How To Finally Feel Good Enough
We have all been there. That pit in the stomach feeling of, “I don’t belong.” Something tells us that we are too broken, flawed, dumb, ugly, crazy to be good enough to be loved and to belong with others. Even when the evidence is contrary, it is difficult to shake this belief. This feeling stops us from living our best life. It stops us from doing things like going for the jobs we would love, leaving relationships that are unhealthy, making friends or just holding our head up high when we walk into a room. These behaviors only further confirm the belief that we are unworthy. The worst part is that this perception of self is untrue and our own doing. The good news is we can undo it. We chose this mindset, therefore we just as easily choose a different mindset. And you do not have to be perfect or change anything about yourself to be good enough and worthy of love and belonging.
Practice Self Acceptance.
Perfection does not exist. You do not have to twist yourself into a pretzel, never make mistakes and always show up put together and polished to be good enough. You are already good enough. You are not the problem. Your perception of yourself in comparison to others is the problem. Look around you. All of the people that you see that have love and belonging are not perfect either. You are worthy of love and belonging just like the others that have it and just as you are right now, imperfect with flaws and all. Accept it. If you want to feel good enough and worthy, you have to accept yourself as you are right now. Stop waiting until you have more money, lose weight, get that job, have that partner. You have flaws, just like everyone else AND you are good enough to deserve love and belonging. We often hyper fixate on all of the things that are wrong with us that we need to change or perfect because we think when we get them we will finally have earned our way to love and belonging. The problem is with this mentality we never get there, we just think of another thing we need to do or get or perfect to be worthy. That is because feeling worthy does not come from outside things we achieve or accomplish, it is an inside job, a mindset that you need to have about yourself. You have to love and accept yourself as you are. You have to find that love and belonging from YOURSELF as your imperfect self now, before you can accept it from others. We think if we beat ourselves up and criticize ourselves it will make us change ourselves, so we can be worthy. But you can never shame yourself into change. Otherwise, you would already be perfect and not struggling with this. If you don’t accept yourself, it does not matter how much love and belonging you have, you will never see it and never feel good enough.
Decide You Are Good Enough And Act As If.
The reason you do not feel good enough is not because you are not good enough. It is because you decided you are not good enough. So make a different choice. Right now, in this moment, decide that you are good enough. If you are good enough, what would you do differently? If you knew you were worthy of love and belonging, even though you aren’t perfect and don’t know everything, how would you act? What would you do differently? Would you speak up for yourself? Would you go for that promotion? Would you ask that person out? How would you walk into a room? What behaviors from others would you not put up with? Start doing those things. Your behaviors help shape your identity. Once you decide you are good enough and start acting like it, your identity of being good enough will be reinforced.
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
Talk To Yourself Like You Were Someone You Love.
The way you speak or think about yourself about yourself matters. I like to play a game in therapy where I tell people to say to me, their therapist, the same things they tell themselves, but directed toward me. No one has done it yet. Why? Because it is too mean! Even under the guise of me being the therapist, telling you to do this, people fear hurting my feelings and refuse. You would not say the things you say about yourself to anyone else because you recognize they are mean, hurtful and will damage the relationship. Often, they aren’t even true. The same applies when you tell those things to yourself. You are hurting yourself and damaging the relationship with yourself. Many times, people are so mean to themselves, that if someone else talked to them the way they talk to themselves we would call it abuse or bullying. Don’t confuse this with toxic positivity where you lie to yourself and pretend like everything is rainbows and butterflies. I am talking about being honest and having self compassion in your self talk. You can’t shame yourself into self improvement, but you can love yourself into self improvement.
Let Go Of External Validation.
I can hear your thoughts from here, “But Michelle, some people won’t like me unless I am _______________(Fill in the blank).” Yeah, you’re right. Not everyone will like you. You won’t be loved and accepted everywhere by everyone, no matter what you do. That is a fact. And it is perfectly okay. Just because some people don’t like you does not mean you are unworthy or not good enough. Those that don’t like you or don’t think you are good enough are just not your people. There are many reasons people won’t like you and you won’t belong and very little has anything to do with you. This is why you need to let go of external validation. Stop using the love and acceptance of others as a way to validate your worthiness. When your feelings of worthiness are contingent on someone else’s opinion of you, you’re never going to feel secure in your worthiness. External validation is not something you can rely on. What is the most important is that you like you and you know you are good enough and worthy of love and belonging. When you like you, other people’s opinions matter a little less to you. When you like you and accept yourself, you give yourself permission to be your authentic self. Just like there will be people that don’t like you and don’t think you are good enough, there will also be people that do like you, places where you do belong. Those are your people, the people you can be your authentic self with and that love and accept you just as you are. Even then, your internal sense of worthiness, regardless of the external opinions of you, is what is most important to finally feel you are enough. You are good enough to be worthy of love and belonging whether people like you or not.
