When are we actually enough?

Am I good enough? Successful enough? Interesting enough? Attractive enough? Clever enough? Am I doing enough?

I’ve been thinking about something…

Enough is such a small word, but I wonder how much of our lives are shaped by it.

Am I good enough? Successful enough? Interesting enough? Attractive enough? Clever enough? Am I doing enough?

And underneath so many of these questions can sit a much bigger belief: I am not enough.

This is a common belief so many of us carry. Sometimes we know it’s there. Sometimes it’s much more subtle, showing up in our striving, our perfectionism, our people-pleasing, our busyness or our constant desire to do a little better. Because if I believe I am not enough, then enough — or more — becomes something I have to achieve.

I can do more. Give more. Achieve more. Improve myself. And perhaps each time I do, I get that lovely little feeling of reassurance that, for now, I might be enough.

But what if enough isn’t something we achieve? What if it isn’t about what we do at all, but about how we see ourselves?

That doesn’t mean we stop wanting things. We can still grow, change, learn, have ambitions and want more from life.

Perhaps the difference is that we don’t need those things to prove our worth.

So I keep coming back to the same question: what if I’m already enough? 

And perhaps that’s the bit I’d like you to sit with. No need to answer it or to convince yourself that it’s true but to notice what happens when you ask yourself:

If I were already enough, what might I do differently?