Was there ever a time in your life where you were satisfied with your life or your efforts? If the answer to that question is no, then you my friend suffer from never good enough syndrome. This is where you can never do anything without reminding yourself it isn’t good enough or you could have done better.
Not feeling good enough stems from what we heard or was told as a child. Maybe we didn’t do anything good enough according to our parents or our teachers or family members. You may have tried your best but you always were lead to feel that you were not good enough. For others, we don’t feel good enough because our parents made us feel unwanted or neglected.
Expectations from your parents were too high or even when you did reach those expectations your efforts still were not good enough. There was little or no acknowledgment. The bar was set high and when you reached it, it would be set even higher. In order to compensate you would try harder and remind yourself of what you were told and how your efforts are not good enough, even when you do reach those expectations.
Now as an adult you set unrealistic expectations for yourself. Your self esteem is low, you feel burnt out, drained, insecure, feeling worthless and unconfident. You feel like you are always on the go and you can’t relax. Trying to always out beat others or even yourself. Not only that but you most likely surround yourself with people that make you feel like you are not doing good enough. Whether its by them telling you, you aren’t doing good enough or it is by surrounding yourself with high status people that don’t value you.
This is something you have been suffering for, for many many years so it will take some time to overcome it. Our brains are always changing and they are very malleable it just takes repetition. We can do try with these steps:
The first step to overcoming a problem is to become aware of it. Notice how you talk to yourself and the things you are saying. Are you speaking very negatively to yourself? Is there a certain time you are harder on yourself than others? Are you saying things like “you’ll never amount to much”, “this is not good enough!”, ” I could or should have done better.” Jot down on a piece of paper when you are saying these things to yourself.
The more you notice your behaviors and the things you are saying, the easier it will be to be able to catch yourself so you don’t in the future.
The things we were told and reinforced about as a kid are not the things we would have told ourselves if we did not hear it from someone else. So it is important to be able to recognize it. “That’s my moms voice again telling me I’m not good enough. That is not my voice, that is hers and I am not going to talk to myself like that because it hurts me.”
By doing this you are separating that type of talk and distinguishing how it makes you feel and you want to start different and be different than your upbringing,
This may be hard at first because you have used this self talk as a coping mechanism for so long. You may think it helps you to be better or you deserve to be talked to like that or if you don’t talk like this to yourself x,y and z will happen. Let me be the first to tell you that this self talk is doing the complete opposite.
That is your brain trying to stop change because we don’t like change it is scary. This type of talk is causing you to not want to try and keeping you in that dark place you don’t want to be in. Self awareness is what keeps us in check not reminding ourselves how bad we are.
Instead challenge those thoughts that keep coming up. What proof do you have that they are true? When is enough, enough? What about all your accomplishments? Don’t they mean anything? Be compassionate towards yourself. Remind yourself of the good about you. When you catch yourself having those thoughts, kindly remind yourself how it doesn’t help to talk like that and you are enough. Let yourself know what you are doing is good enough and it is the best you can do. You are worthy. It may feel inauthentic at first but once you start to believe it, it will feel genuine.
The key thing is to believe. And it all starts with what we tell ourselves or don’t tell ourselves. The more you reinforce the positive affirmations the easier it will be to start to believe.
Growing up feeling like we are not good enough usually results in us surrounding ourselves with people like our family that reinforce those feelings of having to prove ourselves. Whether that is forming romantic relationships with people that make us feel unworthy, still being around our family that make us feel this way or friends, it is important that once this behavior is recognized we need to distance ourselves.
The reason this its important to steer clear is because while you are healing you want to surround yourself with positive people that reinforce your new mentality. You are the company you keep as they say. Sticking around with people that bring you down will continue to make you want to stay in that bad mentality of not being enough.
As I had said earlier part of not feeling good enough is by setting the bar too high and expecting ridiculously high things of yourself. Honestly sit and think about the things you want out of yourself. If you have to jot it down to physically see it then go get that paper and pen!
Can you see what I am talking about now? You probably are spreading yourself thin! You are only human. Now it is time to be a little more realistic and set goals you know you can accomplish.
For instance instead of trying to force yourself to be this perfect human learn to acknowledge your flaws and mistakes and that it is okay because you are only human. Set goals that are more realistic for you like if you struggle to eat healthy. Rather then set such a strict diet where it is hard to maintain and it feels like you are in jail, help set goals to add healthier choices to start with. Start small, accomplish those and give yourself room to work your way up.
Celebrate the little victories! It may feel stupid at first but in order to change we have to do things differently. You never let yourself feel good about your accomplishments in the past or how far you have come in life. So now is the time to give yourself some credit! No matter how little.
Let yourself know you did good by reaching some of your goals or doing something you have been struggling with. Even if you did not do it perfectly or didn’t complete something that is okay! Because now there is room to do it better next time since you are encouraging yourself rather than discouraging yourself!
So for instance if you have been struggling with exercising and went for a half a mile walk even though you wanted to do a mile, celebrate! That is a little victory because you were struggling to do it in the first place! And then kindly encourage yourself to try again tomorrow. Be proud of yourself. Give yourself credit. Don’t take away that joy from yourself. That is how you make self improvement exciting rather than a discouraging uphill battle where you can never win.
What do you guys think? Do you struggle with never feeling good enough syndrome? DO you have tips to share? Leave it all in the comments below!
Check out her sister post on conquering negative thoughts!
1 Comment
[…] Not feeling good enough is something we have all felt at times and some even unfortunately feel it all the time. It is so important to let yourself know you are enough. When we don’t feel we are enough we then become burnt out and have a harder time moving forward. Telling yourself you are not enough demotivates you from improvement and makes it harder to go froward. […]