Believing in Good Enough

This article is part of the Pursuing Happiness series in The Hard Truth, exploring the messy intersection between pursuing happiness and how perfectionism holds us back.

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In this series, we've explored the idea that at the heart of someone who is high in perfectionism, there is a niggling feeling of not being 'good enough', perpetuated by a society fuelled with reinforcements that we always need to be more than we are.

I know this intimately, because this is something that I've felt time and time again. Every time I reach levels of burnout, I ask myself why...why I am here again? How have I let myself get back into cycle of negative self-talk, where nothing I do feels good enough?

This idea that we are not good enough fuels this unrelenting sense of doing more and more, being always productive, almost trying to convince ourselves that good enough exists.

But, do you really believe it? Deep in your soul, do you believe that a good enough exists? Will there be a level of satisfaction and joy once you've reached the next goal? Or, are you immediately onto the next one?

I started to ask myself these questions in late 2023, because I was stuck in a cycle of trying to convince myself that good enough existed, even though deep down I don't I believed it was actually possible. I started to ask myself, do I even look around and see what the world has to offer, or do I spend all my time in my own head?

This question can also be literal. How many times a day do you look up from where you are and simply look around yourself? I am not talking about looking around to see if a car is coming before you step onto the road, or if someone is in the doorway that you are trying to go into. I am talking about really looking around you. Sitting, observing, and absorbing what is between you and the edge of what you are able to see, feel, and hear.

How many times do you find yourself aimlessly scrolling your phones when waiting for something? Or getting caught up in what you should and shouldn’t have said or done in the past? How often do you spend thinking about what you don’t have, and what didn’t go so well? Is your mind filled with reminders and commentary that focused on what's missing?

On the flip side, how often do you spend thinking about what you do have, and what you once desired or had a goal for, and how much of that you have been grown from?

I’ll stick my hand up, straight in the air, and admit my tendency to look at the what I don’t have, or the goals I haven't reached.. We are brought up in our lives focusing on the missing parts of our lives, which causes us to forget what we already have. Once we get one new iPhone, we want the next. Once we get the one-story house, we want the two-story house. Once we get the promotion, we want the next job.

Much of the time, our attention and memory are focused only for a short time on the elation we feel when we get something that we perceive of value, be it the new phone, house or job. We tend the find it is only short-lived though, and before we know it, we are onto the next thing, reaching for the next star.

How do we believe in good enough?

In this so-called epiphany of mine, I started to realise just unhappy I was, as I've explored in previous articles. I realised a lot of my goals were actually someone's goals, things that I thought I needed to be, and things I needed to do, to make me what was successful in society's eyes. In this realisation, I also realised that nobody could help me feel happier but myself...and to do that, I had to start going deeper than just expecting it to change overnight, or hoping that a green smoothie and a run will make all the things better. Working harder wasn't going to change unless I started to look at how I thought about myself.

However, one of the things I noticed in this process was the intensity of the negative self-talk that was perpetuated my ideas that I wasn't good enough. My brain wasn't letting me believe that good enough existed, and I realised that I had many years of practice convincing myself of this! How can we expect ourselves to feel good if our brains keep telling us that things are never good enough and that good enough doesn't exist?

But, how do you change it?

Notice the negative self-talk

You'd think being in mental health, and training as a psychologist, I'd be really good at noticing negative self-talk. But, a lot of the time negative self-talk is so intertwined with how we've always talked to ourselves that it is really hard to notice at first. For some of us, it might have been the way we've spoken to ourselves across our whole lives, cycling through this idea that what we do, how we think, who we are just isn't good enough.

Anxiety fuels our a perfectionist soul, convincing ourselves of this notion that we are not good enough, and it becomes so well-versed, the daily thoughts just feel 'normal'.

If you feel like negative self-talk is something you need to work on, first and foremost, I always recommend getting a referral to speak with a psychologist - whose role can be incredibly powerful in helping you notice things you cannot see. However, if that isn't in scope for you now, it is a great option to just start to become more aware of how you talk to yourself.

Start to think about...What kind of things are you saying to yourself? What happens in your mind when you reach a goal? What happens when you don't reach a goal? What kind of words / statements are you saying to yourself?

This exercise requires us to slow down, to be patient, step back and notice things that might be hurtful. The brain's goal is to protect us, and that's what it is trying to do, but it has gotten so good at protecting you, that it has become anxiety-fuelled to stay in control, avoid failure, and, ultimately, avoid discomfort of the idea that things might not be perfect.

I always recommend to clients that sometimes it is easier to notice the uncomfortable feeling that comes up first, then reflect on what were you just thinking. This can help you build up your knowledge in your self-talk and how your self-talk relates to how you feel. Bear in mind, this might be a confronting process, so be patient and kind to yourself as you begin to notice your negative self-talk.

Reframe the negative self-talk

Once you start to notice the negative self-talk, the hard work continues in being able to replace it with more helpful statements to yourself. Your thoughts are not facts, they are simply opinions of the mind. This means that if your brain says something negative, it doesn't mean it is true.

So, notice it, and start to think - is this really how I want to talk to myself? Is this a useful way to talk to myself? Do I really believe this self-talk to be true?

A technique we recommend to replace negative self-talk is to imagine if your thoughts were in your friend's mind - would you respond to them in the same? It is helpful to use the strategy to 'adopt a friend voice' but direct that friend voice to yourself.

Think about if you had to replace that self-talk with something that you would say to a friend, what would it be? Then replace the negative self-talk with your new statements. These strategies help us to become more aware of the language we are talking to ourselves with, and be able to start replacing those words with more helpful ones.

Over time, you'll start to find it easier to 1) notice the negative self-talk 2) replace it with your friend voice, and this cycle of more helpful thinking will become more well-versed that it may will (slowly) replace the automatic negative self-talk.

Our goal isn't necessarily to get rid of all negative self-talk - we are human, after all, so try to avoid getting caught up in getting annoyed at yourself for negative thoughts, but rather notice it in a neutral way, say "Hey, you aren't helpful to me here", and replace it with what you'd say to a friend.

After all, we need to remember that our perfectionist brains are simply trying to protect us, but perfectionism doesn't need to protect you anymore. You are a capable, strong, and valuable human that doesn't need to be 'perfect' to be considered worthy, and now we just need your brain to believe that too!

Subscribe to the series to continue to learn more about maladaptive perfectionism in the next article and strategies to overcome it.

We have a workshop that deep dives anxiety, perfectionism and strategies to overcome it in the workplace. Reach out to learn more at Camille.Davey@growtogethernow.com for further information on how we can support your team.