I Am Selfish Too

I want to talk about that voice.

The one that says who do you think you are. This isn't for you. You're not enough.

For a long time I thought the answer was to make the other side louder. To start a battle in my head.

Yes I am. This is for me. I've got this.

The problem is that I was just feeding the war, making one side right and the other wrong, and it never actually ended.

And the voice I was fighting never left. It just went quiet. It stopped shouting and started to hum, under everything, like the fridge you forget is running until the day it clicks off.

Whatever we fight or avoid gets bigger. (Tell yourself not to think about a blue elephant and see how that goes.)

Here is the picture I keep coming back to. A tug of war. And when you really look, both ends of the rope are in your own hands.

One hand pulling I am enough, I've got this, I'm building something real. The other hand pulling I'm not enough, who am I, this will never work.

A rope is only tight when both sides pull.

So the harder I yank the good end, the harder the other end digs in, or the whole thing goes slack. Every time I crank up the positive, I'm quietly feeding the negative. I'm making the war bigger. And I'm the one in the middle, holding both ends, getting tired.

That was the thing I had to see. The cheerful voice was never coming to rescue me. It was the proof. I don't stand in my kitchen telling myself "I've got this" before I pour a glass of water. I only reach for it when some part of me is already sure I can't.

There's research on this, if it helps. People who already doubted themselves felt worse after repeating "I am a lovable person" than the ones who didn't repeat it at all. The kind words just pointed at the gap.

I recently had an experience that made this so clear to me. It isn't about business at all.

My dog. A Yorkshire, fifteen years old. This year she got sick. She went to the hospital in December, and again in May, and the second time it was clear she had lost most of what made her life hers.

And the vet said it. You might want to consider euthanasia.

I don't know if you have ever had to make that kind of choice. What I noticed is that no matter what I picked, I felt selfish.

Let her go, and I'm selfish. I want my time back. I want the relief.

Keep her here, and I'm selfish too. I want her to stay because I can't bear to lose her. Maybe one more medication. Maybe she'd be fine.

There was no version where I wasn't selfish. The vet and the woman at the desk kept gently telling me all the reasons I wasn't. And my body kept saying, no. I am being selfish. I'm there thinking, is this my inner critic? Am I a bad person?

I was pulling the rope from both ends. Refusing to be selfish, and then building a story to prove I wasn't.

So I got quiet and I asked my body. Should I let her go? And my body said yes. And honestly, holy shit, because now I had to actually follow through and do it.

I cried. I was so sad. And I still felt selfish, still building my case. The war was on.

Then something in me went, hold on. You are selfish too. But you are not only selfish.

I am selfish too.

And the moment I let it be true, something shifted. I could feel the alchemy of it. I didn't win the argument. I dropped the rope.

And here is the part I only understood later. I didn't drop the rope by letting go early, or by rising above it, or by deciding to be the calm one who doesn't pull.

I dropped it because I finally let both ends stretch me all the way.

Selfish and altruistic at the same time.

Both true. Both mine. No apology. The problem was never the two sides.

It was making one of them the enemy, the one I had to fight off to be okay. The moment I stopped making one of them wrong and the other side better, there was nothing left to pull against.

I let her go. I did it for her, she was in pain. And I did it for me too. Both true. Both okay.

The most honest part. The first time I walked back into the house, I told Phil what a relief it was that I didn't have to clean her pee off the floor anymore. And I watched myself judge me for saying it. That was selfish.

And that was okay too.

So why am I telling you this in a letter about your business?

Because it's the same voice. I'm enough, I'm not enough. I'm generous, I'm selfish.

We do it all day.

We do it most when we go to raise a price, and the voice says, who are you to charge that. So we lower it and call it generosity. But what if it's just true. I want to be paid well and I am generous too.

We try to build businesses out of one half.

The half that has it right, that feels ready, that never looks greedy or unsure. We spend ourselves hiding the rest, exhausted, pretending we are not also the other thing.

But you are. You are the one who gets it right and the one who gets it wrong. The generous one and the greedy one. And you don't get free by picking the nicer half, or by climbing above the whole mess.

You get free by letting both sides stretch you, all the way, until you can hold them at once without apology.

The inner critic is there for a reason. So is the cheerleader. The light is not somewhere above the two of them. It is what is left when you stop apologizing for either one.

I'm not trying to be enough. I'm not fighting not enough.

I am.

With Love,

Carolina