You are Enough.
Have you heard people say this before or perhaps read this thought on a meme on social media? How did you react to it? Or, how did it make you feel?
I am going to be honest that I often feel uncomfortable when I hear or read this phrase.
In fact, I have felt uncomfortable with ideas like this much of my life. And it’s not only this idea. It’s related ideas, too, like…
Just be yourself.
You are worthy of unconditional love.
And, You don’t have to do or be anyone other than yourself to be worthy of love.
You are good enough just the way you are.
The Irony of All This
If you have read my blog much, you might be saying to yourself, “Wait a minute, Shelly. Don’t you write all the time about how we are worthy of unconditional love—that we are valuable and worthy just as we are?”
Yes, I do. I know. It’s ironic.
I write about these ideas because I believe them about you, me, all of us. But I also write about them because sometimes I still have problems believing I am worthy.
If I am not careful, I still find myself trying to do more to prove my worth. I still find myself being highly critical of myself at times.
Accepting and loving ourselves just the way we are requires that we accept our intrinsic worth, and this can be hard for many of us to do for a lot of reasons.
Here are a few of the things that make it hard for us to believe in our intrinsic worth:
One: Demeaning Cultural Messages
There are a lot of cultural messages that suggest we must look a certain way, wear a certain kind of clothes, achieve certain goals, make a certain salary, own certain possessions, and be a certain weight to be worthy of love.
These messages continually communicate that we cannot accept ourselves the way we are—we must be different and better to be worthy.
Two: Messages that Distort Religion
There are a lot of religious folks who do an awesome job of communicating the idea of God’s unconditional love.
Unfortunately, there are also a lot of religious folks who have really distorted views of God and people, and sometimes they communicate ideas like this:
Everyone is a horribly depraved sinner.
God is continually wrathful towards you and everyone else.
You will never be good enough to earn God’s love
Ideas like this can certainly destroy people’s sense of intrinsic worth. And they can make us feel like we must continually work to prove our worth to God and to other people.
Three: Natural Personality Tendencies
In the last couple of months, one of the most helpful things I have done is take a personality test called the Enneagram.
The is based on the idea that there are nine common personality types that each have a healthy and an unhealthy expression.
Each of the personality types has a natural tendency towards a certain personality strength—like reforming the world or helping people.
When our personality type becomes unhealthy, we have problems believing in our intrinsic worth in a way that is unique to our personality.
For instance, when reformers become emotionally unhealthy, they doubt their worth unless they are right or perfect.
When helpers become emotionally unhealthy, they doubt their worth unless they are constantly helping other people and are needed by them.
All of us have the potential to become emotionally unhealthy at some point in our lives.
And the more emotionally unhealthy we become, the harder it is to recognize our intrinsic worth.
I encourage you to take the Enneagram test here and to spend some time reading about your personality type here.
Four: Unhealthy Relationships
Sometimes we become surrounded by unhealthy people who regularly communicate to us that we are only have worth insofar as we please them, meet their expectations, or do what they desire.
If we spend a lot time around such folks, these negative messages can seep into our consciousness and undermine our sense of intrinsic worth.
Five: Unlearned Lessons
We may have never learned how to value our own intrinsic worth. Sometimes we did not have folks in our life who taught us to value our intrinsic worth.
Sometimes we did but for some reason, the lessons didn’t stick. The good news is that it is never to late to learn the lessons of intrinsic worth.
Six: A Fixation on Our Mistakes and Failures
We are human, and we make mistakes. Sometimes we make really big mistakes, and sometimes we have massive failures. Or sometimes we develop significant character flaws, blind spots and addictions and hurt other people.
These small and large imperfections can cause to doubt our worthiness.
*****
It is a pleasure to read from you again dear Shelly 🙂 I shake my head in agreement with every thought you present with such care. I loved the accompanying pictures that you painted.
That’s so kind, P! I am looking forward to reading your blog posts soon, too. Thank you so much for enjoying my posts and pictures. I really had fun writing this one and drawing and painting for it.
My pleasure as always dear Shelly 🙂 Your joy in creating these posts reaches me.
I have missed you, Shelly! I hope you have had fun/enjoyed a break from blogging. I will carry out the exercise around messages about worth. There is so much in this post to revisit regularly. I have just applied for a job which is quite a step up, which excites me, but I don’t want to fall into perfectionist ways, so this is timely.
I have missed you, too, Ali! I am excited to read your posts again soon. I had a really peaceful February, but I missed blogging and you all. I am so glad you found these messages helpful. To be honest, I write posts like this to remind myself, as well as everyone else. Congrats on your new job! I am so happy for you. I would love to know more about it, but don’t feel like you have to share, especially on this public space.
There is so much wisdom here – wish I’d been able to read it when I was a teenager!
That’s so kind, Ann! It’s interesting you mention wishing you could have read it as a teenager. Frequently when I write, I write to my teen self.
Loved so much this. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much, Jaque! I am so glad you enjoyed it.
What a wonderful post Shelly, thank you so much for all you’ve put into this – I’ve just read it for the first time but there’s so much rich timely life-affirming wisdom for me here that it’ll have many re-reads! So helpful in my journey to believe that I am…
Vera, I am so pleased that you enjoyed this post and that you find it helpful! My goal it to provide a post that both contain good reflection and often activities or affirmations for making these ideas a regular part of life. And to be honest, I often write these posts as much for me as for anyone else. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment,
Like!! Great article post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
Thank you so much, Friend!