For my last newsletter of the year, I planned on writing about what I’ve learned in 2021.

But as I began, I realized I didn’t learn new lessons this year; old ones were reinforced. So instead, I’m going to write about something I know for sure, which I’ve learned throughout my adulthood. I think that will serve you better going into 2022.

I know that far too many of us believe we are “too much” or “not enough” and are alone in our harshly critical self-judgments. We don’t realize that such thinking is common and that there is a name for it: Cognitive Distortion.

We share too little of ourselves because we’re afraid, which separates us.

For the longest time, nearly my entire life, I believed I was not good enough in every area of it.

But the more work I did on myself, the more I read, thought, talked, and wrote, the more I realized that this belief is universal. Of course, not everyone suffers in this way—some lucky few don’t suffer—but a lot of us do.

And the more we talk about how we suffer, the more we understand how not alone we are.

It’s impossible to be “too much” or “not enough” of anything, and yet we convince ourselves that we are, based on stories of ourselves from childhood that other people told. Then we take our internal convictions into the world, assuming everyone agrees with our silent assessment of ourselves.

Our invisible critical beliefs live inside many of us as tiny secret selves that we can’t seem to slay. This tiny secret self is constantly popping its head up, making sure that we notice when a random encounter, a bad conversation, a tonal shift, or a side-eye has confirmed our fears.

That tiny secret self began as the voice of someone else: a parent, a teacher, someone on an overheard phone call, a bully, a doctor—but now it’s ours, and we are the ones who keep validating what we believe (and fear) is genuine about us.

We’re all trapped in an infinity mirror of selfness, where we look outside ourselves only to return and report to ourselves that we were right—we don’t belong. We were right—we’re not smart enough.

We were right—we are too much. We were right—we’re not enough. We’re on a walkie-talkie playing both sides. Calling and answering, not even realizing we’re talking to ourselves.

We’re in a loop, a fractal of me-ness, and we don’t know the way out.

Except that we do.

We hold on to the story of our broken selves because it feels safer to be the story we’ve been telling ourselves our entire lives than to live anew as our true selves, separate from the outdated narrative. But we don’t need it anymore. It’s taking up too much of our lives.

Once we drop the story, we can do our work, deepen our friendships, experience what matters, and strive to get what we deserve, even if we never get it. Because the point is not getting it, the point is the belief that we deserve the goal.

Since we’ve never stopped clinging to this story of ourselves that other people spun for us, we’ve never really developed the actual person we are. The one who doesn’t recommit constantly to the worst of herself, but who doesn’t care.

The one who truly gives zero fucks.

It’s only when she gives zero fucks that she can experience life. She can experience what it feels like to be a human being. She can experience what it feels like to live instead of living in the constant pushing away, truly.

Letting go of the belief that you’re not enough or too much, and embracing exactly who you are, is not scarier or harder than holding on to that belief. Because it doesn’t happen all at once, it happens little by little, like easing your way into the swimming pool an inch at a time.

Jumping out for a minute before going back in. This is what life is. Those who want to stop telling the same story, who are tired of it and have finally understood that they are brave enough and strong enough to walk away from that story, can do it.

We can only be what we agree we are.

We only gravitate toward what we agree with.

So ask yourself, for real, if you agree with yourself.

Honestly?

Shut your computer.

Take a walk.

Sit quietly, think, and answer.

Do you agree that you are who you fear you are?

If you don’t want to close the computer or put down your phone, that’s okay. The question is in you now. It won’t go away. Get to it when you’re ready and when you want to. We can only agree with something we believe in.

So what do you believe in? What do you stand for? What’s your purpose? Your mission? Your drive? What is the source of what carries you through every day?

It’s also okay if you don’t know. The question won’t go away. Even if you forget it, it’s in there. You’ll get to it when you’re ready. And here’s the magic about life: The answer will not change. The answer is stable. It’s our questions that are all over the place.

This is how we’re all the same. We all share a secret, and it’s our secret of ourselves. Some of us don’t even let ourselves know we have this secret—maybe we will one day, we won’t.

But I’m convinced that I’m describing almost everyone with the cognitive capacity to make sense of their feelings, even if they don’t know how.

Be who you are by learning who you want to be. We were raised to learn by studying, but most don’t examine themselves. Not to the extent we should. Study it if you want more confidence, trust, gratitude, love, or anything else your story has cheated you of.

Learn how to gain it, and then practice. Please read about it, talk about it, think about it, watch movies, and research it. Learn it as though you need to teach it because you do. You need to teach yourself what you need to learn.

Of course, our stories differ in various ways, including level of acuteness. Some lucky few are even immune. But by and large, I believe most of us spin our false beliefs as truth and call that existence reality.

What I know is that we choose the reality we live in. We don’t select the external realities, like poverty, the pandemic, and cancer, but we decide what we believe about ourselves. We choose what is meaningful to us, and it’s in that meaning that we understand who we are and how we want to live.

Beloved subscribers—thank you for making these past three months so meaningful. I launched this newsletter on September 8th, 2021, with zero subscribers.

That it’s grown so quickly is astonishing to me. Thank you for the support and cheer of your emails and DM’s these past three months. They’ve meant the absolute world to me.

I loved writing this newsletter. I’ve loved reading, researching, thinking, and talking about every piece, hoping you’ll get something valuable from it. I hope you have.

If you have a favorite “How to Live” piece, let me know in the comments which one it was!

Thank you, as always, to Edwina White for pairing my words with the perfect images.

Please have a healthy entrance into 2022. I'll see you there.

Until then, I will remain,