You’re Not Good Enough?

For most of my life, I believed: You’re not good enough.

Where does this belief came from? I think mostly from years of being bullied in school and I thought this must be the reason — that something was wrong with me. There wasn´ t the answer that maybe the others doing something false.

Inside

I felt like I wasn’t okay. So I started to adapt, trying to become someone others would accept. But it didn’t work. Instead, I lost the connection to myself and my emotions. I felt empty. That emptiness was unbearable, so I pushed it away.

I developed a new belief: I’m only good enough if I perform well.

That became my survival strategy.

I filled every free minute with something productive — emergency medicine, studying, training, planning. There was no time to feel or to rest. From the outside, it looked great. People said:

“Wow, you’re performing so well. You’re so smart. I’m curious where this will lead you.”

It looked like success. But inside, I was running — from myself.

For seven years, I couldn’t slow down. I never cried. I had no real connection to my body or emotions. I held everything down inside until my body started to speak. There were moments when my legs were shaking so much that I had to hold onto a table just to stay upright.

Even then, I couldn’t stop. Looking back, I see that there was simply too much pain beneath the surface — and taking a break would have meant facing it.

Outside

From the outside, I looked calm and grounded. But a few years later, when I told an old friend how restless and insecure I actually felt at that time, he looked at me and said:

“That can’t be true. You were the calmest and healthiest person I knew.”

That moment taught me something important: many people who look calm on the outside are actually fighting restlessness on the inside. It’s not peace — it’s adaptation. Sometimes it’s even a form of toxic self-regulation.

High performers often run without ever pausing. To be clear: I love performance and power. But I learned the hard way that if it becomes impossible to rest — to recharge our battery — the body will eventually force the break for us.

The Results

On a small scale, that looks like getting sick after a stressful period, once the pressure drops. On a larger scale, it’s burnout, depression, or high blood pressure. And in the most extreme cases, it can end in something life-threatening — a stroke, a heart attack, or worse.

In my case, it was a something like a burnout and strong physical reactions like trembling for weeks. My old strategies of control collapsed. The identity of the high performer exploded.

I fell into a hole. It was empty — no answers, no identity, no sense of worth.

And I’ve seen the same in many others — people whose entire identity was built on what they do, not who they are.

For me, it was the identity of the high performer. For others, it’s being a successful entrepreneur, identified with their company — their “baby.” When that company ends or gets sold, the same question appears:

“Who am I now — if not that?”

And no one else can answer that question for you....