“You’re perfect just the way you are.”
If you’re an active social media engager, there is a good chance you will see this at least once a day somewhere.
Do you believe it?
Is anyone perfect?
100% NO!
So what value can reading this bring you if it is not true?
- Could it support you in continuing to be a victim to toxic behaviours?
- Could it support you in continuing to demonstrate toxic behaviours towards others?
- Could it support you in continuing to do things you really don’t want to do and feeling stressed because you haven’t yet learnt the healthy art of saying “no”?
- Could it support you in continuing to constantly worry about what people think of you and therefore spend a lot of your time ruminating and feeling anxious?
- Could it support you in continuing to eat unhealthily when you know your unhealthy diet is causing you to be overweight or even contributing to your ill health?
- Could it support you in continuing to watch hours and hours of telly when deep down you know you’re wasting your life away?
Yes! To all of the above.
So why do we so often see the comments following these posts being something like “Thank you, I needed to hear this today”?
Why would someone who is imperfect (because we are all imperfect) get so much value from hearing the untruth that they are perfect?
The impact of deep-seated insecurity
When life seems so overwhelming, someone telling you you’re perfect just the way you are, allows you to take a break from feeling the pressure of the responsibility of creating positive change in your life. The positive change which seems so unattainable on a day-to-day basis.
So what makes positive change seem so unattainable for so many people?
Imagine feeling that icky feeling day in and day out. The constant feelings of anxiety, putting up with a situation even when you know it is no good for you – and not knowing or feeling you have the power to change things.
Hearing that you’re perfect just the way you are can massage that deep-seated insecurity. The insecurity of not feeling ‘good enough’.
You get value from this because you feel it validates how crappy you’re feeling and this validation allows you to carry on living the crappy situation without having to do the hard work to change things.
It is all completely understandable.
For those who feel downtrodden and worthless, it helps them stop feeling so powerless for just a little while. It pardons them from having to take any responsibility for where they’re at and pardons them from having to do whatever work needs to be done (often having no idea what that is anyway…) to get out of the crappy situation.
But the real trick to happiness is not believing you’re perfect, but rather in coming to terms with all the ugly truths of NOT being perfect.
Knowing that you will never be perfect.
Knowing that you’re good enough even with all your imperfections.
Choosing which imperfections are worth attempting to improve upon . . . and which are not.
Committing to making small positive changes, one at a time.
And then believing that that is good enough.
The journey in becoming ‘good enough’
There are so many people living an unfulfilled, unhappy, anxiety-fueled life because they’re too scared to come to terms with who they really are.
If this resonates with you, I can tell you that being willing to recognise all the hard truths about yourself, which I know from experience can be extremely painful in the beginning, is what is going to help you turn your life around.
It will help you realise that you are so much more than just good enough and it will help you live a life where you have your anxiety and overwhelm under control.
It is only once we get to know ourselves better, coming to terms with all those ugly truths about ourselves, that we can start to realise what we need in our life to be truly happy.
We develop experience in how to be happy, imperfections and all.
And these initial positive experiences encourage more enthusiasm and commitment to make the changes in our lives that we know are going to serve us best.
“Good enough” vs “Good enough”
After living a pretty happy life until I was 30, two very bad choices in relationships led me to that place of rock bottom. That “can’t see any way out” rock bottom. Absolute worthlessness.
When I was rock bottom, like so many others who experienced narcissist type or other abuse, my self-worth was so low that just being alive was a serious uphill struggle.
Through all the self-help I read at the time, the one consistent guidance was to commit to building self-love. And when your self-worth is so very low, or non-existent as mine was, an important ingredient in building that self-love, is to start to just be WILLING to believe that you are ‘good enough’.
For months and months, my head was telling me I was good enough, but my heart was not having any of it.
