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Do you ever have the thought, “I’m just not good enough?” Whether you experience this thought frequently, in all areas of your life, or whether it comes up occasionally around certain things, I want you to know first off that nothing has gone wrong.
The truth is that we all feel like we’re not enough at times. We all find ourselves looking for validation from others, to be approved of, and we make their opinions dictate whether we’re good enough or not. But I’m posing a question to you this week. What does “enough” even mean?
Join me today to discover why we actually don’t need to completely solve for not feeling good enough, and what you’re inadvertently doing when you consistently try to resist or get rid of this thought. I’m sharing some tips on how you can counter it, but ultimately, I’m dialing into why it’s not a problem worth spending lots of time and energy on.
If you don’t currently have a life coach, I would be so honored to be yours. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. If you’re ready to take this work to the 10X level, click here to check it out!
What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- Why there’s nothing wrong with you thinking you’re not good enough.
- How to counter not feeling good enough.
- Why we don’t need to completely solve for not feeling good enough.
- How I know you’re both enough and not enough.
- Why there is zero upside to thinking you should be further ahead than you are.
Mentioned on the Show:
- When you’re ready to take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10X level, then come check out Be Bold.
- If you’re a coach who is already certified through The Life Coach School, I want to help you take your coaching to the next level. Interested? Get on the waitlist here.
- Follow me on Instagram!
- Grab the Podcast Roadmap!
- Brené Brown on shame
I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 297: How to Feel Good Enough.
Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.
Hey there, how’s it going? I’m excited to talk to you about this topic. It’s one I coach on all the time. I know it’s a challenge for many of us to feel that we are good enough. I just want to begin by saying today is one of those days when everything feels like it’s working against you which I know is not true. I know everything’s always working in my favor.
But I woke up this morning to find my laptop sitting in a pool of water which is totally my fault. I left it on the kitchen counter next to a cup of water and our cat knocks over water glasses in the night. I should have known better. I’m always telling my kids not to leave water out on the counter and there I go, doing it myself. So I’m using my son’s computer and we’re just making it work and we’ll figure something out. But just one of those days, it’s just how it goes sometimes.
Anyway I want to talk to you about how to feel good enough and I want to preface that this is one of seven things I’m going to be teaching in the April class in Be Bold. The April class in Be Bold is called How to Enjoy Being You. And it’s a class that I think we all need and I want you to know it’s a little bit different than confidence. I mean confidence is a part of it. It’s certainly more fun to be you when you’re feeling confident. But confidence is sort of at the surface of it all I would say. I might be able to be confident at certain things.
Maybe I’m good at certain things or I can show up confidently anyway in certain areas. But that doesn’t mean I always enjoy me. I’ve been a confident person for a pretty long time. But I didn’t enjoy being me until probably a year and a half ago, really to the extent that I enjoy being me now. So there’s a lot more to it and if you’re feeling not confident, we’re certainly going to work on that too. But this is a class that I’ve found has changed my experience day-to-day.
When I enjoy being me it just changes, again hard things are still hard. Trials are still hard, big challenges are still hard. And big successes and big wins are still fun. But I’m talking about the day-to-day which is probably 90% of our lives, it’s just the day-to-day mundane do you enjoy being you?
So if you’re not in Be Bold you’ve got to get in there because I’m teaching that class next week. And we just opened the doors to Be Bold and they’ll only be open until Wednesday March 31st and then we will close the doors and I’ll be teaching how to enjoy being you. So don’t miss that, go to jodymoore.com/membership if you’re not in there to join us.
But the first thing I want to teach is how to feel that you’re good enough. So let me ask you this question, do you ever have the thought, I’m just not enough? I’m just not good enough in this way? If you say no then I want you to question if that’s really true because the truth is we all do at times. Some of us might experience that thought more frequently, some of you think that thought all the time in all different areas of your life. Some of you only think it occasionally about certain areas. But we all do think that and we all wonder that on some level.
And I say this all the time so you might have heard me say it before but I just want to back up that claim with Brené Brown’s research on shame. Shame is a feeling that we feel when we think that we’re not enough, we’re not good enough. And according to her research, everyone feels shame at some point unless you have a mental illness. If you have sociopathic, psychopathic problems you may not ever feel that. But every healthy human being does at some time in some way experience shame which is the feeling that comes from thinking that you’re just not good enough.
So that is so important for you to know because a lot of you think the thought, I’m not good enough and feel the shame and then you think that something’s wrong. Well, first you think something’s wrong with you but then as you gain awareness that that’s just a thought, and hopefully you have some other more conscious higher level thoughts that counteract that where you know that actually we’re all good enough. We’re all valuable.
We’re all created in the image of divine parents or whatever you believe spiritually, but we are all good enough. Hopefully you know that on a conscious level. So then when your subconscious thoughts come up and cause you to question it then you think that there’s something wrong with you thinking that. And that’s the first thing I want to offer to you is that there is nothing wrong with you thinking that. In fact it’s right that you would think that. It means you’re a mentally and emotionally, healthy stable adult.
