The 21st century is a wild time, we have the liberty to calling so many things “personal”, this would have been a dream to the many generations who lived before us. We have personal devices, personal workspaces, personal transport, personal bank accounts and most importantly personal demons. Everyone has a different definition of what a “personal demon” is, each definition is unironically “personal” to them. I would like to introduce you to mine.
My demon’s been around for a while now, but it shows its face just often enough to keep me on edge. When I open Instagram, for instance, when I see people living lives I dream of. It appears when I open my wardrobe to get dressed. It materializes beside me, when I look at myself in the mirror. It guffaws when I look at job openings and applications for college. It’s even here right now, as I type down this very piece of writing. My demon always has something to say and as you can see there is a recurring theme to it. It goes on saying, “you are smart not enough to get into this school don’t even apply, you don’t have the taste clothes to be called fashionable don’t bother dressing up, you don’t eat have a healthy enough diet to get abs so don’t bother working out.” I could go on, but for redudunacy’s sake, I won’t.
My demon works very efficiently, it kept me paralyzed in this loop of wanting to do something, wanting to be the best at said thing, knowing it’s not going to happen in the first try and convincing me it’s best I don’t try at all. This meant it could feed off me for as long as I had dreams and goals. How fun.
A symptom of having this demon was that rejection became my enemy, I steered clear of anything which was not a sure-fire success. Constantly punching below my weight so that I don’t have to come to terms with my actual capabilities.
I let this demon take the steering wheels of my life. I became Tom Hardy’s character in Venom. I became just a vessel for this vile creature that dictated every facet of my life, from my academics to my social life and it even transcended into my relationships. I had to strive for perfection and anything that would not result in perfect 10s across the board was not worth doing. In short, for a long time, I did zilch.
But sometime in the past year or so, I became more aware of this parasite. I started recognizing its ugly face whenever it showed up, and in a moment of clarity I decided I would get exorcise this demon if that’s the only thing I did with my life. I took advice from the horrid movie “The Nun” and decided to call the demon by its name to have power over it. I did research, inward and outward, I searched the highs of my mind and the depths of the internet to finally conclude that this demon was called “The Inadequacy Mindset”. Lo and behold, I saw it for what it was, a Boggart that needed to be Ridikkulus-ed away.
So Ridikkulus I did, every time it showed up telling me “This is not enough, you are not enough” I would counter with a “ok but what if I am?”. Every time it froze my hands from doing something, I would sit with my hands till it thawed. Every time the darkness of “oh but you don’t have enough” shrouded over me, I would quickly draw the curtains and let the light of gratitude flow in.
It’s been over a year since I waged war with the Inadequacy Mindset, slowly but surely, I’m exorcising it. Some days are good, some days are bad, I’ve learnt that such a fight is not going to be linear. Nevertheless, I persist.
