t, we can expect to be shamed or reprimanded. This can lead to a lifetime of chasing ideals like having the right job, the right lifestyle, the right weight, the right clothes, the right house with the right decor, or anything else that makes us “good enough” in the eyes of society.

“These days it’s not even enough to just make money anymore, we also have to be inspired, passionate, and self-actualized while making lots of money. ”

This is why self-acceptance is so difficult to achieve and why actually achieving it is so precious. Even when we choose the path less taken, it’s hard to overcome the desire to be acceptable. I’ve spent years trying to carve out my own path, while also wanting to make a lot of money to “prove” that I was right to pursue my own path. I still craved the accolades and congratulations that people give you when you succeed on their terms.

These days it’s not even enough to just make money anymore, we also have to be inspired, passionate, and self-actualized while making lots of money. It becomes yet another mile-high expectation to fall short of. No wonder we’re exhausted.

The fear of not being good enough has been with me most of my life, but something shifted this past year because of the inner work I did. I understand now that this fear was behind my difficulty speaking in front of people no matter how small the group or informal the situation. It was also behind the writer’s block I’ve had for the past two years that made me afraid of writing even though I really wanted to write.

It was the constant assessment of whether the work I produced was “good enough” compared to others I admire. If not, or if someone else had written or spoken on a similar topic, I doubted it was even worth trying. I would end up editing myself into oblivion and into silence. When I did speak or write, the way I expressed myself tended to be stiff because I was trying to put up a facade. Some people can perform themselves and still be eloquent while hiding who they are, but I’m not one of those people.

I spent a long time trying to become who I thought I wanted to be, and now I just want to be myself. That means there’s nothing wrong with being where I am. I still have goals and things I want to accomplish, but if my work isn’t as good as I want it to be, it means that I have room to learn and improve, not that I will never be good enough — so why bother.

I don’t push myself as hard these days, but that’s not a bad thing either. Threatening myself not only made it twice as hard as it could’ve been, it also hurt me physically by giving me high cholesterol and triglycerides. I used to be stressed out all the time because I often felt like I could fall short, and that’s not a fun way to go through life. Our value as human beings doesn’t come only from our work. We don’t only improve and learn under the threat of disapproval or disappointment. We might even be able to learn and improve simply because we enjoy what we do and care about the end result.

In the end, life is not just about what we get done, but whether we like ourselves while we’re doing it. If we are kind to ourselves, the journey becomes much more enjoyable.