do we ever feel "good enough"?
do we ever feel "good enough"?
am i deserving of my desires? have i tainted my dreams in self-doubt and comparison?
Before we get into this month’s newsletter, there are a lot more of you here than last month! Hi!!! I wasn’t expecting such a big response to last month’s newsletter, but I’m eternally grateful to have so many more of you to share my raw thoughts with. I hope you enjoy walking with me through my twenties, my confessions are now yours, always.
For most of my life I have been trying to answer the nagging question: am I enough? Will I ever feel enough? How do we quantify enough?
The question has plagued me for as long as I can remember. As a woman, it feels like I’m constantly chasing some idealised version of myself, a version that is sensible and bold and easy to approach and confident and mysterious and and and. The list goes on and on, full of contradictions and hyperboles. I can’t possibly be all those things all the time, can I? Is there a cocktail of prescriptions and supplements that would make me feel good enough? Can that feeling be bottled and sold? Would it be cheap?
Someone told me once that I was “fake deep”— said that my poetry was just a half-assed attempt at trying to be someone of substance. It wasn’t the first time someone I loved had turned words into a weapon to be used against me, shackling me to the delusion that I was a fraud, a fake. For many years I took their words as gospel, carrying around the notion inside me that no matter how hard I tried I would never be enough. Looking back on it now saddens me; I spent so much time being weighed down by the way others perceived me, afraid they were right, that they knew more about me than I did, worried they could see through my facade of fake confidence. When I ran into that same person years later they were no longer a God to me, in fact, it had been years since I last thought of them. They stopped me on the street to tell me that during our brief time together they had spent a lot of time envious of me, of how I always seemed to know who I was, who I wanted to be. I had to laugh, thinking back to the years prior when their words echoed in my brain every time I tried to present myself, and my art, to the world— for many years their words were a noose around my neck, holding me in place. Although it had been years since I felt that way it still came as a shock to learn their cruelty stemmed from jealousy and had nothing to do with me.
Of course, my struggles with feeling good enough didn’t stem from one person’s words or even many people’s words. I remember feeling this way even as a child. I remember this inherent desire to constantly prove myself. The idea of being “good enough” ties into the intrinsic pressure we all feel to succeed— to achieve success. We think once I do this or get that or go there, I’ll finally feel like enough. But how do classify enough? Is there a cheat code? Can we bypass the hardships and wake up one day feeling enough?
Whenever I sit and ponder about my worthiness it always bleeds into my fears surrounding the future. My future feels so scary because I’m constantly wondering if I’m good enough for the things I want in life— if I’m deserving of the kind of success I’m after, or the partnership I crave, or the kind of joyous life I’ve always dreamed of. When I’m struggling with these introspective notions of being enough (pondering if I’m virtuous enough, kind enough, considerate enough), I catch myself holding back, as if in preparation for the inevitable. After years of feeling so undeserving and disconnected from my needs and desires, my brain automatically assumes the worst and prepares a safety net disguised as self-sabotage, ruining great things before they even have the chance to be great.
Sometimes I get so jealous of people who seem to be so sure of themselves because so much of my life has been spent wrestling with self-acceptance and self-assurance; the uncertainty I have in myself forces my life to halt at the most unexpected times. I compare myself to other women, to people younger than me who seem to have accomplished so much more than I feel like I ever will, to strangers online who spend every Sunday meal prepping while I rot on my couch scrolling. The fear of my capabilities paralyzes me, frequently sending me spiralling down a tornado of self-doubt and comparison. I romanticise past versions of myself, groaning about how I was so much prettier back then, or so much more determined, or whatever else I can come up with to justify why I’ve grown too damaged to be deserving of what I want.
It’s an awful game I play by my lonesome. I have all these dreams and goals and aspirations but still, I find myself crippled by fear, afraid of where my success would lead me. I’m so scared of these imaginary futures that the more I move forward the more I become benumb, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s foolish. There are all these big beautiful things, all within my grasp, and I want to lunge at them, yet, just as I’m closing my fist around them, I pause. My body trembles, my eyes get watery; I stand before the mirror, gripping the bathroom sink so tightly my knuckles go white. In those moments I’m not entirely sure what I’m searching for. Perhaps a glimmer of confidence. If I don’t pull myself away I can spend the whole night standing there, probing my self-conscious for a way out of the abyss of self-doubt.
