Never Enough

Episode 67 of the Secular Buddhism Podcast

Welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 67. I'm your host, Noah Rasheta, and today I'm talking about our tendency to feel like things are never enough.

The Song That Says It All

The title of this podcast episode comes from a song in the musical The Greatest Showman with Hugh Jackman. If any of you have seen it, there's a song in that movie called "Never Enough," and I really like that song. I think it has a powerful message that, to me, quite honestly, seems like the anthem of our society. It's a way of thinking that seems to permeate our societal views and our expectations towards life, towards others, and towards ourselves.

Think about this for a moment. When it comes to physical things like having a house, there's this mentality of never enough, right? You can have a great home and you're always daydreaming of that bigger house. Or you think, "This house is great, but it would be better with a pool." It's the same with our jobs. This job would be great, but if I could just get paid more, or have a better title, or move up to the office with the corner window view—whatever it is—there's this tendency to think of never enough. We're always seeking after more.

We do this with our relationships. We do this with our experiences and our feelings. You can be feeling great about something in life, but that's never enough. We're always looking for the next thing.

Now, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. This tendency has driven us as individuals, but also collectively as a species, as a society, to make leaps and bounds in terms of comforts and technological innovations. There's this drive that seems to motivate us for a better life, and it's always happening. So I don't want to give the impression that this is necessarily bad.

But I do think it can get tricky if we just have a habitual tendency to react to this desire to have more and more and more. When we understand it, when we understand ourselves, we can see this in ourselves and become more skillful with how we handle this natural human tendency. We can pause for a moment and ask: Is this worthwhile pursuit, or has this become an unskillful, habitual form of reactivity where I'm just never going to be content with what I have? We can be more skillful with how we handle this natural human emotion.

The Message of the Song

In the song, if you've ever heard it, she's talking about how all the shine of a thousand spotlights, all the stars we steal from the night sky will never be enough. Never be enough. "Towers of gold are still too little. These hands could hold the world but it'll never be enough." That's the message conveyed in that song. It's a really catchy tune. Like I said earlier, I really like belting it out in the car, which is hard to do because it's got some really high notes. It'd be embarrassing if anyone ever heard that.

But again, I think we live in a society where we view life as never enough. What I want to talk about in this episode is specifically how that starts to influence how we view others. I think that can be one of the more dangerous ways this mindset manifests. I want to correlate this notion of never enough to how some people end up getting entangled in a much bigger and more serious problem—emotional abuse. The abuse that we receive from others or that we give to others.

I would assume most of you know someone who has gone through some form of emotional abuse. I was recently talking to someone who had been confided in by a dear friend going through a difficult time with emotional abuse in a relationship. Hearing this conversation unfold, it was interesting to feel a sense of anger and frustration towards that situation because you care for the person who's going through it. But what was interesting to me was seeing the indignation in the person telling me about this experience, the total unacceptability on behalf of this friend who was going through it. I think that was great to hear, in the sense that we don't put up with that, right? We want what's best for our friends, for our loved ones.

But it did get me thinking. So many of the things that were being described in this relationship and emotional abuse seemed to stem from this notion of never enough. This spouse was being emotionally abused because the abuser had this mindset that this person was not a good enough spouse, or a good enough parent, or a good enough partner. In all these different realms and aspects of the relationship, there's this sense of not being enough. So then there's the intimidation and other emotional abuse that was unfolding.

A Troubling Realization

But what I started thinking about as I was listening to all this is: man, a lot of these symptoms seem very common in how we deal with ourselves. So I looked up the definition and symptoms of emotional abuse. There are tons of resources online for people dealing with emotional abuse, but this one stood out to me.

One definition of emotional abuse is: any act, including confinement, isolation, verbal assault, humiliation, intimidation, or any other treatment which may diminish the sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth.

I really paused for a moment thinking, "Oh man, so many of us do this to ourselves all the time." How fascinating that we would be so indignant hearing about somebody else enduring this from somebody else, but rarely do we pause and feel that same sense of indignation when we realize how guilty we are of doing this to ourselves at one time or another.

The resources mention some specific signs and symptoms of emotional abuse. Listen to some of these and just imagine yourself. Have you ever done any of this to yourself?

• Yelling or swearing
• Calling names or insults
• Mockery or mocking
• Threats or intimidation
• Anything humiliating

I thought, man, we all talk to ourselves in these tones. We swear at ourselves. We call ourselves names. I'm sure everybody listening to this has called themselves an idiot or felt—not just said it, but genuinely felt—like you are such an idiot because of something you did or didn't do.