Oprah Winfrey wonders whether she’s good enough at times. And not only does Oprah but I heard Oprah once talk about all the years of hosting her show and having all these guests come on, everyone from KKK members and violent criminals to really high revered leaders, and politicians, and celebrities and everything in between. And she said every one of them at the end of the recording asked me some version of, “Did I do okay? Did I do a good job? Was I good? How was that?” Why do we ask that?
Because we’re seeking validation that we’re good enough because we all wonder, we all want to be good enough. We all want to be acceptable. We all want to be approved of by people around us. We all want people to go, “That’s good, you did a good job.” Because then we make it mean that we’re good enough. We all wonder it though.
Have you read bios on any celebrities that you would say maybe have had a successful career or are doing a good job in the world? Because if you had you’ll find that they all question their value. J. Lo thinks maybe she’s not pretty enough at times. And Beyoncé thinks maybe she’s not good enough. And Steve Jobs questioned his value all the time. And Demi Moore always felt that she wasn’t good enough. Those are just a handful of the ones that I’ve read.
But I’m sure any bio you read on a healthy functioning adult is going to include a lot of the time them questioning whether or not they’re good enough. So I really want you to know that, it’s normal to question that, you know why? Because you’re a human, I don’t have a really detailed explanation beyond that because I don’t know. I’m going to ask in the next life when I meet my maker, “Why is it?” But I bet there’s a good reason for it. I just know that it’s normal.
It’s sort of like the day I was getting my daughter out of the bath, my five year old daughter, she had taken a bath and we had washed her hair and everything. And when she gets out of the bath she always go, “Oh mom, I’m so cold.” And I wrap a towel around her and she tries to curl up in a ball as much as she can and continues to say, “I’m so cold”, until we get warm clothes on her.
And you know what I tell her? I don’t freak out and go, “Oh no, what’s wrong? She’s cold.” I go, “Yeah, you’re cold because your skin’s wet and your hair is wet, that makes us cold. We’re going to get you dressed and you’re going to get you warmed up and we’ll get a blanket on you and you’re going to get warm.” But it’s normal to feel cold when you get out of the bath or the shower and you’re all wet, especially because she doesn’t like her bath to be very hot. So it’s totally normal to be cold. And it’s normal to not feel good enough, to believe that maybe you’re not good enough.
We have some friends who have the sweetest daughter who is about to turn eight, or maybe she just turned eight. Anyway, she was asked to speak at state conference recently. And when I saw her afterwards I said, “You did such a good job giving your talk.” And she said, “Thanks. I was so nervous.” And I said, “Yeah, of course you were because you gave that talk in front of so many people and had a computer Zoom screen staring you right in the face. It’s totally normal that you would have been nervous. It’s okay that you’re nervous.”
We don’t think anything’s wrong with our kids in many cases when they say that they feel nervous, or scared, or whatever they’re feeling. We understand, yeah that’s scary and I want you to know the same thing is true for you, you guys. Our brains question whether or not we’re good enough, that’s just the way it goes, it’s totally normal, there’s nothing wrong. We don’t need to completely solve for it. Now, we are going to lighten it up a bit because I do think for some of you it’s driving you way more than it needs to.
And I think you’re sort of believing it when your brain says, “Am I good enough? Maybe I’m not good enough.” And I don’t think that’s necessary either. I think that you can sort of counter it. And I want to talk to you about that next. So let’s just dive in a little bit to this thought, I’m not good enough. What does that even mean? What does it mean to be enough? What are we trying to be enough of? How do we know if we’re enough? What makes us enough? Is it if other people think that? How could that be because some people might think that you’re amazing? Other people might not care for you at all or think that you’re terrible.
So how do we know if we’re enough? It’s not even a thing that is provable, or real, or concrete in any way that’s useful. It’s just a made up construct that there’s this thing as being enough or not enough. That’s not even a real thing. Isn’t that fascinating? And the other thing is yes, you are enough, and also no, you’re not and you’re not supposed to be. You’re not supposed to be any better than you are. Did you know that? You’re not supposed to be further along. You’re not supposed to be more capable than you are.
I don’t care your age. I don’t care how long you’ve been striving in this certain area of your life. You’re supposed to be exactly where you are. You’re supposed to not be enough in many ways. And again, depending on what you believe religiously, I believe that is why we have the atonement of Christ, because we’re not enough. And we’re never going to be enough in this life. But we’re not supposed to be. We’re supposed to fall short. And then the question is what do we do next?
But I love to remind myself that when my brain says, “Well, you’re not very good at that thing. And you’ve never been good at this and you probably never will be good at that thing. Or you’re not enough in this way. You’re not giving enough. You’re not kind enough. You’re not”, whatever it is that I’m judging myself for, I say, “Yeah, and who says I should be better than I am?”
I’m going to keep trying to progress as a human being. I’m going to keep trying to grow myself just because I think that’s why we’re here on Earth and I notice that I have some part of me that likes progress and growth. And if I don’t progress and grow I actually feel a different kind of discomfort. So to think that I should be further ahead than I am, is sort of ridiculous, zero upside to that.
