FEELING GOOD ENOUGH
All my life, literally since I was a little girl, I've struggled with feeling good enough. It sounds kind of ridiculous, imagining a self conscious four year old girl with a distinct sense she wasn't as good as everyone else, but the fact is it was true. If I close my eyes I'm taken right back to that place, and to this day I still remember exactly how I felt. Over the years I think I've managed to figure out what it was that lead to me feeling that way, but it's taken me a long, long time to get to the point where I really do genuinely believe I am good enough. It was so recently that I reached that point, literally only the end of last month, that I woke up one day feeling like something had finally changed inside of me. It was this reassuring calmness and inner peace, hippy-ish as that sounds, that somehow made me feel like I was enough, that everything from this point was going to be okay. I'd finally made it to this wonderful place that has eluded me for so, so long.
Most of my life I've struggled with feeling second best, losing out and coming last, finding my place, doubting my own abilities and questioning the person I am. There's been so much inner conflict that's managed to arise from the most mundane and simplest of things over the years, despite so many re-assurances from so many different places and people that I am good enough, and it's been something that I've had to work on as I've grown older. My teenage years especially have been a steep learning curve, with one particular incident leaving my shaky self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief in absolute tatters, to the extent that they were almost non existent, dramatic as it sounds. I just didn't believe I was good enough for anyone or anything. I was trying my best to be good enough but it was never, ever enough, and I ended up turning on myself even more, reducing myself to half the person I used to be, and hiding how I was feeling from everyone I knew. And the worst thing was although this incident was single handedly the worst I've ever felt in my life, in terms of being good enough, that very same pattern of blaming myself has happened so many times over the years. The only difference was the people involved and the scenarios at hand.
It took me to the age of sixteen to finally realise the bad habits and destructive cycles I had acquired over the years, and finally realise my biggest error of all. For near enough all my life I just didn't realise that somewhere along the way I'd began using the people around me as a way of judging and deciding my self worth. The way I felt about myself was directionally proportional to the people around me, and both how they made me feel or how I perceived them to feel about me. I was ridiculously influenced and dependent on other people, and I had accidentally began using their opinions and judgements to subsequently become my own worst enemy. When I eventually realised that, it allowed me to start noticing when it happened. I was able to see just how deep this cyclic behaviour ran within me and what triggered it. I began to figure everything out, and although it allowed me to start setting things straight, making long needed changes to how I thought about myself, shutting out the influence of other people and trying to piece my self-confidence and self-esteem back together, I still tripped up every now and again. There were still moments when I broke down feeling like I just wasn't good enough for my family, friends, guys, college, my future chosen career path. It happened a lot less than it used to, but those bad habits still hadn't been broken. Things were still changing.
Over the last couple of years I've steadily come into my own, a little like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, and learnt how to stop letting my self worth and self-esteem derive from other people. I've managed to cut the negative thinking habits, and now I'm the only one responsible for deciding how I feel about myself. And since I've both finally regained control completely of the way I perceive myself, and really paid attention to the positive reaffirming things that have happened to me over the last year especially, I finally do believe, realise and have decided that I am good enough. I feel complete as a person. I know exactly who I am, good, bad and everything in between. I believe I've figured out my place in life, or at least where I'm meant to be right now, and I know what things are in or out of my control. Although I am grateful and appreciative of positive comments people may occasionally give me, or actions directed my way, I just appreciate them in the moment they're given, and I rarely let those comments or actions have any effect on my self-esteem, self worth and self-confidence. I try to keep the two separate, because in doing so it's helped me learn how to be responsible for myself and how I feel towards myself entirely. I've learnt how to be nice towards myself, to constructively critique and keep improving, to be more optimistic, to do things that make my soul happy, not be so hard on myself, be truly independent, my own person, to pick myself up and dust myself off should I ever fall down, tell myself I am good enough and I am worth something, whenever I start to think the opposite.
At the end of the day, I am who I am, I'm the best version of myself yet, and I've learnt to love and be happy with everything I am and am not. I'm not worthless, I'm here for a reason, and finally coming to that realisation is the most wonderful thing in the world. So with that, although I know this post has been pretty long, I hope reading it has helped you in some way, should you have ever felt the same. Maybe it's got you thinking, and I hope most of all that it's somehow helped you to feel better about yourself, realise you're not alone and that you really are truly good enough.
Over the last couple of years I've steadily come into my own, a little like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, and learnt how to stop letting my self worth and self-esteem derive from other people. I've managed to cut the negative thinking habits, and now I'm the only one responsible for deciding how I feel about myself. And since I've both finally regained control completely of the way I perceive myself, and really paid attention to the positive reaffirming things that have happened to me over the last year especially, I finally do believe, realise and have decided that I am good enough. I feel complete as a person. I know exactly who I am, good, bad and everything in between. I believe I've figured out my place in life, or at least where I'm meant to be right now, and I know what things are in or out of my control. Although I am grateful and appreciative of positive comments people may occasionally give me, or actions directed my way, I just appreciate them in the moment they're given, and I rarely let those comments or actions have any effect on my self-esteem, self worth and self-confidence. I try to keep the two separate, because in doing so it's helped me learn how to be responsible for myself and how I feel towards myself entirely. I've learnt how to be nice towards myself, to constructively critique and keep improving, to be more optimistic, to do things that make my soul happy, not be so hard on myself, be truly independent, my own person, to pick myself up and dust myself off should I ever fall down, tell myself I am good enough and I am worth something, whenever I start to think the opposite.
At the end of the day, I am who I am, I'm the best version of myself yet, and I've learnt to love and be happy with everything I am and am not. I'm not worthless, I'm here for a reason, and finally coming to that realisation is the most wonderful thing in the world. So with that, although I know this post has been pretty long, I hope reading it has helped you in some way, should you have ever felt the same. Maybe it's got you thinking, and I hope most of all that it's somehow helped you to feel better about yourself, realise you're not alone and that you really are truly good enough.
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