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Searching for being "good enough"?

mrs.snooks

Hi all. I wondered if you had any tips of ways of helping to believe being "good enough".

I am a perfectionist and also quite competitive. Work is very important to me and I compare myself to a colleague who is super brilliant at the job we do. I am having trouble believing I am good enough, when I am not as good as her.

A friend has said that it is about being "good enough" and I believe that is what I am looking for, but it is not always possible for me to believe that about myself. 

I struggle with the problems I have with my austism a lot of the time and work is important because it gives me value in myself. I'm struggling to find value in my life today.

I kjnow that I am more than my job. But work feels like is the only thing that I am good at, so when someone is bettter than me, it really shakes my confidence.

Any advice would be really appreciated.

Parents

  • 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! 

  • in reply to Ann :)

    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.

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