Threats and intimidation? Man, we tell ourselves things like, "Noah, if you ever do this again..." We threaten ourselves. Some people punish themselves. They say, "I won't buy this thing that I want," or "I'll take this back," or whatever it is. We self-sabotage and self-punish.

Looking Inward

So I wanted to change the direction of that topic because I think all of us can immediately identify that if a friend came to us and told us about the type of emotional abuse they were enduring, we would all feel incensed, a form of outrage. We would want to do something about it. But when we change that direction and look inward and ask ourselves, "Am I emotionally abusive to myself?" I think it gets a little harder.

If you listen to that list again of symptoms and signs, and you genuinely ask yourself, "Do I do this to myself?" I think a lot of people would have to acknowledge that, yeah, they do. If not from time to time, maybe all the time. "I always talk to myself that way."

The Deeper Root

This correlates with something I quoted in episode 57. I referenced something from Tara Brach's book Radical Acceptance. And I want to spell Tara Brach's name: T-A-R-A B-R-A-C-H. I had feedback from a podcast listener that I think was excellent—they suggested I mention the spelling of names when I'm referencing people or their books, because not everyone has heard of these people. So I'm going to try to do that from now on. Thank you for that feedback.

But Tara Brach mentions something that I think gets to the root of this. The root of all of this emotional abuse we direct toward ourselves stems from the fundamental belief that we are not enough. We have bought into the lie that there's something fundamentally wrong with us. And what I'm talking about here, what Tara Brach is talking about, is this concept that at the core of so much of our suffering is this sense of unworthiness. We have this core belief that there's something wrong with us, that we are not okay, that we are not enough, and from that core belief, everything else stems.

From that belief, we then engage in all these forms of emotional abuse toward ourselves. We put ourselves down. We criticize ourselves. We don't allow ourselves to rest. We push ourselves harder and harder. We never feel satisfied with what we've accomplished. We always have to do more, be more, have more. And underneath all of that is this core belief that somehow, we are just not enough.

When we start to understand that this is a belief we have adopted, not the truth about who we are—this is an incredibly liberating realization. We have the capacity to examine this belief. We have the capacity to question whether this belief is true. Is it really true that I'm not enough? Or is this a belief that I've adopted based on my past experiences, based on what I was taught, based on the culture I grew up in?

The Problem Isn't the Thought

I want to share a personal story with you. I mentioned before that I used to have a recurring pervasive thought that would surface regularly. The thought was: "You're not lovable." This thought would come up, and it would trigger a cascade of emotions and feelings that could put me in a really uncomfortable place. One emotion would trigger a thought, and there I was spiraling in this form of disturbing or uncomfortable feelings.

But what I found with time was that the problem wasn't the pervasive thought. The problem was that I believed my own thought.

What changed over time was the relationship that I had with the thought, but not the thought itself magically going away. The thought still surfaces as a recurring thought for me. But when it does, what's changed is the relationship I have with it. Now I almost smile and see it for what it is. "There's that pervasive thought again." And I see it with a greater sense of compassion and fondness, almost a softer tone to it, rather than feeling aggressive about it like, "Oh, I need to get rid of this thought."

I get why it's there. Past experiences, past feelings and emotions—they've caused this thought to become a recurring thought. I can see it for what it is. When it arises, I notice it and I say, "Well, there you are." And that's fine. You can be there. But I don't believe you anymore.

Just because I thought it doesn't mean it's true. Just because I think it doesn't mean it's reality. That has been an incredibly powerful transformation for me in terms of the relationship I have with my own thoughts. I don't believe my own thoughts anymore. I'm very cautious about what I believe or what I don't believe. Just because I think it doesn't mean it's true.

And that's where the power of that specific pervasive thought—"you're not lovable"—lost a lot of its power. The belief was what gave it its power. Without the belief, it's just a thought. It's just something that surfaces, and I can let it pass by like a cloud in the sky.

A Challenge and Some Hope

So I would hope that anyone listening to this, if you heard about somebody going through emotional abuse, you would feel a tremendous sense of concern. You would want to do something about it. You would want to help a friend get out of a relationship that's causing them harm, where they're being emotionally abused. I think most of us would. I don't think we'd be like, "Hey, well, you know, just deal with it." I think most of us would say, "Hey, this is a very serious thing. We need to look at this. What can you do to get out of this relationship? This isn't healthy for you." We would have a lot of genuine concern for that person.

