How to Stop Focusing on What You Lack

And love the life you’re living

I asked myself, Will I ever find relief from this icky, churning feeling of never being good enough? I knew I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. I knew I needed to change my inner monologue.

Image by Stephanie Sunberg for Maria Stanley

The best and worst thing that has ever happened to me began with being dumped on the morning of college graduation. There I sat at the yawning mouth of adulthood, clad in cap and gown and utterly shell-shocked. 

Heartbreak gives us two options: Learn we’ve always been worthy of love, or outsource our self-worth through external validation. I chose the latter and doubled down on pragmatism, hitting each stepping stone of adulthood like I was collecting tokens of “success” at each checkpoint. Where I lacked, I put my focus. Grit became my religion. 

Twenty years later, I see how this break-up was my sliding doors moment, one that shoved me on a path where I’d learn to surrender to the alchemy of loss and transformation over and over again. We all die many deaths throughout our lives, shedding outdated versions of ourselves through all the losses big and small. Hopefully, along the way, we find ourselves getting a little closer to home. 

What often keeps us stuck is the fear of loving our life as it is. Focusing on what we lack keeps us safe because we’re looking for our weaknesses. Staying in lack prevents us from saying something stupid in front of the wrong person. Staying in lack keeps the status quo. Staying in lack is familiar, and the familiar is safer than the unknown.