Now, another thing that comes up a lot for people around this topic is what other people think. This person is dissatisfied with me, or unhappy with me, or judges me in this way. And it’s really common in the world of self-help for us to say, “Let’s just not care what people think.” But I do think that’s a very surface level way of thinking about it.
When you first hear that thought, maybe when you’re 12 years old or something and somebody offers to you that you could just not care what people think, it’s kind of liberating and frank. So I don’t think it’s a terrible thought. But I also think that at some point it’s not very realistic because a part of us does always care, at least a little bit what other people think. And I again, think that that’s just normal. It’s sort of like being cold when your skin and hair is all wet. It’s like yeah, and as a human you care at least a little bit. You’re interested in what other people think of you.
So I like to teach that the goal isn’t to not care what other people think of you. It’s just to care more about what you think of you. Your opinion of you needs to be more relevant and it needs to be something that you continue to choose consciously and to shape and to develop, and to work on having the kind of relationship with you that you want to have. Other people’s opinions, you might still think are relevant in some way. But I want you to work to make your own opinion the most relevant. And this is true not only of your opinion of yourself but when it comes to making decisions.
So many people are living their lives making decisions to try to please, and satisfy, and put on a show for other people outside of them, that is a painful way to live my friends. Trying to live your life according to what other people think you should do, will eat away at your relationship with yourself. Now, I understand it takes courage to live your life based on what you want to do and who you are if that is different than what other people around you think you should do. I’m not saying that’s an easy thing to do.
But that’s what I want to encourage your work to be around is to make your opinion about yourself, about your decisions, about how you spend your time, about how you live your life more relevant than everyone else’s. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll ever completely not care what other people think. That’s just not the way we’re wired as humans.
So this is kind of how I want to wrap this up. I was coaching someone this week who led with this thought. “I just feel all the time like I’m not good enough and I want to work on that.” And we coached on that but we found a lot of other juicier things that were more interesting to coach on because what I told her was, “Yeah, okay, so you think that you’re not enough.” And by the way this particular client had a history of challenges in a previous marriage and some verbal abuse and things that she’d endured.
And so I think a part of her felt like, see, I think this because of these challenges and therefore there’s something wrong with me and we should try to fix it. And what I said to her is, “There may be things that we need to address because of the challenges you’ve experienced. But this thought, I’m not good enough, isn’t one of them. That’s called being a human.”
And my brain offers me that thought on the daily. But do you know why I don’t allow it to slow me down in my life? Is because I don’t really give that thought a lot of momentum and a lot of traction, I don’t give it a lot of attention. And sometimes us trying to get rid of it is giving it a lot of attention and actually giving it even more momentum. What I do is I notice it and I just sort of answer my head with like, “Okay, there’s that again. Boring.” That’s the truth, this thought, maybe I’m just not good is such a boring story.
I’m 46 years old so for at least 44 years of my life since language was a thing for me I’ve been wondering if I’m good enough. I’m just so bored with that story. I’ve done things that I thought, once I do that then I’ll feel good about myself. I’ve accomplished many of those things. And guess what? It didn’t go away. Yes, I was proud of myself for things that I’d done, was grateful to myself, it was fun. But then that voice just came back again, just found a different reason to question whether or not I’m good enough.
So I’m just so bored with that story that I don’t entertain it or give it much notice at all, I just am like, “Yeah, there’s that.” When my skin and hair is wet because I just got out of the swimming pool, or the shower, or something, then I’m cold. And on a daily or weekly at least my brain says, “I think you just are not good enough in that way. I think all those other people are better than you.” And I’m just like, “Yeah, move it on. What are we going to think about now?”
Do you know what my friends? If you stop trying to get rid of that thought then you’re going to have head space to focus on a different problem. Your brain wants a problem to solve. Your brain’s very good at solving problems, that’s what it does, so it’s on the lookout for problems. And the problem of am I good enough is just not a very interesting useful problem to solve. It’s not even solvable in this life because (a) it’s not a problem at all because you already are good enough. But (b) you’re probably never going to convince yourself of that entirely.
So let’s just decide that that’s a boring story, we’re done giving it lots of traction. It’s always going to be there a little bit, it’s kind of annoying but we can deal with it. And what do we want to think about now? What would be more fun? What would be more useful? Do you have a hobby you want to try out? Do you have a challenge you want to embrace? Do you have somebody else you want to go help? There’s so many more useful interesting things we could be thinking about than this.
So you know how you feel like you’re good enough? You just embrace that sometimes you won’t and that doesn’t make it true. And then you do the other six things that I’m going to teach you in How to Enjoy Being You. It is a very important class. It is the work of our life to understand our value. And once you enjoy being you, you free up even more head space to serve the people around you or do whatever it is you want to do in the world so let’s do that. Please join me. I will see you in Be Bold next week. Take care everyone.
Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.
We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.
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