There are days when I’m sit on my balcony stare out at the horizon and wonder how much of our lives we spend trying to become someone we believe we'll finally be happy with.

We set goals for ourselves, work toward them, accomplish things we're proud of, and then almost immediately start thinking about what we need to do next. There's always something we could be doing better, something we could improve, or some part of our lives that hasn't quite come together the way we'd hoped.

And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I believe we should want to grow. I think it's important to have ambitions, to challenge ourselves, and to continue becoming more thoughtful and intentional about the way we live.

But I also think we have to be careful about the relationship we develop with the person we are right now.

Because sometimes, without even realizing it, we begin treating ourselves as though we're not quite good enough yet. As though there's some future version of us who will finally deserve the confidence, happiness, peace, or love we've been waiting to experience.

And I wonder what would happen if we stopped approaching our lives that way.

What if we could look at ourselves, exactly as we are today, with all of the things we've accomplished and all of the things we still want to work on, and genuinely believe that we're enough?

Not because we've reached some extraordinary level of personal development or because everything in our lives is going well, but because our worth as human beings was never supposed to be dependent on any of those things.

I wonder.

Somewhere in our life (usually childhood), many of us learned to associate our value with what we could accomplish or contribute.

And when you think about it, it sort of makes sense. We live in a world where people are regularly evaluated by what they produce, how they look, how successful they are, and what they bring to the table.

I personally can attribute a lot of my success to my looks. Sure, I’m brilliant, like literally Mensa brilliant, but it’s not the first thing people notice and it’s certainly not the thing I’m told most often.

We learn pretty early that certain things earn us praise and approval, and over time, it's easy to start believing those are the things that make us valuable.

But there's a difference between being appreciated for something you do and believing that what you do or have is what makes you worthy of appreciation.

And knowing that becomes especially important when life changes.

Because what happens when you're no longer as productive as you once were? When your career changes, your children grow up, your marriage ends, or you find yourself in a season where you're not accomplishing nearly as much as you used to? Or even when your looks fade and your body changes?

Do those changes make you less valuable?

Of course not.

But if you've spent years measuring yourself by those things, it can certainly feel that way.

And that's where we have an opportunity to reconsider how we've been defining ourselves.

I think one of the reasons the idea of being enough can be difficult to embrace is that we sometimes confuse accepting ourselves with being satisfied with everything about ourselves.

You can genuinely like the person you are and still recognize that there are things about yourself you'd like to change.

You can be proud of the life you've built and still want something different for the next chapter. You can appreciate how far you've come and still be disappointed by some of the decisions you've made along the way.

Ah, the dichotomy of life. Isn't it grand.

In fact, I would argue that having a healthy relationship with yourself makes it easier to acknowledge the things you need to work on.

When you don't see every mistake as evidence that something is wrong with you, you can be more honest about your behavior. You can recognize when you've handled something poorly, take responsibility for it, and decide what you want to do differently next time.

You can look at a relationship that isn't working and consider your contribution to the problem without making the entire situation a reflection of your worth.

And you can set ambitious goals for yourself because you're genuinely excited about what you want to experience, rather than because you're hoping the accomplishment will finally make you feel good about who you are.

I mean that's a much healthier place from which to approach personal growth.

The goal was never supposed to be to become someone worthy of…(fill in the blank).

It was to learn how to live well with the person you already are, while continuing to grow into the person you want to become.

It's also important to pay attention to how we talk to ourselves when things aren't going the way we hoped.

Most of us have experienced moments when we've been disappointed in ourselves. We've made decisions we regret, failed to follow through on something important, or found ourselves repeating a behavior we promised we would change.

And there's nothing wrong with being disappointed.

Sometimes disappointment is appropriate. Sometimes we really do need to sit our azz down and deal with the consequences of our decisions and acknowledge that we could have handled something better.

But I think we have to be mindful of what we do with that disappointment.

There's a difference between recognizing that you made a mistake and deciding that the mistake says something definitive about who you are.

If you fail at something, that doesn't mean you're a failure. If you struggle to maintain a commitment, that doesn't mean you're incapable of being disciplined. And if someone decides they no longer want to be in a relationship with you, that doesn't automatically mean you were somehow insufficient.

Those experiences may instead reveal something you need to understand or address about yourself and they may require you to make some uncomfortable changes.

But they don't have to become the way you define yourself.

Especially as we get older, because by this point in our lives, most of us have accumulated enough experiences to construct a pretty convincing argument about who we believe ourselves to be and typically don’t give ourselves nearly enough credit.

You can look back at the relationships that didn't work, the opportunities you missed, the money you mishandled, or the things you said you were going to do but never quite got around to doing.

And if you’re not careful, you can spend so much time evaluating ourselves through the lens of those experiences that you lose sight of everything else that's true about you.

We're allowed to acknowledge our mistakes without making them our identity.

We're allowed to be disappointed in our choices and still have compassion for the person who made them.

And we're allowed to believe we're worthy of a good life, even while we're working through the consequences of decisions that made our lives more difficult.

One of the most freeing things about genuinely believing you're enough is that you can stop looking for other people and external circumstances to confirm it for you.

You can appreciate being loved without making someone else's love the measure of your worth. You can pursue success because it's meaningful to you, rather than because you need another accomplishment to feel good about yourself.

And you can accept that someone may be disappointed in you, disagree with you, or even decide they no longer want to be part of your life without interpreting their decision as evidence that something is wrong with you.

Of course, believing you're enough doesn't mean you'll never question yourself again. There will still be moments of insecurity, disappointment, and uncertainty. And there will certainly be times when you'll need to take an honest look at yourself and make some changes.

But there is something beautiful about being able to do all of that from a place of genuine appreciation for who you already are.

Because no matter how much you accomplish or how intentional you become about your life, there will always be something else to learn, experience, or improve.

And I hope you continue to pursue those things.

I just hope you don't spend so much time becoming the woman you want to be that you forget to appreciate the woman you already are.

Think about the expectations you've placed on yourself and how much of your sense of worth you've attached to meeting them.

What would change about the way you see yourself if you genuinely believed you were already enough?

I hope we continue setting goals, pursuing our ambitions, and finding new ways to grow and experience everything life has to offer. I certainly have no intention of stopping, and I hope you don't either.

But I also hope that as we continue becoming the women we want to be, we learn to appreciate the women we already are.

Because there will always be something more to accomplish, something new to learn, or some part of our lives we want to improve. And I think that's a beautiful thing.

I just don't want us to spend so much of our lives looking forward to who we're becoming that we forget to enjoy who we are today.

With love,

Donteacia 💛