Yes, you are!

Stop asking this question and quiet your inner critic.

How often have you avoided doing something because you were worried about what people might think or believed what you were doing was not good enough?

Many people, especially women, feel they are not good enough, not pretty enough, not clever enough, not rich enough, or not successful enough. Sometimes, what you do doesn’t matter; it just isn’t good enough.

There are numerous reasons to feel this way. Maybe your parents had extremely high standards that you could never attain. At school, it didn’t matter how well you did; you never lived up to their expectations. Maybe they could have hoped for you to become a doctor or lawyer or follow in their footsteps somehow, but you were just not interested, and they did not bother to hide their disappointment. Maybe your sibling excelled at sports, music or chemistry, but you were only good at art, and they could not see any value in that. There are endless reasons, but the result of this tends to be a very harsh inner critic constantly reminding you that you are unworthy. Unworthy of love, of success or of just being happy.

No one is immune to this. Even people who appear brimming with confidence sail through life without a care in the world while achieving great things without seemingly trying. You can bet they occasionally have a little devil on their shoulder telling them they are worthless.

Years ago, I started creating a course on fairy tales and archetypes, but this course was never completed and never released. The primary reason for this is that I never thought it was good enough. I still have the work I did for this course, and one day, I will release it, but it is currently in a folder on my PC waiting for me to return to it.

Several years ago, I finished writing the How to Become a Wise Woman course. I released it on the Teachable platform around a year ago. Last week, I finished transferring it to my website, The Ancient Wisdom of Women.

How many people know about this? Hardly any. This is because I haven’t told many people. This is because I am just not sure it is good enough. What if no one likes it? This is rubbish because I gave it to friends to check over, and they love it. I have been over it many times, and every time I do, I feel proud of it and want other women to benefit from my experience. So why am I not shouting about it from the rooftops? Fear that it, and therefore I, am not good enough.

While writing this course, part of me felt like a fraud. Who was I to be writing about being a wise woman if I still thought I wasn’t good enough? Indeed, I should have sorted all that out by now. But I’m not perfect; I am working on myself, especially those traits that are holding me back and preventing me from reaching my full potential. So, I can say that I am a wise woman because I am aware that I am not a finished article; I am a work in progress that is changing and improving myself all the time.

We are all works in progress. To be wise, we must be aware of this and be prepared to work with the areas of ourselves and our lives that we feel could be better.

What can you do when your inner critic won’t stop that nagging?

When the annoying devil on your shoulder starts with that old familiar chatter, stop and ask yourself the following questions:

• • What does not good enough mean?
  • Not good enough for what?
  • For whom?
  • How could you become good enough?
  • What exactly would you have to do?
  • Who says you are not good enough?

When you ask these questions, the idea of not being good enough starts to fall apart.

Stop comparing yourself to others. We all do it; you can guarantee that the person whose life you envy wishes they were someone else too. People’s lives are rarely as perfect as they sometimes make them seem. Instead, see them and yourself as humans, getting on with their lives and doing their best.

Think about all you have achieved. Instead of thinking about how you would like things to be, think about how far you have come and what you have achieved. Look at your progress rather than what you would want to accomplish in the future.

Let go of your expectations. If you expect something to happen and it doesn’t happen, you will feel disappointed. Instead of concentrating on the results, spend your time and effort on the progress and how you will get there.

When your inner critic is being particularly cruel, ask yourself if you would speak to anyone else the way you did well speaking to yourself. If the answer is no, then why are you doing it to yourself?

I have a quote on my desk by Katharine Hepburn:

“If you always do what pleases you, at least one person is satisfied.”

Meaning, you will never make everyone happy, so there is no point in trying. But the one person whose approval you do need is your own. This doesn’t make you selfish, or I mean you don’t care about anyone else; it just means that you do not need validation from others to feel worthy. So, if you start to feel self-doubt creeping up on you, remind yourself that you are good enough, even with or maybe even because of all your flaws and imperfections. You and everyone else in the world are a work in progress.

If you want help overcoming your inner demons my How to Become a Wise Woman e-course will help you with this and many other dilemmas.

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