Do You Struggle to Feel Good Enough?

Do you find yourself questioning whether you’re good enough in work, in relationships, or just as yourself? Would you love to boost your confidence, self-assured, and free from those relentless doubts in your mind?

The good news is, confidence is a skill that everyone (yes, including you), can build over time. 

Through self-care, managing negative self-talk, and embracing your authentic self, you can begin to feel more than good enough.

“Good enough is good enough. We're not supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to be complete”.

Jane Fonda

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What Life is Like When You Don’t Feel Good Enough

As a counsellor, I’ve seen how deeply “not feeling good enough” can affect someone’s life, and I know how it feels personally.

It can show up as imposter syndrome at work, avoiding opportunities, overthinking, or believing you don’t deserve good things. You might push yourself too hard trying to prove your worth, or hold yourself back because of fear and self-doubt.

You miss out on life experiences, potential work opportunities, and of course, the impact it can have on your confidence and happiness in general.

On a personal level you may lack confidence in yourself, and believe that you’re unworthy of love and experiencing nice things.

Some common experiences include:

• Not feeling capable, despite actually doing the work
• Struggling with self-belief and decision making
• Mental health issues, in particular anxiety or low mood
• Feeling angry or frustrated with your work or progress
• Avoiding events or opportunities (personal and professional)
• Starting but not finishing projects
• Unhealthy lifestyle choices (poor sleep, over or under eating etc.)

Impact

When your sense of worth depends on what you achieve, it’s easy to overcompensate. For example, pushing yourself beyond your limits to feel good enough, valued, and accepted.

When you're feeling like this, avoidance can quickly become your safety behaviour, which is okay in the moment, but can be costly to you both personally and professionally. Not only will you miss out on fun and experience with friends and loved ones, you may also be stepping away from potentially life-changing opportunities for your business or career.

The cycle of this unhelpful thinking, followed by avoidance or overthinking is exhausting, but it can be broken.

Steps to Feeling Good Enough

Becoming confident starts with awareness, and noticing your thoughts, patterns, and where those “not enough” beliefs began.

You might choose to explore this with your therapist, with a coach/mentor, or on your own as part of your self-development goals. Learning to understand and respond to those feelings with compassion rather than criticism is key, and how you can begin to change the narrative.

Here are a few key areas to focus on:

Self-Acceptance

Self acceptance simply means embracing all of who you are as a person, the good, the imperfect, and everything in-between.

It’s choosing to see yourself grace and compassion, instead of judgement or criticism. It's the understanding that nobody's perfect (but everyone's worthy), so why is this something you feel you need to strive for?

It's about knowing that you’re worthy of love and respect exactly as you are.

Recognise and Embrace Your Unique Self

Everyone is different, with different values, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes and personality.

You have had your own unique experiences in life that contribute to who you are today. You will have faced your own challenges, shown resilience during difficult times, and also achieved many things.

There will be several things that you have overcome, where you showed strength and courage, and times you will have made a positive impact on others.

In today’s world, with social media, the influence of seeing others “living their best life” can have a huge impact on how you view yourself.

Be careful with comparison, especially with what you see on social media. Remember, you’re seeing someone’s highlights, not their whole story.

How to overcome this?

1. Recognise and Celebrate your Unique Worth as the Person you are.

When you begin to acknowledge your own achievements, and recognise your qualities, you'll start to shift the view you currently have of yourself.

Try this journaling exercise:

• Write down three challenges you’ve overcome and what they taught you.
• Note three ways you’ve made a positive difference to others.

2. Challenge Negative Narratives

Take a moment to think about how you speak to yourself. What is your inner narrative like? Is it hostile and critical? Remember that your inner critic can be loud, but it's not always truthful.

Having an inner critic increases self doubt and lowers self confidence and self worth. When you focus on challenging this, you will become more compassionate and kind to yourself.

Try reframing thoughts:

Notice what the inner critic says, and challenge it like you would if a friend spoke that way about themselves.

For example:

“I’ll never achieve this” to “I’m learning and taking small steps”.

“I failed” to “I tried something new and I’m growing from it.”

Remember that thoughts are not facts. Once you begin to challenge this thinking, you can identify whether the thought is based on fact or misconceptions. A great exercise is to find evidence to challenge the thought so that it no longer holds any relevance for you.

Declutter Your Mind & Environment

A cluttered mind or environment can amplify the feeling of discomfort, stress and unhelpful thinking.

Journaling:

Journaling is a great way to clear some of the mental clutter. It helps you get the thoughts out of your head so you can process emotions and create some space in your mind.

Journaling provides space for you to openly explore your feelings and emotions without judgement. It’s a method for you to dump the persistent worries and repetitive thoughts swirling around in your mind.

You can free-write or use guided prompts to help focus your thoughts and writing. Either is a good option, it depends on how comfortable you feel with journaling and what your goal is.

Free Writing – Write for 10-15 minutes to begin with, paying attention to how you’re feeling, both physically and mentally. It's amazing what can surface during these sessions.

Guided Journaling – Using prompts to guide can be very effective. They can help you focus on specific areas, gently guiding you to explore deeper.

If you’re struggling with what to write, start with guided journaling until you build up your confidence. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, it’s simply about getting those thoughts and fears out of your mind and onto paper.

Declutter Your Space

Decluttering your physical environment can have a great impact on your current mindset and sense of happiness and calm.

