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REAL-LIFE STORIES
When You Accept Yourself, Everything Else Falls Into Place
Peace starts when we embrace who we are, not who we should be
“You’re doing better than you think. Stop being so hard on yourself,” I told my friend as he sat across from me, tears streaming down his face. His voice cracked as he repeated the words: “I failed her. I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough.” I didn’t know what else to say to him. Here was someone who had never truly accepted himself, no matter how much he accomplished.
My friend had built a multimillion-dollar business from nothing, rising out of poverty. He cared for his aging parents, sent two siblings to college, and even helped them get married — all before he turned forty. Yet, despite these incredible achievements, his response was always the same whenever I praised him: “Not good enough. Not yet.”
I know this mindset well, having grown up in an entrepreneurial family where my performance was constantly measured through comparisons.“Look at so-and-so’s son and how well he’s doing,” my father would say. That sense of comparisons and expectations was relentless. The thought of meeting these standards blinded me to the 90% of things I was doing right. Instead, I became fixated on the never-ending 10% I hadn’t achieved to prove myself, and if not, I would become bitter toward myself and those I was trying to match in performance. I would develop an inflated self-confidence that I would crush all aspects of business or have zero to no confidence in certain business activities.
When I didn’t feel competitive enough, I lost opportunities and friendships when there was a better approach for collaboration and a win-win. I often didn’t know why I was competing; I just wanted to prove to my father that I was better than the other guy, and he was wrong. Initially, things might feel like you are improving and moving forward. Still, the amount of poison and negative energy you inject into yourself is much more damaging than the instant pleasure of the wins. At last, my father realized he was doing more damage than good when, during a fight, I told him, “How about you adopt one of those guys as your son, and I will find myself a better father?” It was a shock to him but a natural response from…
