How to feel good enough.

This week I want to talk to you about something that is really important to me, I've actually already done a coffee chat about it, it is about feeling/being “good enough”.

Firstly, what does that even mean, I sat down this morning and I actually looked up the google definitions of both good and enough and what I found out is that basically when we put these two words together what we're saying is that it is when we believe we are desired and approved of as having the qualities to a high standard that are required at a degree or extent that is to be considered enough by others.

Like my brain just went, like what? We're deciding whether we're good enough based on what we perceive other people may or may not be thinking about our behaviour when we're with them based on what we share with them. I was like well that's just crazy especially if we aren't even being authentic because now, we are basing a sense of good enough on someone else’s opinion of us when we're not even being us. I just had to laugh because when you say it out loud like that, well, it just seems ridiculous.

Honestly, no wonder we all worry so much about what other people think!

The thing is, we're all taught to do it, all of us. We don't look at babies and ask ourselves whether they're good enough, it just it goes without saying, they're good enough exactly as they are, we accept babies, toddlers, exactly as they are, knowing they will change as they learn and grow, and in fact we often say when we first look at a baby, oh isn’t she/he perfect.  

Why does that change, certainly as babies we don't ask ourselves whether we're good enough, we don't look at other people and ask ourselves whether or not they think we're good enough or try and think about what they might be thinking so we can decide whether we're good enough. This thought process starts later, as we get older and learn language we start to notice and understand how people talk to us, what their words mean, “you're such a good girl” or we hear two adults talking and one says to the other “she is such a good girl, always doing what she is told, always trying to help” or maybe we’ve been told to “make a good impression”, to be a “good girl” etc.

We've had all of this feedback and in response to that we've felt accepted or liked or desirable or whatever and so we've wanted more of that, and we don’t know or understand as children that every individual has their own idea of what “good enough” is, that what one person praises about us another person might find irritating.

So as an example, as a very young child I was full on always running, you know never walked anywhere, some people love that about me, other people just found me too much. So, some peoples response supported a sense of self-worth, other people’s feedback supported a sense of self-recrimination.

Imagine how confusing that must be for children, like how do you ever get a stable internal sense of self-worth or sense of good enough about yourself based on that. It's just not possible to please or be approved by everybody, so, if to be good enough we have “to be approved of by everybody”, and that is a core belief we have learned growing up, it would be impossible to ever feel good enough.

I know for me that I was taught this core belief that “to be good enough I had to be liked and approved by everybody”, so upon realising this, it was no surprise at all that I spent over half my life never feeling good enough. The criteria is simply not able to be met, because absolutely no one in this world, even Mother Teresa, even God himself, was/is liked and approved of by everybody.

 Just to get a little bit meta, how do we even know when we are liked and approved of by others, did they tell us, “I like and approve of you”, probably not, no they probably behaved in a certain way towards us, and we decided for ourselves what that meant. We decided they like us, they don't like us, they think I'm smart, they think I’m stupid, whatever that decision was that you made as a child based on what you were taught, so we judge ourselves as not good enough based on our ability to guess the accuracy of other people’s thoughts and feelings. OMG, talk about mission impossible.

So, here's what I've learned, you have to decide for yourself what good enough means for you. You have to find out what you currently believe about what good enough means to you so that you can question it, get curious about it, and gain some insight and understanding about it. Doing that supports us to treat ourselves with acceptance and compassion for the person we are right now, and from there we can decide what we want good enough to mean to us as an individual.  Create our own criteria based on our own values then live by that.

In my recent coffee chat I spoke a little bit about that so if you would like to watch that please do www.pampoole.co.nz click on the resource tab, but to summarise, good enough for me is doing my best in any given moment and that changes from day-to-day, moment to moment. Sometimes my good enough isn't that great and sometimes my good enough is amazing, and sometimes it's anywhere in between, the important thing is that when I look back on my day or reflect on how I showed up during the day, I know in my heart I did the best I could at any given moment, and that’s good enough for me.

Honestly, I believe we're all just doing our best in any given moment and that we are all always good enough, just as we were the day we were born, we don’t have to do or be anything in particular to be worthy, valuable, lovable, or good enough.  

I encourage you to genuinely consider this, what does being “good enough” mean to you and is your current belief about that one you want to keep, is it helpful, does it serve you and if it doesn’t, I encourage you to consider changing to a belief that does serve you.  Take your time and ask yourself what do I want it to mean, look at the gap between the belief you have and the belief you want to have.

Some of you will have a shift just through reading this, some of you might need to make more effort and know how to move from a learned belief to a self-decided consciously chosen belief, some of you like me, might like to do this work with someone, if that is you, please reach out and book a time to chat with me, I would love to help.

Alright my friends, as always thank you for taking the time to join me today and have a great rest of your week, and remember you are always good enough.