But with the way I was feeling, all I really had on my side was HOPE. Hope, that if I did what ‘they’ told me, no matter how much I didn’t believe it, it would work. So I CHOSE to be willing to believe the literature. Hey, when ending your life is one of the only two options you feel you have, at the time, choosing the alternative seemed like the best of a bad bunch.
So I chose to commit to reminding myself that I was good enough each time I felt worthless. Every undermining thought, every undermining emotion.
In the beginning, I would not be lying if I told you that this was more than 100 times a day. I kid you not.
I slowly started feeling it. Very slowly.
And then. . . that ray of light which seemed non-existent for so many months, started showing its face at the end of the tunnel.
“Wow, constantly reminding myself I was good enough really did the trick!”
After many months, the narrative of “I am good enough” had become such a core supporter in keeping me going, that I had this bright idea to get a tattoo which read “I am good enough” on the top of my wrist. I was terrified of falling back into feeling worthless. So, just in case I ever forgot that I was good enough, this would force me to be reminded anytime I dared to forget. Dared to forget that I was good enough.
The thing is, because this was a very personal message to myself, I didn’t feel comfortable for it to be understood by just anyone and wanted it written in a reasonably unfamiliar language. Trying to find that ‘rare’ language was far more challenging than expected. In hindsight I could have just done something simple like spelling it backwards . . . 😊
Luckily, I spent so much time in analysis paralysis, umming and ahhing on a language, the font to use, that before I had the chance to put ink to my lily white skin, I actually started feeling truly good enough and no longer felt the need for the reminder.
And you know what, about a year later, for some reason, I was reminded of these intentions and I found myself thinking “oh my goodness, I’m so much more than good enough!”
And it was then that it hit me of the true power of just being WILLING to believe I was good enough had had on me.
Warning: it is not a picnic
Ok, I’d be telling you porkies if I told you it was as simple as just committing to believing I was good enough.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and just about everyone who has done it will tell you, but building a healthy level of love for oneself, to feeling confidently ‘good enough’ is in most cases a long hard slog. With many excruciatingly painful periods in the beginning.
I’m most definitely not trying to put you off. But if you’re going to succeed, you need to be prepared.
But is it worth it? Like everyone else who has persisted through the initial shitty times will tell you … 100% YES!
(Like I did at times, you may struggle trying to differentiate between knowing when ‘good enough’ is enough and when ‘good enough’ is putting up with less than you deserve. Here is a blog by Brad Constanzo which I feel matches my view perfectly on the difference between the two.)
What does “I am not good enough” look like?
Every person is different. Any childhood traumas or emotional neglect can manifest in different ways. But if any of the following are strong elements in your life, then you most likely could do with at least a little dosing of self-love.
- Needy of others’ attention (co-dependent)
- Chaotic/toxic relationships
- Eating disorders
- Hypervigilance/Anxiety
- Perfectionism
- Lack of assertiveness
- Feel overwhelmed and stressed out
- Body-conscious
- Negative emotions scare you
- Uncomfortable spending time on your own
- Don’t commit to self-care because you see it as selfish
- Apologise all the time
- Find it difficult to say “no”
How to start feeling ‘good enough’
So, how do we go about not only falling in love with ourselves and confidently feeling ‘good enough’ but know that this will also help us be loved, and love others better?
It’s really all about creating new habits. New habits of living. And like it is with establishing any new habit, it takes practise.
When you’ve been unconsciously practicing bad habits of living for years and years, it would be unreasonable to expect it to be a walk in the park. But like any new habit, with practise, everything becomes easier and better.
We could always BE better in some way – because we are not perfect. And we will never be perfect.
But as long as we commit to being a better person today than we were yesterday, for ourselves and for others, we are good enough at any one moment in time.
We will always make mistakes along the way, because we are not perfect. But these are most often our best learning opportunities and should be embraced to foster our best possible ‘good enough’.
And for those of you perfectionists out there . . . the reality is you will never be perfect. But I hope you can be willing to believe that there is happiness in believing that you can be imperfectly good enough. And that being good enough is just perfect.😉
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