How to Feel Good Enough (5 Easy Steps)

It’s your right to feel good enough. But do you? Because this right is one of those that others might violate most often and as soon as you come into this world.

In this article, you’ll learn how to feel good enough in 5 easy steps.

These five steps will help you rediscover your value, find your path to self-determination, and wash away those negative emotions that you might’ve turned inward.

You’ll learn why and how to forgive yourself, offer yourself compassion, and think more positive.

You should feel enough; but do you?

It’s your right because who you are today took a lot of work.

Together, all your mistakes, victories, and choices brought you here, at this very moment, and made you who you are.

You made it! Even though many things were out of your control, You made it.

Now, what are your five steps to feel good enough?

Step 1. Offer Yourself Compassion.

Self-compassion gives you a moment of peace and acceptance.

It doesn’t matter:

• how you look
• if your hair is shiny
• if your career is climbing
• if you have 5000 friends on Facebook and
• how many likes you’ve got today.

Acknowledge that you’re human and, like the rest of us, you’re not perfect; but that’s fine.

Put your hands together on your chest, close your eyes and say this to yourself: “I see you, I feel your pain, I forgive you, I understand you, you have my permission to let go, permission to thrive, permission to be you.”

With your eyes closed, tell this to your soul: “I see you, I feel your pain, I forgive you, I understand you, you have my permission to let go, to thrive, to be yourself.”

Remind yourself: you did in life what you knew best at the time.

Step 2. Reset the criteria for what means to be enough

Listen, if you don’t feel enough is not a matter of fact, is not that you’re not enough, it’s a matter of living in a box. A box that someone else made for you and locked you in.

That someone could be, for example, your family, your former teachers, or bullies. They intentionally or not, have set for you the criteria of when you’re allowed to feel enough. And if you think about it, you might discover how unfair and subjective are the borders of that box.

Reset your criteria for what means for you to be good enough.

At first, having your standard could make you feel a bit uncomfortable.
The box you’ve been locked in has forced you to live for and through others, for their desires, satisfaction, by their standards, and wishes.

It has never been about you; now let it be about you without feeling selfish or self-centered.
Embrace your freedom of mind.

If you don’t feel enough yet, it’s because of this:

Those who influenced your life, especially as a child, demanded the impossible from you; then blamed you for the “so predicted failures.”
What else can be expected when we talk about the impossible?! What else but mostly failure?

They shot arrows randomly, and you had to run with the target, so they hit right in the middle of it. Impossible!
And, going even further, to demonstrate they are better than you, after the arrows landed, took a pencil and drew the circle around: “you see? I’m perfect, and you’re lame.”

Do you see the absurdity of it? And that’s what happened to you and many of us.

Have you tried, as a child, to make your parents be civil to each other? Or, be perfect to be loved? Or, give up on your dreams to be accepted? Or, forget that one of your parents offered more attention to the cat than you?

We learned in many different ways how to feel inadequate. And the saddest part of it all is that is some point we become those shooting the arrows…

Reset your criteria for what means to be enough.

When you have a sincere desire to improve yourself, don’t see it as a confirmation of your self-doubting thoughts – “oh I’m not good enough. I must do more”.

But see it as a declaration of self-belief: “because I’m enough, it means I have the perfect garden to cultivate and grow even more.”

Do you agree you’ve spent enough time putting yourself down?

Stop thinking about what you’re not doing right and start celebrating your achievements, because from there are coming: your confidence, motivation, self-esteem, and desire to do better in life… from your successes, not your bruises.

Step 3. Forgive Yourself.

Not feeling good enough and blaming yourself go hand in hand.

How could you miss the arrows?!… Guilty!

Perhaps, you don’t even know the reasons why you feel guilty, you just do.

Feeling guilty is a never-ending circle of sorrow and pain.

You know you should love and accept yourself; everyone tells you so.

If you don’t, you feel guilty that you don’t. And then, you feel guilty for feeling guilty; and when you feel like that, your mind needs a better reason for the way you feel; so, seals the gaps with imaginary flaws, mistakes, and shortcomings.

Forgive yourself for actual or imagined mistakes. Know that you’ve done, always, the best you knew how.

Listen, judging your former self with the knowledge you have today it’s unfair!

Forgive yourself for the opportunities you have missed and create new ones; for letting yourself down and give a hug to your soul. Forgive yourself even for some things you haven’t done yet, but, you guess might happen because, as you know, you can’t control everything. So, yes you’ll make mistakes!

I have a dear friend that, if I don’t answer the phone, calls 10 to 20 times. In the beginning, I thought: Wow! Something bad must’ve happened. Something is burning. When I call back, to my shock, nothing happened, my friend just wants to say hello.

I don’t always answer the phone because I don’t always have time for 15 minutes hellos. When I do not respond, I forgive myself in advance for that One Time when this friend will call because something is on fire. And I’ll not be there.

And, the most significant forgiveness, it’s to pardon yourself for allowing others to decide when you’re good enough.

Step 4. Get out of the loop of negative thinking

A deer goes back to grazing after surviving a lion attack.

But, we, humans, tend to go back in time, again and again, and make scenarios about what could’ve happened, giving ourselves a scare hard to forget.

“What if the lion would have grabbed my leg? No more biking for me…or pulled out one of my eyes? No more beautiful sunrises…, or, even worse, killed my dog…so horrible!”

