7 Things to Know When You Feel You’re Not Good Enough

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I sigh as I begin typing on my laptop. Once again, a topic that hits home all too well for me. Not feeling good enough is so common, I wonder what went wrong for all of us. How did we end up measuring ourselves so much that we started to feel that something is lacking in us?

I am not a psychologist, so I won’t pretend to know exactly what causes this but I want to share my thoughts with you and hopefully help you think about yourself more kindly.

7 Things to Know When You Feel You’re Not Good Enough

1. It’s not your job to live up to people’s expectations

See, we all want to do well. We want to be good friends, daughters, sons, spouses, co-workers, leaders, caregivers, etc. But, we also know how much we can and want to give, and what our capabilities are. We know our limits best.

So, someone else’s approval and their idea of what your life should be or how much you should be doing something is not your responsibility to fulfill.

I understand, these people could be really close and would matter a lot, but find a way to strike a healthy balance. Respect their opinions but don’t make them tasks to check on your list. You must do what feels right to you.

2. Comparison is a losing game

We can spend hours scrolling through social media, look at our peers who seem to be doing better than us, or put ourselves against an ideal image that we’re not close to, to come to a point where who we are now is something that doesn’t seem enough to us.

Learning from others is helpful and encouraged because there’s always something that we don’t know and there’s endless knowledge to receive, but what will we gain from starting on the wrong foot?

Comparison is a game that we play against ourselves to experience resentment and self-doubt. It is an unhealthy way to use our mental energy.

3. Focus on progress, not perfection

Focusing primarily on the idea that we’re not there yet, that we should be moving faster, and that there’s so much left to do stops us from acknowledging all that we have achieved so far. Slow and steady wins the race.

If you keep taking regular, small but effective, steps to be what you want to be, it is enough and an intelligent strategy. As you look forward, be mindful of how far you have come. Your wins deserve your attention and celebration.

We’re so willing to criticize ourselves, what about appreciating ourselves with the same dedication?

4. Your worth is not tied to achievement

Sometimes I really sit and wonder how society shaped up to be what it is today. How did we start measuring the value of someone’s work by the money they made? How did we start classifying people as successful or unsuccessful based on the number of things they could buy? When did joy become dependent on goals? And, how did our worth become something to be challenged?

Attaching our worth to ideas and achievements is unfair to the infinite value of life. Your worth is not conditional. No one can define it. You are worthy just as you are. It’s a fact.

Your worth is not a graph with data that keeps changing. You cannot measure it. Your life is not a business with performance indicators. Your life is a gift, it’s miraculous, it’s so much more than you give it credit for.

5. Your thoughts are not facts

We have infinite thoughts passing by every day, infinite. All of them are not to be taken seriously. When the thought of being not good enough occurs, don’t take it as the truth, instead, try to understand why it might’ve appeared.

Feeling not good enough does not mean that you’re not good enough. Really, what are we comparing ourselves to? What is good enough?

If you know there are some things that you can be better at, that’s great and I encourage you to work towards them step-by-step. But, that doesn’t mean that you beat yourself up for not being that already. You can do a lot, but you don’t have to do it all.

6. People make their own choices

Consciously or unconsciously, we have chosen who we want to be. What someone chooses to do is on them. The way they react, talk, and behave are their choices.

Of course, we must be fair and kind in our behaviors as well, that’s a given, but if a parent left when their child was young, it’s not the child’s fault. If someone cheated on their partner, it’s not the partner’s fault. They chose to do it.

If people do wrong to you, don’t go into the hole of blaming yourself for it. It is important to self-reflect, surely, but be neutral in your analyzation, and look at the facts of the matter.

7. You deserve your unconditional love

Time and again, I have mentioned in my posts, that we must become friends to ourselves. The relationship that we have with ourselves is the most important one of all. Strive to give yourself unconditional love.

You deserve your own love, you deserve the dreams you have, you deserve the life you want. You are good enough for it. Why wouldn’t you be? Choose to let go of your self-limiting beliefs. Think about it, the energy that we put in towards discouraging ourselves can be used so well in empowering ourselves instead.

Start on the foot of unconditional love and worth as you move towards achieving what you want to, and remember to not base it on ideas and checkboxes. You are good enough. You will always be good enough.

And, that’s all for today! I hope you liked these reminders and felt even a tiny bit empowered. Our lives deserve a lot of love from us, and I am grateful that you are here to learn how to do that more.

I wish you the very best. Have a great day!

👉 Continue reading:
8 Easy Ways to Worry Less from Today