Why do so many of us think we’re not enough, or not deserving, of the things we want in life? So many of us spend our days trying to drown out the wails inside us— we walk around, we work jobs and see friends, hang out at bars and go to concerts. We live. We move forward. We hold ourselves through painful moments, get on the subway the next day and pretend as if it never happened. I don’t know how we do it. Humankind is so resilient. However, I wonder if we could all be more honest about the crushing weight that being alive and trying to be a good person provokes in us if it would ease the suffering a tad. If we could admit that all of us doubt ourselves sometimes and no one really has it figured out. Would that make it easier to bear? Would it make it easier to open up and feel connected to others?
The fear of being perceived stunts all of us, halting us at the gates of self-discovery. The fear of being seen trying and failing: of starting your dream job only to get fired 3 months later, or falling in love only to get your heart broken, or moving across the world only to feel so homesick you don’t last a year. We’re so scared of trying because we fear what will happen if we finally do. We get so afraid of the ending we don’t even begin, wanting to avoid embarrassment or judgement from others. We can spend our whole lives in the same spot because we never get over the fear of being seen.
That’s the root of it I think, the fear of being seen. We’re so afraid of opening ourselves up completely, of screaming our desires out into the world, because if we can keep our dreams, our wants, our desires, locked firmly inside of us, they can’t backfire; they can’t hurt us. It’s comfortable to never change, to never chase after what you want, or open your heart up to anyone or anything. But, nothing changes if nothing changes. We spend so much time wondering if we’re good enough for the things we want, debilitated by the trepidation of failing and the judgement of others, that we never actually go after any of it at all. We blame age on the inability to chase after our dreams, we make up excuses and pack our Google Calendars full of distractions, trying our best to shift culpability to anything but us. Really though, it’s our fault. What we want is never a godsend, it won’t simply fall into our laps— we have to chase after it, we have to dive headfirst without worrying about an escape plan. The life you want isn’t something that will show up at your doorstep. You can’t order it on Amazon.
You can spend your whole existence sitting, waiting until you feel worthy and deserving and enough, but these sentiments are all self-afflicted. The only way to feel good enough is by proving to yourself you are. By showing up for yourself, by going after the things that you want despite the nagging doubts about your worth; destiny never seeks us out, we must go looking for it. You must prove to yourself that you are worthy of your deepest desires. Our greatest adversary is often ourselves, standing as the sole barrier to everything we long for, refusing to step aside. It’s irrelevant if you feel good enough for it, if you want it you have to reach for it. You have to do it scared, you’ll have to do it uncomfortable and uncertain and at times, downright miserable. But you must do it.
I’ve squandered countless hours questioning my worthiness— wondering if I’m good enough: for people, for jobs, for the kind of life I want. I've diminished myself to occupy spaces I never truly desired, all out of fear of my own potential. I was against me my entire life, a realisation that only clicked a couple of years ago; I would tirelessly chase after my desires, yet the moment I attained them, I would sit and question my own worthiness, allowing insecurities to taint triumph, turning each achievement into a lingering wound I could spend years licking clean. And how exhausting that was, how exhausting it is to be against yourself for your whole life. How exhausting it is to be waiting for the other shoe to drop constantly.
I still grapple with doubts, I still don’t know if I’m “good enough” or “hot enough” or “smart enough” or “cool enough”. I still choke on my words, falter on steady ground, struggle to make enough eye contact when I’m speaking to people. Some mornings I wake up with a deep gnawing fear that I’ll get everything I’ve ever wanted only to have it snatched away like a thief in the night. Sometimes after important, pivotal business meetings I’ll go home and cry, feeling as though my confidence in those moments was nothing but a fragile facade. Yet, I persist. I get up and face each day, undeterred by my fears.
