When you try to do all the things

Be with you.

I’ve mentioned this before, that in the past I used to think I needed to DO all the things in order to prove my worth, because I used to think I wasn’t “good enough.” I wasn’t even conscious of this as a choice I was making–I just thought it was how I was supposed to do things. 

I’d do things from a sense of internal pressure–to take classes to learn a certain skill, to exercise only for weight loss, to do activities where I could meet new people, to be on nonprofit Boards, to volunteer my time in other ways. I ended up doing so much in order to feel like I was “good enough” that I ended up exhausting myself and feeling stressed out and overwhelmed.

Only looking back, and through the self-awareness work I’ve done through therapy and coaching, I see that I was “doing” in order to prove myself as worthy and valuable. Because I thought I wasn’t good enough, I thought there were things I could DO to feel good enough. 

Now I know that worthiness comes from within, that I can choose to have the belief “I am already 100% worthy.” And that belief is available to ALL of us. We get to choose to believe it (or not).

Sometimes we do things to “avoid” ourselves or “escape” ourselves. Maybe we’re not used to being with ourselves, or we don’t like being with our own thoughts, or maybe we might not like being with ourselves as our only company. 

If that’s the case, I want to offer that the most important work to feel “good enough” comes from learning how to like ourselves even more.

To do this, we need to know what we think about ourselves. Are we acknowledging ourselves for who we are and what we like about ourselves? Not what we DO, but who we ARE as people. Many times, when asked about ourselves, we talk about what we DO or the roles we have. But how often do we talk about what we like about ourselves? 

Some self-acknowledgements could be:

This is not to say that we’re doing this in order to feel “better than” other people–which for some of us, doing this type of work can feel uncomfortable because we’re not supposed to be “boastful.” 

No, this work is for us to acknowledge ourselves and who we are and what we like about ourselves. To feel “good enough” or valuable comes from within ourselves. When we slow down and spend time checking-in with ourselves, we get to know ourselves even more. We start to find out what’s true for us, about us.

And if we happen to see things in ourselves that we’d like to change or improve upon, we can always do so, but from a place of compassion and care for ourselves. Instead of from a place of not feeling good enough.

So now I do things because I want to, from a place of knowing that I have value to contribute–not in order to get a feeling of value from “out there.” 

Your turn: What if you stopped doing all the things to prove your worthiness and value and started spending time checking-in with yourself? What’s good about you? (Think about who you ARE, not what you DO, to answer that question.) How can you enjoy being with yourself even more? How can you enjoy being YOU even more?

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.