“Good enough”

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Hello, my friends, welcome to today's episode.

My name is Pam Poole I am the founder and CEO of Pam Poole Self Discovery coaching the home of “living your Dream”, “authentically You “and the Horse Wisdom Program, which is self-discovery coaching co-facilitated with horses.

My vision is to help you live intentionally and authentically and to do that I first need to share a little knowledge and this podcast is where I do that.

We don’t change in isolation; we change and grow through experiences and in relationship. But for this to be helpful and healthy we simultaneously need to have autonomy.

Achieving this requires overcoming internal challenges and learning to feel “good enough” often requires a combination of self-awareness, self-compassion, somatic processing, cognitive reframing and support from a Therapist, Life Coach, Counsellor or other qualified and skilled professional.

So, today I want to talk to everybody about “good enough” because if there's one thing that I hear from just about everybody's lips it's I just never feel “good enough” and honestly it seems to be a global concern for both men and women, and I am hoping this will support us in beginning achieving helpful and healthy relationship with ourself and others.

Today I'm going to look at it from the viewpoint of a woman because I think that woman in particular are socialised literally from birth and particularly if you are in my age group too look outside ourselves to feel “good enough”.

If you find yourself stuck in a place of frequently feeling and thinking I'm not “good enough” you have a few options, but today I will focus on two of them, because it's simply not true it's not true for anybody, we are all enough.

The truth is from the moment we are born, we are born enough we never question the worth or good enough-ness or value of a baby they don't have to do anything they don't have to be anything they don't have to show up in a particular way they don't have to give anything we just don't even question it we don't go there, but as we get older we learn to question it we learn to associate our good enough-ness, our worth and value with other people's approval, of course we do it's in our survival DNA to want to belong we need to feel like we belong to feel safe so of course it's very easy for children to learn this misconception.

We learn that because it avoids us being rejected and while we avoid being rejected, we belong even if we don't enjoy the group that we belong to and while we feel that we're part of a group and we belong to a family or any other kind of group we feel safer it is the human survival DNA because in the past being isolated would have meant certain death.

When we become adults just like we ask many animals whether it's horses or dogs or cats or any other animal that we choose to bring into domestication, we ask them to behave in ways that don't necessarily align with their instincts or their survival DNA,

Because it's a different world today to the world that that DNA was created in, we also need to ask this of ourselves, we need to be willing to train ourselves intentionally and in a way that may not necessarily align with our old instinctive DNA.

First, I want to look at the word “good”, we hear it and learn it from a very early age.  Even as babies parents are often heard sharing “she/he’s such a good baby”, but few of us actually have a look at this word and ask ourselves what does that even mean. We don’t question if it is helpful or not because it seems like a nice word, a nice thing to say, hear etc.

 Also, because we tend to use this particular word when we're talking about our feelings, such as  “I don't feel very good” or as mentioned before “I don't feel like I'm good enough”, but I want to make it clear “good” is just a word that we sought to replace  to describe how we are feeling in a generalised way, in and of itself it is not an actual feeling and when we treat it like a feeling, such as using it to describe, feeling comfortable or happy we don’t question it and we blur what it really means.

So, I want to get clear about this today, when you actually look up the definition of “good” it says, “to be desired or approved of”, let me say that again, “desired or approved of”.  

We are taught to look outside ourselves to measure our desirability and approvability (good enough-ness) as children, particularly as females. 

I suspect most of us will have heard or been told, “be a good girl and do that”, or “you are such a good girl”, and these statements are usually used in relation to when we are being compliant and/or when we are pleasing others which is why people pleasing is such a common feature for women.

 I am not judging this people pleasing as right or wrong, I’m just saying it's a behaviour that a lot of us engage in and that this is a reason why we do.

The thing is it is impossible to ever feel “good” enough for very long when it is reliant on how other people treat us. We will never feel that way if we're looking outside ourselves because we literally have no control over how other people feel about us all think about us, we could be doing everything they could ever want and if they are having a bad day, we will likely be treated in a way that leaves us feeling lacking.

The truth is that the only time people desire us or approve of us and show us that is when we are doing something for them that pleases them that they want us to do and they are in a good mood, because how another person treats us is a result of how they are feeling but we take responsibility for their behaviour and judge ourselves as lacking in some way.

Now of course I recommend that we learn too desire and approve of ourselves if we want to feel consistently “good enough” to know that we can look at ourselves in the mirror and go “you know what I think you're pretty amazing most of the time you really do try and do your best”, but there is another option if you find that challenge overwhelming or impossible.

Another option is to change what you are thinking, change what you are telling yourself,  to change the statement too “I'm enough”, now if you test that statement, you will notice it feels very different in your body, “enough” means as much as required to a degree that is sufficient, and I think that most of us can say that statement “I am enough” and find it believable, consider it possible, or true and to begin to feel better about ourselves.

As a reminder and quick summary, you can think “I am enough” instead of putting the word “good” in there because it holds so much weight and judgement or you can choose to look at that belief and decide that you're the only person that gets to decide what “good” means you are the only person that gets to decide whether you're desirable or approved of enough, you set the criteria as something within your control.

You are the only person that can approve of yourself and find who you are as a whole person desirable (something you like) because while you look for that outside of yourself it will be forever a merry go round or roller coaster ride, because it's just not ever going to be possible to always feel good enough if you're looking for it from the outside.

Alright my friends well I hope that this brings some clarity to you and just for a moment you might consider that you are enough you always have been, you always will be and that other people's opinions and whether you do what they want or don't want doesn't get to decide that.

I already know that all of you are “enough” that all of you are “good enough” if you really want to keep that word in there.

Have a great week my friends and if you want to find out more about this or any other topic, we cover in this podcast go to www.pampoole.co.nz sign up to my Friends list so you get access to Free worksheets and other resources that you might find helpful. 

Thank you so much for listening, I appreciate and value your time and interest.  Bye for now and I look forward to talking to you all again next week.