Moral of the story: I don’t think any of us ever feel like we’re enough, I think it’s inherently hard to imagine ourselves as worthy. But, one time someone who loved me told me they believed in me, told me they loved the way I saw the world, told me they thought I could move mountains if I wanted to. I still can’t explain it, maybe they caught me at a vulnerable moment or maybe I could see in their eyes that they truly meant what they were saying, but I believed them. After years of clinging to cruel words sharpened as daggers, it felt refreshing to change the narrative; to believe that there were people in my corner cheering me on. I realised I wasn’t alone, far from it. Now, in those soul-crushing moments when I falter and question my self-worth, I strive to see myself through the eyes of the many people who love and support me.
If you’re akin to me and are struggling with feelings of inadequacy, pause and try to see yourself through my eyes; I know for certain you’re worth everything you’ve ever wanted, and then some.
After all this, I’ve decided that actually, it’s quite radical to chase after the things we want.
We've been conditioned to believe that we must earn everything—love, friendship, success. In truth, you’ve always been deserving; you never had to earn it. It’s irrelevant if you don’t feel good enough for it, you deserve everything you want. At the end of the day, what you may think about yourself is peripheral. Fight for what you want, stop waiting for it to reveal itself to you, go running toward it.
Remember: You are experiencing life. Life isn’t experiencing you.
It’s not easy to break down the negative narratives we’ve forged for ourselves, especially when they are so ingrained and embedded in our psyche, I know this. Healing isn’t linear— growth isn’t linear. Remember that as you chase after your dreams.
A lot of time we prevent ourselves from going after what we want because of shame, fear, and self-doubt. Shame prevents us from fully seeing ourselves. We have to learn to step outside of the shadow of ourselves. But… how?
As a starting point, I found this reflection exercise from Vanessa Aldrich to be particularly helpful. Get comfortable, grab a pen and paper, and be prepared for some serious self-reflection.
Ask yourself these questions and write your answers out on paper:
When was the last time you did something embarrassingly brave on behalf of your goals? When was the last time you were trembling with fear but pushed through and did it anyway?
Get real about where your shame is coming from by making a list of the ways you police other people. Make a list of three or four things about other people that have been getting under your skin (for example, maybe you’re bothered by people who love the spotlight and are always seeking it out— if you’re someone who is pursuing a goal where you must be in the spotlight but currently feel uncomfortable in it, others ability to be grounded in attention may irritate you, but that’s because it’s a quality you wish you had).
Write a list of things you have stopped yourself from doing and why. Shame and fear masquerade themselves as wisdom, talking us out of going after what we want and preventing us from succeeding. Reflect on some of the ideas you’ve had but stopped yourself from doing.
Introduce yourself to your courageous side. There are always two versions of us fighting for dominance, especially when it comes to pursuing our dreams: the fearful side and the courageous side. You need to start tapping into that courageous side. Write a list of five to ten people who inspire you, who have qualities you admire, who are doing what you wish you could be doing. Write out what you admire about them, what inspires you about them, and what qualities they possess that you wish you did.
This self-reflective exercise will help you visualise and understand what aspect of your shame is stopping you from going after what you want. Keep it and look back on it when you feel yourself faltering and giving into shame or fear.
As I continue to tackle my own feelings of shame and fear, I’ve been doing my best to pour myself completely into my creative endeavours. That being said, I recently launched a new series for my magazine, See You Next Tuesday, called IN THE STU WITH SYNT, an immersive series where we follow creatives into the studio and learn more about their craft.
For this first episode, my friend Jay (aka DJ DIAZ) taught me how to DJ in an hour. This was definitely a step out of my comfort zone but it ended up being euphoric, and now I know how to DJ (kinda ;P).
Normally, when I have an idea, I sit and ponder it for days, weeks even, wondering if anyone would find it useful or entertaining or or or— but this time I just went for it. I had the idea, texted Jay and some friends, and that day we booked the studio. Sometimes you have to get the ball rolling and say you’re going to do something so you can’t back out of it. At least that’s what I do.
All this to say, sometimes I struggle to take my own advice, but when I do, it always pays off. Want proof? Watch me quite literally step out of my comfort zone:
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s edition of Confessions of a 20-Something. I encourage you to share this with your close friends if you feel like it’s the kind of thing they’d be into.
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Until next month …