The dark secret

At some level, we are always afraid of someone coming up and telling us we are not good enough.

At the workplace, on social media...

Especially on Linkedin.

There is a story behind that fear.

A story about secrets. More so, dark secrets.

Secrets are supposed to be known only to those who entitled to them.

A dark secret is something about us - something we know, but don’t tell ourselves.

When someone tells us we are not good enough, they have suddenly revealed a dark secret.

That’s against the rules.

But when that rule is inevitably broken by someone, it’s like a band-aid getting ripped off. The wound is there for everyone to see. The worst part is, that everyone includes us.

Along with becoming visible, it also brings the realisation that it was always there even as we wished otherwise. And, it was tracing its own path of healing and recovery.

When we look closer, we might realise it wasn’t really a wound at all. It’s just a mark. The bigger surprise comes when we understand that everyone it and is shy of revealing.

When we stay with it a bit longer, we realise we made this mark ourselves.

We perhaps did this one day as a way of reminding ourself to be well-prepared to meet our biggest challenges. Somewhere along the road, we changed the label on the reminder and called it a wound. From there, it became the ugly scar we want to hide from the world. It became our secret. Then, we didn’t want to see it too and that’s how it became our dark secret.

As time passes, we learn to accept that we can never be precisely prepared for our challenges. We can only meet them with what we have and accept what comes our way, learn from it and try again when the next opportunity comes by.

On certain days, the best we have to offer may seem ordinary and on other days, what we consider mundane could add more value than we can imagine.

So, in the end there is no such thing as good enough. What is important is remembering that we are here to learn; to commit to our practice; to swallow our ego and show up.

It takes an enormous amount of energy to dodge that fear and show up every day.

In fact, the person telling us we are not good enough is only able to do that because they recognize the band-aid.

In calling out our ‘dark secret’, they are calling out their own. They can only call out what they see in others as they too (like us) have their own dark secret. With that awareness, unless we allow it, they can’t damage what was never broken.

So, instead of being fearful or resentful about such critics, it might help to just stay with the revelation they have made for us and see where that leads us. If anything, they may just have freed us and got a step closer to freeing themselves.