I don’t know about you, but there are days when I wonder about what I am doing and why am I doing it. I ask myself a simple question and too often the answer leaves me wanting.
That question is:
Am I good enough?
I know, I’ve written a free eBook on the subject and I’ve repeatedly told you that you are good enough. Still, believing it is sometimes difficult, even, dare I say, impossible.
I really did write that sentence. Forgive me.
Today’s post is about blogging in my case, but it could be about something else, anything else, for you. Something you’re interested in. Something you want to excel at. Something you work hard at. You pick the something.
I read a lot of blogs and at the top of my list is Seth Godin’s. He’s a remarkable blogger. He’s the cream of the crop.
Seth writes in a concise, meaningful way. He conveys so much in so few words. I am inspired by Seth! But, and I have to admit this . . . he makes me feel ineffective because he is so effective. What takes me about 500 words to say Seth can say in 30 or less. It’s daunting. I bow before is mastery and efficiency, yet somehow I feel as though I am not saying enough to convey how much better he is than me.
Why can’t I be more like him?
Another blogger I admire is Jeff Goins. Jeff is phenomenal at reaching into your soul and touching it. He’s a writer’s writer. After I read any of his blog articles I wonder to myself, even if it’s only in secret and I never admit it to anyone (no, never), why I even try. This guy is a master. Jeff schools me just by showing up.
Why can’t I be more like him?
After reading a post from either of their blogs or another elite blogger, I do go away with new, valuable information and insight, but too often I also go away feeling I am not good enough. “I have a very long way to go,” I tell myself.
And that may be true, I have a ways to go in honing my writing. There’s another truth. It’s an important one for me to understand:
I am not Seth Godin or Jeff Goins.
I am Bryan Hutchinson. My gifts are different than theirs. My desires, my goals and my writing skills, even, are different than theirs. They also write for larger tribes. I write for a niche that is much smaller, although just as important. Like them, I am part of a tribe, a very special one, indeed.
Yes. I can tell myself those things, but the reality is that these premier bloggers make me feel wrecked. I feel as though I must readdress what I am doing, how I am doing it and perhaps even why I am doing it.
Slowly, though, I am beginning to understand. To really and truly get it.
Wrecked!
I am currently reading an outstanding, life-changing book, a book that is teaching me a valuable lesson, in much the same way The Dip by Seth Godin taught me a special lesson: To make it through.
The book I am reading is entitled Wrecked by Jeff Goins. It is perhaps the most valuable book I have read so far this year. It sure beats Hunger Games.
In Wrecked, Jeff talks about pain and suffering and how we seek to avoid it, but that we shouldn’t. Pain and suffering are part of the cycle of life and although we seek comfort, it is not in the arms of comfort where we learn our most valuable lessons or create our most memorable moments.
Sometimes we have to get wrecked before we discover our life’s purpose or at the least, learn valuable lessons. Too often we strive for comfort so much that we miss important events which could teach us something incredible, even life changing.
The ADHD Factor
Clearly, those of us with ADHD have been through our fair share of being wrecked.
The ADHD factor often makes me feel as though I am not measuring up because I’ve been criticized relentlessly over the years. Too many times I have truly wanted to give up. And, yes, there have been times that I have done exactly that. Too many times.
Here on my blog and in my memoir I have already shared with you all of the interests I dropped like hot rocks when I didn’t feel as though I was making progress or lost the desire to continue or, and this one hurts the most, I didn’t feel as though I was good enough and I never would be.
It was part ADHD and part inferiority complex. Too often those two go hand in hand. But there’s another part. I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be criticized anymore, I didn’t want to feel the pain and by avoiding those things I didn’t reach to overcome and missed valuable lessons.
So now when I find someone doing what I want to do, but doing it better, I still feel uncomfortable and it would be easy click the X on my web browser, but I don’t. Because that’s not the right thing to do.
Learn from them.
Perhaps you have been there? It’s so easy to see others who are doing what we want to do, others who we perceive as better (and perhaps they are) and then feel like stopping.
Instead, learn from them.
I don’t give up so easily anymore. No. I don’t want to do that. Thanks to Jeff’s book Wrecked and Seth’s The Dip, I see why we must get wrecked and why we will go through the dip. These are natural and necessary parts of growth, they are the only sure ways forward and I tried to avoid them like the plague. It didn’t work.
Today I sit back down, start typing and try my best to create something better than before. Or I go learn something new, something that will help me improve my skills as a blogger, as a writer and, if I am willing to admit it, as a person.
Always will be someone better.
There will always be someone who is at a higher level, who is achieving more and is, better. Even those who seem to be the best can find someone better, someone who makes them stretch, who makes them give just a little bit more, who makes them want to learn something new and continue to improve.
I’ve come to the realization that there’s always someone better because we need them to be.
Still, that does not make what we are currently doing any less significant or meaningful. It does mean there is room for improvement, there is room to learn and grow. Let’s do that.
After all, it was the burning desire to improve that compelled me to seek help for my ADHD symptoms in the first place.
And so in that context, I am writing today’s blog. I know it is not as great as something Jeff or Seth might write, but it’s what I’ve got, right now, right here. And for me, it is good enough. For now.
What about you?
Bryan
If you are interested in Wrecked or The Dip I have added them to the ADDer World Amazon affiliate book store. Click here to go there.