Your body doesn’t make a difference between the things you imagine happening and facts. Your body reacts in the same way, produces the same hormones and puts you in the same mood in both cases: imagined or real events.

Get out of the loop. Learn what you need to learn and then move on. The lion didn’t get you, but when you continue thinking about it, reliving the event, again and again, it feels like it did.

Do you want to feel good enough? Offer yourself forgiveness, compassion and leave the past behind. Understand now that feeling enough it’s your ground level from which you can fly.

Remember your ground level every time you have regrets, blame yourself, or you have any other negative feelings toward self: offer yourself forgiveness and compassion.

If you’re not doing that for yourself, you might linger in negative states, feeling stuck and unworthy of the good life you want.

And Step 5. Stop Failing Yourself

I will not challenge you to push beyond your limits, but I‘ll challenge you to get out of your comfort zone.

Is it comfortable to let others lead your life?

Is it comfortable to submit or surrender rather than fight?

Is it comfortable to maintain a painful status quo rather than asking for a change?

Don’t fail yourself, show up and you’re good enough.

You could say that you don’t want to feel enough because that could stop your progress. If you are already enough why bother? Feeling enough and wanting more don’t exclude each other.

The person who invented the wheel looked at it and said: what (a perfect) wheel I made! Now I’ll go further and make a use for it.

Things don’t stop progressing when they get to be beautiful, but being beautiful leaves them room to grow even more and become amazing and astonishing.

Stop failing yourself, show up, Be the hero of your life because no else can make your life as great as you can.

Be more relaxed about trying and failing and succeeding and failing and trying again and again until you are victorious.

Are you afraid of failing? Are you afraid of wasting your life? Are you afraid of change?

To all the fears you might have there is a simple answer: even if you’re afraid, show up, and stop failing yourself.

Now, what means to show up and stop failing yourself?

When a baby learns to walk, the first attempts are disastrous. He falls, gets scared, and starts crying. Someone comes and wipes his tears.

The baby stands up, again and again, he falls he gets scared, cries again and again. No matter how many times he fails to make the first step, he shows up again and again until he makes it.

You may say: ”that is a human instinct.” It might be so, and if it is so, even better, you have in you the resilience to show up for yourself since the day you were born. You have it in you.

Now I have a Quiz, a cheeky quiz: Which mountain was the highest in the world before we discovered Mount Everest?

Easy, it was still Mount Everest, but we haven’t discovered it yet.

You’re like that too.

You have in you, talents and potential that you don’t know are there until you show up for yourself and discover them. Underneath all the fears, self-doubting thoughts, failures, and insecurities you might have, you’re a gold mine. Start exploring. Uncover that gold by showing up for yourself.

Showing up for yourself means to take a step further from just dreaming or wanting.

It means to take action:

• regardless your fears or insecurities,
• regardless of what you’re telling yourself ( that you can or you can’t), regardless of what others might think (that you can or you can’t).

Take action to get the job you want, take action to start your own business, take action to make your environment harmonious and loving.

Every good thing in your life starts with you, you taking action.

How do you know when you’re failing yourself?

Let’s have a few examples:

• You dream to be a pianist, and you never touched a piano
• A co-worker takes credit for your merits, and you do or say nothing about it
• Your family steps on you and you suffer in silence
• You don’t ask for a salary raise because you are too modest or scared
• You’re not assertive because you don’t want to be perceived as aggressive

These are examples of when you fail yourself.

The list can continue. However, I believe you’ve got the idea, and I guess you have your own list.

You know the saying: I don’t regret want I did as much as I regret the things I haven’t.

You are failing yourself when you silence the internal voice that tells you:

• take a chance,
• make a step,
• make the most of [this] opportunity,
• you can do it!

Show up and stop failing yourself.

Now, do you feel you are good enough? Are you willing to commit and promise yourself the following?

• From this day forward I learn from my experiences, good or bad, and then move on;
• I’m the gatekeeper of my happiness and the guardian of my most precious possession: my life;
• I’m kind and considerate of what I’m feeling;
• I’m listening to my deeper self when it calls me to take action;
• I’m living the life that feels right to me;
• I stand up for myself;
• I use my talents and skills to make a difference in my life and my world;
• I gather around myself people that love, appreciate, and accept me as I am;
• I trust myself to deal with whatever life puts in front of me;
• I have the strength to walk away from things and people that hurt me;
  if I don’t know what to do, I ask for help.

Because you’re unique and you have your own issues, and challenges take the commitments and make the promises that fit your life and circumstances. Put in the present tense what you are doing already and want to do more of; and in the future tense the things you plan to start doing. Revise your promises periodically because you make progress every day.

Remember that you don’t need fixing, you are enough; if you want to progress, add something new to who you already are.

Improving yourself is less about changing and more about giving more power to your strengths, shaping up your behaviors, learning new skills, and honoring the most precious gift you’ve received: your life.

Believe that you are enough and start walking for your bright future. Believing you’re enough is your foundation, your ground level on which you build the life you want; it’s like the runaway on the airport. And improving yourself is like adding the lights, the control tower, the guide that signals you is safe to take off and so on.

When you have all these things, you can fly even further than before, starting from your ground level, believing that you’re enough.

Now, I’m curious to know which of the five steps you found most difficult?

Leave a comment below.