You are enough

There is so much pressure on us to fail. As a parent, as a spouse, as a child. If you think about how you define that it's really hard, isn't it? Are we going to fail because we are not good at it, that we are going to do it really badly or are we simply lacking the confidence to succeed? The funny (not funny haha but funny ironic) thing is that we make all this stuff up in our heads. It's not real....and then we give up. Sound familiar?

And the vicious cycle continues. The fear of failure is working against you and preventing you from succeeding. Failing is not a bad thing though. Obviously this is how we grow, learn and ultimately become a better person. We put this pressure to fail on ourselves most of the time. A lot of our fears in life are completely unwarranted and we make them so much bigger in our heads than they actually are.

What are your biggest fears? spiders? earthquakes? a zombie apocalypse?

What about something a little more intangible like a fear of not being good enough?

Good enough as a person, a wife, a mother, an employee. Good enough at cooking, at sport, at drawing or your job. We constantly compare ourselves to others. Why do we do that?

This comparing stops us from doing things. Great things!. "Well I'm not even going to try and run up that hill because I know I won't be able to" and therefore we fail before we even begin and miss out on the amazing view at the top! Society puts a shit tonne of pressure on us too. We are told that success is about money, fame, fortune, instagram followers. These things define importance apparently. This diminishes our worth and over time our confidence. We are not like this as children, are we?! - well I know my 5 year old has buckets loads of confidence - more than enough for 62 grown adults! The only person your should be comparing yourself to is you. You can only measure your success against the yesterday you, right? "I'm going to run halfway up that hill today without stopping and tomorrow I'm to run a few more steps and a few more the day after until I run the entire way up".

This is success. Confidence, baby steps, a lot of failures along the way, picking ourselves up again, being kind to ourselves and trudging on when we think we cannot do it anymore. Success is completely up to us to define. All these outside influences (and social media influencers) are messing with us constantly which makes things hard but only you can decide what success means to you. One thing I am trying really hard to nurture in my children is both their confidence and their uniqueness. When they reach school age it becomes increasingly hard not to compare themselves to other which in turn knocks their confidence. I'm trying to instil the fact that failing is a part of life and is COMPLETELY OKAY but it's the getting back up and trying to succeed again that is the huge achievement. I read somewhere that if we aren't screwing up more than we are succeeding we are probably not trying hard enough. Pretty true I reckon and once we understand this life might become just that little bit easier.

Anyone got a foolproof way to stop comparing yourself to everyone else and stop pitting your successes against others? No? I haven't quite figured that one out yet either - but I'm getting there slowly. In the meantime we need to remember we are all on different paths. Each path as unique, successful and worthwhile as we are.

We are successful in our own way and in our own time. We are enough.

I'll say it again just in case you didn't hear.

YOU ARE ENOUGH.