You ARE Good Enough

Do you ever feel “not good enough”? Do you have days when you just think that everyone else is better than you?

I have noticed an uptick in the number of people within my own small circle who suffer from low self-esteem. Why are people feeling “not good enough” these days? What causes them to lose their self-pride?

There’s a difference between being prideful and having self-pride. Maybe people don’t realize that. It’s OK and even healthy to be proud of our accomplishments. We can be proud of the good things we have done. Spending too much time boasting about them makes us prideful. It is this behavior which is unpleasant.

I’ve suffered with it for a very long time. I can remember feeling inferior even while I was still in grade school. My sixth grade year was spent in a private school with girls who did a real number on my self-worth. I was an outsider in a school of 15 total students. It was lonely and I was treated like the dirt on the bottom of a shoe. That year damaged me in so many different ways.

High school wasn’t a whole lot different for me. I already felt inferior, not good enough. I was an industrious student who put a lot of effort into my school work. School was my only social interaction, but my circle was still very small. I had nobody I considered a best friend. I “borrowed” my sister’s friends.

This same theme carried through even into adulthood for me. I worked for a while with people who didn’t quite see me as equal. Or at least I didn’t feel like they did. In retrospect I don’t think I was wrong in that assumption. I can still remember very distinctly some of the conversations. They weren’t pleasant for me. And the fact that I can remember them indicates how much of an effect they had on me.

Certain things happened in my life to cause me to do some serious internal thinking. My father died, leaving me to run the household. My mother was not capable of doing it, or even willing to learn how to do it. I couldn’t hide behind my low self-worth. I had to learn how to take charge. Switching jobs and meeting new people helped me. I could start fresh and recreate my personality.

In my personal family my siblings and I were trying to help my mother start a new life again. One of the things I recognized in all of us was a lack of self-esteem. For myself I bought a book simply titled “Self-Esteem” and began to read it. At the same time I met a friend at work who treated me as an equal. Those two things together kickstarted my search for self-worth.

The book helped me a lot. I brought it to the attention of my sister and bought her a copy. I bought a different book on the same topic for my mother, although in much simpler terms so it would be easier to understand. For a while we held self-esteem meetings to try to build each other up and learn the lessons we had not learned earlier in life. For a while it worked until time constraints caused those meetings to fall by the wayside.

But the lessons learned were not for nothing. Over the years I have referred back to the things I learned and read. I still have many moments in my life when I feel “less than good enough”. Recognizing them is becoming easier. Talking back to the internal critic within me comes more quickly.

Taking back my self-worth is a life-long journey. I may always suffer with instances of “not good enough” but with mindfulness they are fewer. Now that I have some time I have hopes of working with those within my own circle to help them find their self-worth.

God made us all equal. Not one is worth any more than anyone else. We are all special in our own right, and the very fact of being unique makes each of us priceless. It’s up to us to find what makes us special and share that part of us.

I will be working on creating a support group for all of us who feel like we aren’t worth anything, who aren’t good enough. If you would like to be a part and learn how to love yourself, please email me at shell@empath.educatetheusatoday.com. The world needs us and all our talents. Together we can make a better world.