If you ever or continually feel inadequate it’ll be helpful to reflect and define what being inadequate actually means. How you define inadequate could and likely differs from how another person in the world defines being inadequate. This is why knowing what being inadequate means to you is paramount.
In a lot of cases, you probably mean you fall short of some standard currently important to you. In the workplace, for example, you might say you’re inadequate if you don’t possess the skills or ability to do certain things.
Being “inadequate” by lacking or not being able to do something isn’t a problem. The problem is what you do when you recognize or become aware of an inadequacy. Currently, you may unknowingly see being inadequate(however you define it) as unaccepable. This way of thinking is problematic because it requires you to feel bad and is often the unkknown reason why you feel inadequate. (See, why viewing somehting as unacceptable creates anxiety). Remember that when you say inadequate, you probably mean you lack or fall short of something.
You might –before now–think that the best way to keep improving yourself so that you aren’t inadequate in any way is to feel bad and believe being inadequate is unacceptable. This approach has its benefits and may have benefited you in the past, but it also has its costs, which are often emotional and internal. Because constant stress is suboptimal for the body, these costs can create or lead to physical health issues.
How to handle inadequacies
There is another way to live. Instead of feeling bad about any inadequacy you see, you can view it neutrally and decide what you’d like to do about it. If you want to change it, then change it. If you don’t want to change it, you have to take ownership and decide whether you want to feel bad about not addressing the inadequacy you’re aware of. Humans are imperfect and have limited amount of time and resources. The idea that you will have no inadequacies and be able to fix them all at once does not align with how most organisms, entities, and humans operate. See, “We Only Do So Much at Once.” You might have to prioritize the different inadequacies you want to change based on your current life goals.
Interestingly, this is how some profit-generating businesses work. Businesses choose their top priorities and focus their time there. If they spread themselves across too many priorities and don’t have the resources to do that properly, the business often suffers. We put forward to you that this phenomenon of selecting and focusing on top priorities based on current goals, available time, and resources is a principle of life that will benefit most, if not everyone, to try and live by.
What if you’re reallllllly inadequate
If this is actually the case, it may be a tough reality or pill to swallow, but that’s how things currently are. You still have a choice. You can decide to feel bad because of this shortcoming or recognize that you dislike your inadequacy but still ultimately want inner peace. Choosing inner peace means you decide to be “ok” with the inadequacy instead of feeling bad about it.
After doing this, you can strategize how to address the inadequacy. Some people aren’t able to neutrally view their inadequacies like this which unknowingly prevents them from analyzing their weaknesses without feeling bad. It’s difficult to come up with improvement plans when you’re unable to analyze or look at your weaknesses.
Some people may think or believe you’re inadequate
But those people probably don’t know what it means for you to be inadequate because if they did, they would know that they, too, are likely inadequate in some way. Why? They’re not god and are an imperfect human being like everyone else. A perfect human being has not yet been reported on this earth. People who call others inadequate often lack the understanding in this post.
Lastly, recognize that you may not get much value by calling yourself inadequate. Others may use that word but you don’t have to. Rather, you can just note any shortcomings or dislikes you have and figure out what you’d like to do about those shortcomings.
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