When things build up and feel messy, it can become harder to relax or concentrate. These cluttered environments can trigger feelings of being disorganised or not in control of things.

Even tidying a desk or small area can restore a sense of calm and control.

Set Achievable Goals

Confidence grows when you take action. Mel Robbins spoke about this in a podcast I listened to recently. When discussing what makes people happy, Dr. Tal Ben Shahar explained that it’s not in the achievement of the goal that makes people happy, it’s in working towards the goal.

When you’re working towards something, it gives you purpose. Whether this is a professional goal, or a personal one like improving your confidence and feeling good enough.

If you're currently basing your happiness off of “when I achieve this I will be happy” it's probably causing you to feel even more dissatisfied and unhappy. But, when you focus your mind to work towards something, it gives you that sense of purpose and direction.

Be careful to not overwhelm yourself with unrealistic goals, especially when you’re working on yourself. You want to feel good about what you’re doing, you want to feel motivated and inspired. These feelings are what helps you to keep the momentum going and increases your confidence as you gradually move closer to your goals.

Focus on small, realistic goals that give you quick wins.

• Choose one goal that feels meaningful but manageable.
• Break it into tiny steps.
• Track your progress and acknowledge and celebrate each one.

Every step forward is proof that you are capable and good enough.

Celebrate Your Wins (All of Them!)

As you’re training your mind to focus on your achievements and value as a person, celebrating your wins is one of the best ways to do this.

Not only is it highly motivating to celebrate yourself and recognise what you have achieved, it’s helping to lessen the power that the inner critic and self doubt holds over you. It helps you to embrace positive self-talk and recognise your strengths in the moment.

Big or small, all achievements matter:

• Challenged a thought? Celebrate it.
• Showed yourself kindness? Celebrate it!
• Journaled today? Celebrate it!

This helps you to value yourself exactly as you are, and acknowledging your progress retrains your mind to focus on what’s right rather than what’s missing.

Self-Care and Self-Compassion

When you choose to be kind to yourself, it becomes harder to be mean to yourself. it reinforces to yourself that you deserve care and compassion.

The more you grow to love the person that you are, you’ll be more inclined to be compassionate and kind to yourself rather than critical.

If you don’t feel good enough or worthy, why would you bother investing time into yourself? When you start to make self-care and compassion non-negotiable, you’re subconsciously shifting your perspective, and valuing yourself more every day, making it harder to believe the old “not good enough” story.

Some simple ideas for Self-Care:

• A short, mindful walk in nature
• Genlte stretches when you get up
• Pausing to take a few deep breaths between work tasks
• Journaling in the morning or before bed
• Resting without guilt
• Saying no when you need to
• Reading / Listening to an audiobook
• Gardening
• Daily Gratitude practice
• Lighting a candle and relaxing on the sofa
• Daily phone detox from 5pm

Tools, Resources & Support

Take a look at these tools & resources that will help you with your intentional planning, seasonal goals and personal growth:

Life Balance Wheel – Gain clarity of your current reality, identify areas that may be holding you back, and create a plan to make long lasting change.

Cognitive Distortions Worksheet – Support emotional clarity and build self-awareness with this printable CBT thought distortions worksheet.

90-Day Planner – This printable 90-Day planner is the perfect companion for you as you set your focus for the next 3 months. Use it every 90 days to help build consistent habits and achieve your goals with ease. With a focus on intentional planning and moving forward at your own space, it's the perfect companion to see you through to the end of the year.

Impact Stationery – Have you ever dreamed of creating your own high-end stationery products? Laura has an amazing course & community designed to help you created printed products that you can market on Amazon, or your own website. It's different to KDP in that they're not print on demand, and the quality of products are incredible.

Canva Pro – Upgrade your content design with Canva Pro. Explore the enhanced features available in Pro. Grab your free trial here.

Etsy – Are you ready to create your own online store? Etsy is a brilliant shopping platform that's used by millions. Setting up your store is simple, and when you sign up with this link we both get 40 free listings!

Final Thoughts

Not feeling good enough is something many of us experience, but once you recognise it, it doesn't have to define you.

Often those who struggle to feel good enough have low self worth and low confidence. The persistent chatter from the inner critic becomes too difficult to ignore, leading to chronic self doubt.

When you start accepting yourself as you are, speaking to yourself with compassion, and celebrating your progress, you begin to rewrite the old stories.

It becomes easier to show yourself the love and respect that you deserve to experience, and finally begin to feel good enough.

Remember, you are Good Enough

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Meet Lynsey

Hey there! I'm Lynsey, a counsellor, coach and mentor for women who want to create change, but are feeling lost, uncertain and exhausted. With over 7 years’ experience of training, running businesses, and over a decade as a tutor and adult trainer, I've learned the value of a gentle and intentional approach to work and life that energises you without draining all of your energy.

I've lived with ME/CFS since 2011, and since then re-trained as a counsellor, and achieved a distinction for my Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice; all while running 4 businesses!

How? Improving your mindset, finding acceptance in yourself, and developing a gentle, but solution-focused approach to achieving goals is key. Knowing that it's not about how fast you move, but finding your own pace and trusting that you can achieve your goals in your own way, one step at a time.

If you'd like to know more about working with me, you can email [email protected] or find me on socials (links in the menu)

Have you seen my online store Quietly Conquer – Find DFY templates, downloads and more!