You Don’t Need to Fix Yourself

The majority of content we consume in the form of articles, advertisements, social media posts, societal expectations, and even some books, is designed to make you feel like you are broken, you are not good enough, and that you’re missing things—material goods, experiences, and even pieces of yourself.

When it comes to marketing and advertising, that’s the whole point: to make you feel like there is a need that purchasing a product can fix or fill.

Your teeth aren’t white enough. Buy this brand of toothpaste.

You’re too fat. Buy this diet book.

Your house is too messy. Buy these containers.

You need to escape your boring life. Buy tickets to this movie.

The insidious repeated message we hear over and over again is:

“You are not enough.”

And when you hear this enough times, you see it in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, webpages, and in apps…you begin to believe it.

It’s not in anyone else’s interest to change that belief, except your own.

Advertisers don’t want you to believe you’re enough—they need you to accept your supposed faults so that you’ll buy their products.

But as a business owner and coach I find the idea of putting people down in order to convince them to buy from me revolting. That’s not how I treat people, and it’s certainly not how I coach.

I’ve had nutrition clients come to me and tell me: “I need a drill sergeant. I need you to kick my ass.” I know that when they say that, it’s because they believe they’re lacking something...lacking strength, lacking willpower, whatever it is. They believe that if I yell at them enough, make them feel guilty, and crack the whip on them, that it will be enough to make them finally change.

But you know what? I’ve never “whipped someone into shape,” even by request.

We’re hard enough on ourselves. The last thing someone needs—especially someone who has lived their entire life thinking they are not enough—is for someone else to tell them they are failing.

It’s not true.

I don’t believe that anyone who comes to me is broken. I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with them. I can see their value and worthiness, whether they see it or not. In cases where they don’t see it, I try to open them up to what I can see.

When I coach someone, it is not to highlight their weaknesses. It’s not to make them feel ashamed of bad habits or of failures. When I coach, it’s to get someone to explore and find their strengths, and to exhibit those strengths as often as possible.

There’s a big myth that if you think you’re enough, you won’t feel any motivation to change. That's also not true.

You can believe that you’re enough and still want to change.

You can still want to change because while perfection doesn’t exist, mastery does. Excellence does. There is no endpoint when it comes to mastering something. You’re never done, even when it comes to becoming a better person.

You can be happy with yourself AND continue striving to improve.

Accepting yourself doesn’t come from believing that you need more. It comes from believing that you have everything you need already.

You don’t need to buy anything. You’re not broken, and you don’t need to be fixed.

You just need to be.