Searching for being "good enough"?

I identify with your feelings. 

I cannot speak for you but here is my experience for what it is worth. 

 I naturally tend to compare my insides with the outsides of others.  

Because I find communication difficult I assume everyone is doing perfectly and am surprised when I learn that everyone is -like me- going through life challenges. 
I got the strength from somewhere inside myself to ask my colleagues for advice on how they do certain things.  I didn’t get fired and I’m fact it probably improved the atmosphere at work when I demonstrate honesty and an attitude of investment in my work in that open way.

I consciously wish my colleagues - and any living human being - well: ‘ May they have health, happiness, peace and love in their lives’.  Looking for ways to help others -as I am trying to do right now, writing this - is part of my personal nourishment.  
Some of my problems are feelings of needing to satiate infinite needs within me but  that specific over-focus on myself is sometimes actually torture posing as hope. 
I need to find ways to feed an attitude in me where I am ‘hoping for the benefit of others’.

Hi,

I can understand being a perfectionist and feeling like you're never good enough. I get that a lot! It can be overwhelming and it's something that can stick in the mind like glue and make it hard to think about anything else.

I think you should make yourself a nice list of things you're good at. I know mostly you're thinking about your colleague but I think having a list will be good for you too.

First things first try not to compare yourself to your colleague. Because the end result is what's happening now. It's good to be competitive but don't let it overwhelm you and cause hassle. It's totally not worth it. 

I think just focus on and remember this. Your colleague is brilliant at what she does... But equally so are you. You both have the job you do because you were and are good enough to do it. You're the same.

I know autism can be difficult and it's hard not to focus on the difficulties but you have a job and you're doing really well in it, I still yet to get a job, so I am very jealous 

Compare, and despair. 

My whole life, both at school and work. 

In the end, I can only be myself. 

Hi. Thanks so much for your reply. Yes that's what I'm looking for. Definitely would be good to have one less reason to stress! Setting standards for myself sounds like that might help me - maybe if I jot down a few ideas and go with that as a challenge to myself.

Thank you for you reply. I've not heard of a growth mindset, but it sounds really interetsing. Will look out for some reading. I have some annual leave coming up, so sounds like the ideal opportunity. 

Hi Ann. Thanks so much for your reply. Yes it is about inner confidence I think. Your comments made me smile especially about geniuses. Thanks again. I need to work on the self worth stuff... as always. 

I hope that you too feel better. It is a hard one in my world.

Hmm

I do not do comparing to others, good or worse is murky water

I do set my own standards at work though, high enough to make it requiring effort.

If I can keep it up than i am satisfied and I am able to feel good at the end of the day

it's something my granpa thought me

so I have one less reason to stress

Well the perfectionist mindset will likely make you feel flawed and not good enough a majority of the time. It is because right now, your value and self-worth is directly tied to the work that you manage to do, and if something goes wrong with the work, you equate it to something being wrong with you, and that's the meaning of taking things personally. People often say "don't take it personally," and "don't compare yourself to others" but they never explain things further than that, they never explain how to do those things.

When an experimenter is tinkering with a machine and it fails, if they were to take it personally, they would say "I have failed" and start beating themselves up for not being good enough. But to not take it personally, you have to realize that thing over there failed, that machine failed, that object. You are not that object. Ponder about what kind of ideas can you think of to fix the machine, and how can you improve the machine. Curiosity and learning about the different ways and methods to go about doing things, leads to a broader, more diversified, and deeper understanding of how things work, and leads to more knowledge and wisdom over time. It's about improving yourself from how you were before. There is no one to compare yourself to, except to see how much you've grown in knowledge and skill from how you were yesterday, or even a year ago. 

Perhaps reading about the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset could help you further. 

Hi, 

First of all, are you sure your coworker is actually better than you at your job? It can be very hard to judge this yourself. For example: I went to university in Cambridge and a lot of us there suffer from impostor syndrome... (eg. thinking we ended up in Cambridge 'by accident'). In supervisions (small group teaching), I always felt that everyone else was much smarter and doing a much better job than me... After a while I realised that other people thought the same: they thought that everyone else (including me) was doing better than them. So everyone seemed to think they themselves were the worst and everyone else was better. 

Also what does "good" or "better" even mean? How do you define this or measure it? You can be good at a job in many different ways (not sure what kind of job you do) but you can be very efficient, very fast, accurate, perseverant etc. For example at university everyone was smart but people were good in different ways- my strength was being super passionate about what I was doing, whilst other people were simply super intelligent etc. We are all "good" at things in different ways. So it is super hard to even define what good is, which again makes comparisons of "how good you are" not very meaningful. 

I don't know if this helps, but I just wanted to point out that "good" and "better" are very subjective terms. Comparisons are therefore also difficult and in general comparisons may not always be helpful

The competitiveness you are describing can be good to give motivation, but it can easily turn against one and lead to feelings of inadequacy. 

Also some people are just absolute geniuses and I find it best to not compare myself. I find it nice when people are "better" than me as that means I can learn from them. 

However, I can relate to "not feeling good enough"- I have very low self confidence and self-esteem and feel like an utter failure most of the time. So whilst I can rationally explain these things, I still find myself "not feeling good enough" and thinking other people are better than me all the time. 

It sounds like you love your job and are striving to do well- in my eyes that means you are extremely good at what you are doing. I hope you find your inner confidence and start believing more in yourself!