I would hope that you would have that same level of concern about your own emotional abuse. If you were to detect, if you were to be honest with yourself and detect any of those signs and symptoms of emotional abuse coming from yourself, directed towards yourself—I hope you would take that seriously.

Getting Started

I think there are a couple of tips to get started with this process of being more vulnerable, this process of recognizing that everything has to go. And that is, first: recognize that it's going to take enormous courage. Take small steps. For me, it was something as simple as asking a loved one what they were thinking about. It meant becoming more comfortable with not knowing how that answer was going to unfold or what it would say about me, or what they were going to think about me. And being proud about the bravery of being willing to take those little steps and being more vulnerable, more exposed, so to speak.

If you tend to worry a lot about what other people think of you—which I think most of us do—recognize that tendency. And just remember: most people are probably feeling that exact same fear that you have. Really, they're just focused on their own internal struggles and not necessarily on you. What they think about you says more about them than it does about you. It's helpful to remember that.

Now, that doesn't magically make this feeling go away, but it is a helpful reminder. They feel the same thing. Most of us are hardwired for this, right? As humans, as social creatures, we're wired to be very attuned to what we think others are thinking about us. That's normal and it's natural. But it's helpful to recognize that while they're feeling that same thing.

When things are feeling a little bit too overwhelming, you can always focus your attention inward on your breath, on the sensations in your body for a few moments. Just try to visualize: what would life be like for you once everything has gone? Once the coat and the shoes and the socks and everything—right? The everything that's holding you back from being free to fly, free to be you?

Liberation Through Letting Go

I've talked about this before. Buddhism is often referred to as the path of liberation. It's not called the path to happiness. It's called the path of liberation because what we're bound by in so many instances is the three poisons: greed, hatred, and delusion. In this case, I think delusion specifically—the delusions around the views that we have about ourselves and others and about life, and thinking that there's a way things are supposed to be.

Being able to live a life where we're liberated from that, where we're free—as Pema Chödrön talks about—free to be the eagles that we realize we are capable of flight, capable of soaring. But oftentimes we're grounded by all the unnecessary weight of unnecessary accessories that come in the form of ideas and beliefs and concepts that we hold about ourselves.

A Question for This Week

So that's the topic I wanted to share in this podcast episode. I hope that you'll be willing to take a few moments this week and just look inward and be honest and ask yourself: How do I talk to myself? Am I emotionally abusive to myself? And if so, what am I willing to do to make a change in this relationship that I have with myself? The relationship I have with my thoughts, with my recurring thoughts, the thoughts that can be aggressive towards myself?

Don't believe those thoughts just because you think them. Like I mentioned earlier, the recurring thought I had about myself was a pervasive one, but I don't believe it anymore. Spend some time being introspective about yourself. How are you towards you? That's the question I hope you'll sit with this week.

I hope you'll be able to experience a sense of lightness as you start to let go of things, as you start to realize that everything has to go in order to have that liberation, to fly like Pema talks about.

A Note on Release Schedule

So that's all I've got for today. I mentioned last week that I'm trying really hard to have weekly episodes, and I'm excited because I did one last week and here I am doing another one on Sunday evening. I'm going to make Sunday the day that I record these, and I'll either release them Sunday night or Monday mornings.

I did some research on the website, and I realized something really telling. Monday is a huge spike in searches online for mindfulness. Everyone wants to be really mindful on Monday. And guess when it drops? It starts to drop on Friday. Friday and Saturday are the two lowest days for podcast listens, for downloads, for web searches—and this isn't just on mine, but keywords on Google like "mindfulness" or "how to meditate" or anything along those lines drop dramatically on Friday and Saturday.

They start to increase Sunday evening. Sunday evening and Monday, we are in full force looking for how to be more mindful. So I want to release podcast episodes either Sunday night or Monday morning—mindful Monday, we could call it—and give you something that you can think about for that week. Something that can be a lesson, something you can keep with you that's enjoyable and beneficial to you.

How to Support the Podcast

If you've enjoyed this podcast episode, feel free to share it with others. You can write a review, give it a rating in iTunes. If you want to join that online community I've mentioned, you can visit secularbuddhism.com/community. There's a link on that page to the Facebook group.

If you would like to make a donation to support the work I'm doing with the podcast, you can visit secularbuddhism.com and click on the link at the top that says "Donate." It's in the menu.

And that's all I have for now. I look forward to recording another podcast episode soon. Until next time.

For more about the Secular Buddhism Podcast and Noah Rasheta's work, visit SecularBuddhism.com