How to Stop Feeling and Believing That You're Not Good Enough

It’s said that the tone and words you use when you speak to your kids will one day be their inner voice. And I couldn’t agree more. When I think about the inner voice that unconsciously operated in the background of my mind for much of my life, I can still hear echoes of my well-meaning yet teenage older brother, the achievement-oriented encouragement of my father, the imperfect comments of elementary school teachers, and the constant messaging of the television that often played in the background of my childhood home.

And though the intentions of each of these people, with the exclusion of the TV, were good ones, they nevertheless had a negative impact on me. My well-meaning older brother was perceived by parts of me to be a mean bully. My encouraging father was perceived by parts of me to be overbearing and never satisfied with my academic success. My 4th grade teacher who was generally my favorite was perceived in those insensitive moments to be an insensitive and uncaring woman. And that TV set. Oh let's not even go there. That television with all the pretty people and pretty lights may have been the worst influence of them all.

Not feeling good enough is one of the most common thoughts and feelings that people experience. It's likely that your story and your reasons for not feeling and believing that you're good enough are in some ways similar to mine and in many ways different from mine (you too have made mistakes, been rejected by people and jobs, been judged by people around you, etc.) but the fact remains that it’s not an accident that you don’t feel good enough. Your environment, relationships, experiences, cultural messages, and the ways your nervous system interpreted those experiences all helped shape the beliefs and emotional patterns you still carry today.

I have a lot of compassion for how you got to this place and how I got to this place and that's why I’m here writing this article. No one deserves to grow up feeling that they aren’t good enough. No one deserves to grow up hearing constant messages that reinforce their sense of unworthiness or ‘not enoughness’. Yet where many of us find ourselves, given the current achievement- and status-seeking societies we grow up in, is exactly there.

So what do we do about this feeling of not being good enough?

Well I often say that the first step to changing anything is first and foremost to acknowledge that this thing that is unpleasant or unfavorable is there… that right now, for one reason or another, you believe that you're not good enough, whether it's that you're a not good enough partner, a not good enough employee, a not good enough boss, not good enough child, or not good enough human being. Then I recommend that you follow these steps that I've followed many times before and continue to follow when my brain incorrectly assumes that we’re back in 1995 and the feeling of not being good enough as a person tries to take me over.

Here's generally what you need to do to slowly and surely reduce the grip that the belief ‘I'm not good enough’ has on your life.

Recognize where this ‘not good enough’ voice is coming from.

Many of us are told directly or indirectly that we're not good enough by being pushed to always be better (as I alluded to in the introduction to this article), and many of us unconsciously adopt the belief that we're not good enough because we're different from our family members and it's easy to assume that we're not good enough because they want us to be like them and we're not.

So begin getting honest with yourself about where this ‘not good enough’ voice may have come from. Is it actually an objective truth about who you are — or is it a belief shaped through experiences, relationships, environments, expectations, criticism, comparison, pressure, rejection, or the ways you learned to see yourself over time?

My ‘not good enough’ voice, for example, is an amalgamation of my father, my older brother, my mother by association, my elementary school teachers (1st and 4th grade especially), the Soviet and American cultures of which my family lineage is a part, and also the city in which I grew up (New York City).

When we begin recognizing that this voice may have been shaped by people, systems, cultures, pressures, and environments that carried their own pain, fear, insecurity, or conditioning, the belief can sometimes begin loosening its grip just a little.

Recognize that this voice is one part— not all— of you.

Once you've recognized that you have this belief operating below the surface that tells you you're not good enough, the most important thing is to remember that this is just one part of you that has this belief. What's happening is that you've attached a certain meaning and belief to things that have happened in your life and now these thoughts and emotions associated with those events bring this belief to life again and again for you. You can notice that your mind will sometimes think you're not good enough or not worthy and simultaneously recognize that this is just one part of you that thinks that. If you asked another part of you that did well in school and that was praised kindly and compassionately by others, it might think otherwise, right?

Practice self-compassion.

Every single person who grew up not feeling good enough, no matter the reason, needs more compassion. They need more compassion from all the people around them and even more importantly they need more compassion from themselves. My feeling of ‘not good enough’ began early on in life and it led me to strive to be the best student, the best employee, the best [fill in the blank] because I was deeply afraid to feel the feeling of not being good enough that I’d experienced many times before because of the judgment and criticism I received from the people around me.

Because I was young and didn't really know how to care for myself, there was no one around to tell me “You know, I'm sorry that you're feeling like this. It isn't true. Sometimes, hurt people hurt people and I'm so sorry you're feeling this way.” I wish I could have heard that many years ago but I know that the best thing I can do now is to offer those same words and that same compassion to myself. So when you notice that ‘not good enough’ voice begin taking over, invite yourself to pause and respond differently than you may have in the past — perhaps with a kind word, a gentler tone, a compassionate gesture, or the same understanding you would offer someone you really care about.

What’s most important in this whole step is that you build a relationship with this part of you that feels ‘not good enough’… this part of you that has been through a lot, and that deserves to be listened to and understood. Where you might have approached this part of you with a bit of disinterest and intolerance, now the intention is to approach it with interest and receptivity. The feeling of not being good enough comes from self-criticism, self-judgment, and self-rejection. The solution, then, is self-love and self-compassion.

The feeling of not being good enough comes from self-criticism, self-judgment, and self-rejection. The solution, then, is self-love and self-compassion.

Cultivate a sense of safety.

The reason this feeling of “not being good enough” can begin overtaking our emotions, decisions, relationships, and daily lives is often because some part of us learned that it didn’t feel emotionally safe to be imperfect, vulnerable, unsuccessful, rejected, fully ourselves, or deeply human in certain ways. Somewhere along the way, parts of us began believing that mistakes, failure, disapproval, criticism, rejection, or not being “the best” meant something painful about our worth, lovability, belonging, or value.

Part of healing often involves revisiting the experiences and emotional moments that shaped these beliefs and slowly helping the younger parts of ourselves feel safer, more supported, more understood, and less alone than they once did.

And that’s much of the work I’ve done and continued doing over the years — returning compassionately to younger moments where parts of me concluded that I wasn’t good enough because I made a mistake, disappointed someone, didn’t know something, failed publicly, was pressured too hard, or was treated poorly by others.

Little by little, I’ve been helping those younger parts reinterpret those experiences differently than they once did. I revisited the time in the 2nd or 3rd grade when a part of me felt she wasn’t good enough because she missed a word in the spelling bee because she thought it was one of those tricky words when it actually wasn't. And I revisited the time a younger 18 year old part of me incorrectly believed she wasn’t good enough when her first boyfriend mistreated her and she thought it was somehow her fault.

We often don’t realize in the moment how deeply certain experiences, environments, comments, pressures, or relationships shape the way we come to see ourselves. But they do.

And healing often begins not by forcefully trying to become more confident overnight, but by slowly understanding where these beliefs came from and learning how to relate to ourselves differently than we once did.

Much of the work I guide people through in my course Happy from the Inside Out® and in my one-on-one work centers around this process of healing shame, understanding our patterns, and building a more compassionate and secure relationship with ourselves from the inside out.

And if this feeling of “not being good enough” is something you’ve carried for a long time, I hope this article reminds you that these beliefs are often deeply learned — not proof of your actual worth.

Note: This article was originally written several years ago and has been lightly updated to reflect my current work and offerings.