Act In Alignment With Your Goals And Values.
What is important to you in life? What are your morals? What is your idea of what is right or wrong? Let go of what you think you should do, what society says or what those you want to impress say. Goals and values are things you get to decide. Anytime you act in a way that is against your values, morals and ethics, your sense of worthiness is going to take a hit. There is nothing wrong with having standards and living up to them, in fact, I encourage it. Before you do, you first need to identify what your values are and decide if they are fair and realistic. If your values and goals require perfection or that you become superhuman, you need to re-evaluate. If your values and morals are not authentic to you, you need to re-evaluate. Your goals should be reasonable, attainable and meaningful to you or you will continue to not reach them and feel unworthy. Remember, you are already worthy as you are. Acting in alignment to your values just helps to reinforce your identity of worthiness to yourself. Think of it as a cycle. If you decide you are good enough and act as like you are, you will be more likely to go for your goals and what you truly value, rather than doing what you think you should be doing in order to impress others or get external validation. The more you act in alignment to your goals and values, the more worthy you feel and the more you prove to yourself you are good enough. You will not be perfect at this. When it comes to acting in alignment to your goals and values, you will fall off the wagon and make mistakes. All humans do. Rather than assume this is caused by a character flaw that indicates you are not good enough, reassess your process or system that you are using, fix what isn’t working and try again. Finally feeling good enough does not come from the achievement or reaching the destination, it comes from the journey to get there. It is in the process of taking actions that you deem important that create the feeling of worthiness, not the end result.
Read “When Hustling Worthiness through Pleasing, Perfecting and Performing Fails”
Feelings Are Not Facts.
Ah, feelings. Both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand they serve as a guidance system to help us learn about ourselves, our wants, our needs, when we are being treated unfairly, teach us empathy and so much more. On the other hand, sometimes they lie to us. Your feelings want to keep you alive and safe. As a result, sometimes they make you feel you are in danger when you aren’t. Your feelings remember when you have been hurt in the past and cause you to feel feelings to make you avoid pain from a similar situation in the future. Walls go up, you get more guarded, you take less risks and stick with what is familiar, even if what is familiar is more hurtful than helpful. Your feelings may even convince you that you are not good enough so that you don’t make yourself vunerable by taking a risk. If you believe you aren’t good enough, you don’t take risks and go for the things that excite you. If you don’t go for it, you don’t have to feel the pain of failure or rejection that may come. The problem is you also don’t get the chance to feel all of the good feelings that could happen if it works out. What can you do? Remember, feelings are not facts. When you are feeling not good enough, look at the actual facts. What evidence do you have that proves that you aren’t good enough and what evidence proves that you are good enough? Is thinking you are not good enough a habit? Is thinking you are not good enough helping you to avoid something or benefitting you somehow? Just because you feel you aren’t good enough does not mean that it is true, it is just your body’s way of trying to protect you from hurt.
Read “5 Mindset Mistakes That make You Feel Bad”
Feeling good enough is an inside job. No one and no thing can make you finally feel good enough but you. The good news is you can do it. You can finally feel good enough. You can feel worthy of love and belonging just as you are right now in this moment. You don’t need to perfect anything about you. You don’t need anyone outside of yourself to validate your worthiness. You can decide that you are enough, right here, right now. Just because you feel like you are not good enough does not mean it is true. You take action towards what is important to you because you are already good enough and worthy of having it.
Don’t believe me? Need a little extra help getting there? Schedule your free consultation to work with me.
What are your thoughts? Share your comments below. Let’s learn from each other!
Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog post is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your therapist or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental health condition. Never disregard professional advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this blog post. The author and publisher of this post are not responsible for any actions or inaction you may take based on the information presented in this post.
